PEEFACE IX 



these opinions have repeatedly been expressed to me. Other 

 people, again, arrive at its climate by analogy with corresponding 

 latitudes in the northern hemisphere. In reality, it is far colder 

 and far more inclement. At no time does the temperatm^e ever 

 rise to anything approaching summer-heat in the British Islands. 

 It commonly freezes at midsummer. Degrees of temperature, 

 however, do not convey the climate. There is the wind from 

 the everlasting snows and glaciers, always blowing with terrific 

 force and with cutting keenness, yet how invigorating and 

 fragrant with forest and peat and seaweed ! 



Drake thus describes the weather in 1578 : — " The moun- 

 taines being verry high, and som reaching into the frozen 

 region, did euery one send out their seueral windes ; somtymes 

 behind us, to send us on our way ; somtymes on the starrboarde 

 side, to driue us to the larborde, and on the contrary ; somtymes 

 right against us, to driue us farther back in an houre than wee 

 could recouer againe in many ; but of all others this was the 

 worst, that sometyme two or three of these winds would come 

 together, and meet as it were in one body, whose forces being 

 becom one, did so violently fall into the sea, whirleing, or as the 

 Spanyard saith, with a tornado, that they would pierce into the 

 very bowells of the sea, and make it swell upwards on every syde ; 

 the hollownes they made in the water, and the winds breaking 

 out againe, did take the swelling banks so raised into the ayer, 

 and being dispersed abroad, it rann downe againe a mighty raine. 

 Neither may I omit the grisly sight of the cold and frozen 

 mountains rearing their heads, yea, the greatest part of their 

 bodies, into the cold and frozen region, where the power of the 

 reflection of the sonn neuer reacheth to dissolve the ise and snow ; 

 so that the ise and snow hang about the spires of the mountains 

 circularwise, as it were regions by degrees, one above another, 

 and one exceeding another in breadth in a wonderful order. From 

 these hills distilled so sharpe a breath, that it seemed to enter into 

 the bowells of nature, to the great discomfort of the lives of our 

 men." 



