142 
FLORULA. 
on either side of the so-called Peninsula of Greenland. 
The culminating peak of the northern abutment of this 
indentation gave me, trigonometrically, 1383 feet; and 
others, more distant, were at least one third higher. 
The cove itself measured hut six hundred yards from 
bluff to bluff. It was recessed in a regular ellipse, or 
rather horseshoe, around which the strongly-featured 
gneisses, relieved, as usual, with the outcroppings of 
feldspar, formed lofty mural precipices. I estimated 
their mean elevation at twelve hundred feet. At their 
bases a mass of schistose rubbish had accumulated. 
I have described this recess as a perfect horseshoe : 
it was not exactly such, for at its northeast end a rug- 
ged little water-feeder, formed by the melting snows, 
sent down a stream of foam which buried itself under 
the frozen surface of a lake. Yet to the eye it was a 
nearly absolute theatre, this little cove, and its arena 
a moss-covered succession of terraces, each of indescrib- 
able richness. 
Strange as it seemed, on the immediate level of snow 
and ice, the constant infiltrations, aided by solar rever- 
beration, had made an Arctic garden-spot. The sur- 
face of the moss, owing, probably, to the extreme altern- 
ations of heat and cold, was divided into regular hex- 
agons and other polyhedral figures, and scattered over 
these, nestling between the tufts, and forming little 
groups on their southern faces, was a quiet, unobtru- 
sive community of Alpine flowering plants. The weak- 
ness of individual growth allowed no ambitious species 
to overpower its neighbor, so that many families were 
crowded together in a rich flower-bed. In a little space 
that I could cover with my pea-jacket, the veined leaves 
of the Pyrola were peeping out among chickweeds and 
saxifrages, the sorrel and Ranunculus. I even found a 
