26 DISCO FIORD. Chap. II. 



Esquimaux, and has devoted mucli of his leisure 

 time in collecting rare specimens of the animal, 

 vegetable, and mineral productions of the 

 country. I came away enriched by some fossils 

 from the fossil forest of Atanekerdluk, also with 

 specimens of native coal. 



It was here I met with the late commanders 

 of the whalers ' Gripsy ' and ' Undaunted,' of 

 Peterhead, which had been crushed by the ice 

 in Melville Bay five or six weeks previously ; 

 all the other whalers had returned from the 

 north along the pack edge, and passed south of 

 Disco. They said that the ice in Melville Bay 

 was all broken up, and that they thought we 

 should find but little difficulty at this late period 

 in passing through it into the North Water. 



Leaving Godhaven in the afternoon with a 

 native pilot, we found ourselves some 10 or 

 12 miles up Disco Fiord at an early hour next 

 morning. After despatching the pilot to an- 

 nounce our arrival to his countrymen at their 

 fishing station, 7 or 8 miles further up, the Doctor 

 and I landed upon the north side to explore. 



The scenery is charming, lofty hills of trap 

 rock, with unusually rich slopes (for the 70th 

 parallel) descending to the fiord, and strewed 

 with boulders of gneiss and granite. "We found 

 the blue campanula holding a conspicuous place 



