CHAPTER IV 
What Nature has writ with her lusty wit 
Is worded so wisely and kindly, 
That whoever has dipped in her manuscript 
Must up and follow her blindly. HENLEY. 
The variety and beauty of the flora of Greenland. Some salient 
features of Arctic vegetation. Arctic and tropical vegetation con- 
trasted. The Arctic and the Antarctic. Lichens and colour in 
nature. 
VISIT to Greenland in the summer affords 
a very incomplete idea of a country which is 
usually associated in one’s mind with its winter 
aspect when, except in the more southern districts, 
the kayak is replaced by the sledge and all com- 
munication with the outer world is suspended. The 
isolation has compensations. A Danish friend who 
passes most winters in Greenland told me that he 
watches the last ship leave in September with a 
sense of relief; it means at least six months of 
peace and quiet. A few brief descriptions of 
typical scenes may serve to dispel the popular 
fallacy that even in the summer this Arctic land 
offers few attractions as a place of residence. John 
Davis in the latter part of the sixteenth century 
described Greenland as a land of desolation, and 
added: ‘The irksome noise of the ice and the 
loathsome view of the shore bred strange conceits 
among us.’ Shelley’s lines, 
From the most gloomy glens 
Of Greenland’s sunless clime, 
