Under the Midnight Sun

I. ON THE WAY.

IT is such a universally conceded fact that the first two days at sea furnish the most dismal of human experiences, that it is not at all worth while to dwell upon it in this place. Take for granted therefore, that when, on the 15th of June, 1869, a party of eight persons found themselves together for the first time on the deck of the “ City of Boston,” pounding into the Atlantic rollers off Sandy Hook, they did not exhibit that lively feeling which one would reasonably expect to see in summer excursionists.

“Going over ? ” inquired a lean and hungry-looking man, who was a fellowpassenger of a young gentleman who was one of the eight.

“Sir ?” said the young gentleman. The lean and hungry-looking man repeated his question.

“No, sir,” replied the young gentleman feebly.

“Not going over!” exclaimed the lean and hungry-looking man, as if astonished,− " not going over, eh ? Stop at Halifax, then ? ”

Now, since to “go over” and " stop at Halifax ” were the only alternatives, the observation struck the young gentleman as somewhat superfluous ; but he was entirely too far gone in seasickness to enforce such a self-evident proposition, and he therefore satisfied himself with a simple, " Yes, sir.”

Thereupon the lean and hungry-looking man exclaimed, “ I want to know ! ”

This observation greatly confused the young gentleman, for he had not the faintest idea in the world why this lean and hungry-looking man should want to know anything at all of him.

Presently the inquirer explained what it was that weighed upon his mind. He wanted to know if the young gentleman stopped long in Halifax. The young gentleman uttered a laconic " No.”

“Going farther, I suppose ?”

A laconic “ Yes.”

“I want to know ! ” exclaimed the lean and hungry-looking man again, eager for information. Then he said, “Where ? ”

The young gentleman replied, “St. John’s, Newfoundland.”

The lean and hungry-looking man again manifested his interest in the same remarkable and expressive manner as before. He was evidently moved by deep curiosity. There could be no doubt that he was on his travels in pursuit of knowledge. He declared himself further by giving his chair an extra hitch, at the same time producing a note-book from his pocket and a pencil from behind his ear. Then he bent forward with an eager and attentive air.

The young gentleman was lying on the seat beside the cabin skylight, propped up with cushions, looking very pale and wretched. He turned his dizzy head partly over and fixed his eyes upon his questioner. His questioner fixed his eyes on him, and got the best of it. The young gentleman turned his face to the sky, closed his eyes resignedly, in a manner which seemed to say, “I give it up ; now do your worst.”

The lean and hungry-looking man now had it all his own way.

“Stop long in Newfoundland ? ” he asked, preparing himself to make a note of it.

“No,” replied the young gentleman in a gentle tone of voice, − “no, no, no,” preparing himself meanwhile for the roll of the ship which was coming in the trough of a passing sea.

“Going farther ? ” asked the lean and hungry-looking man.

“Yes,” said the young gentleman.

“Where ? ” asked the lean and hungry-looking man. The young gentleman reflected a moment and then said, “ To Greenland ” ; at which declaration the lean and hungry-looking man exhibited decided evidences of astonishment, exclaiming, after a short pause, “ Do tell!”

The young gentleman declared he would; which seemed to relieve the other’s mind, for he said, immediately afterward, “ I want to know ! ”

“ You shall ! ” said the young gentleman.

“ Stay long in Greenland ? ” said the lean and hungry-looking man.

“ No,” said the young gentleman.

“ Going any farther ? ” said the lean and hungry-looking man.

“Yes,” said the young gentleman.

Just then the ship gave an extra lurch, and the young gentleman an extra heave, while he clutched the seat to keep himself from being rolled on the deck.

“Where ?” asked the lean and hungry-looking man, with increasing earnestness.

The ship gave another lurch, and the young gentleman said, “ To the devil.” And he looked very much as if he would like to have his questioner go there, too, just then.

Again the lean and hungry-looking man exclaimed, “Do tell! ”

Again the young gentleman declared he would.

Again the lean and hungry-looking man exclaimed, “ I want to know ! ”

Again the young gentleman replied, " You shall.”

Then the lean and hungry-looking man wanted to know if anybody was going along; “ That is, I mean to Greenland, not the other place.”

The young gentleman mentioned several names, and among them one well known to the public.

“ What, the artist! ”

“ Yes, sir.”

“ Him that painted a picture with icebergs in it and ships, and − and other things.”

“ That’s the man, sir.”

The pursuer of knowledge took a good look at the artist as he stood against the rail; and when satisfied returned to the young gentleman again.

“Great artist,” said he; “wonderful picture that. Have seen it often.” Then, growing still more earnest, he bent forward close to the young gentleman and in a confidential manner said, “Must have cost a heap of money.”

The young gentleman told him that it did.

“ How much ? ” still more confidentially than before.

“ Twelve thousand dollars ! ”

This took the man quite aback: indeed it quite took away his breath. He straightened himself up in his seat, with his hands on his knees and his mouth wide open.

The young gentleman, wishing to reassure him, said, “ Fact, sir.”

“I want to know!” exclaimed the lean and hungry-looking man ; but unhappily at that very instant his pencil dropped from his fingers and rolled away. Springing from his seat, he bustled after it. Meanwhile the young gentleman became completely upset with the effort of talking, and with the action of the waves, which were then unusually high. He left his seat with great precipitation, and hurried to the ship’s side. The lean and hungry-looking man, when he had recovered his pencil, was much surprised to find the young gentleman no longer there, and looked about in a puzzled manner. Discovering him at length, he rushed after him, shouting, “Gold or currency ! ”

A gentleman standing near by with his hands in his pockets, observing that the young gentleman was not then in a condition to make answer, calmly informed the excited questioner that it was −

“ Bile.”

What this lean and hungry-looking man’s name was, nobody had the curiosity to inquire. He became distinguished as “ The man who wants to know,” and was never spoken of otherwise. Once he wanted to know if I too was going to Greenland.

I assured him that I was.

“ Stay there long ? ” said he.

“About three months.”

“ Coming back again ? ”

I told him that it was not my present intention to select Greenland as a permanent residence.

“ Been there before, I believe ? ” he continued.

I replied that I had had that pleasure.

“Ah! I thought so. Cold up there, ain't it ? ”

The last I saw of him was on the wharf at Halifax.

“ Stop long at Halifax?” he asked.

“ Not long,” I said.

“ Leave soon, then.”

“ Yes, very soon.”

“ I want to know.”

But I did not stop to inquire what it was this time, and left “ This man who wants to know ” to go on board his ship to “go over,” while we sought the “City of Halifax” and steamed away upon our course to Newfoundland.

On the morning of the fourth day I was on deck bright and early, and was much surprised to hear the ringing of bells and the rattle of wheels, and to smell the smell of fish.

“ What has happened, Captain ? ”

“ Here we are.”

“Where, in the name of wonder ? ”

“ Why, at St. John’s, to be sure ! ”

“ I cannot see it.”

“ O, you ’re not expected to ; nobody does.”

We had crawled in under the fog cloud which hides Newfoundland from the rest of the universe, except on rare occasions when that island takes a peep from under its damp clothes. One of these occasions we were lucky enough to have lighted upon, and before the steamer had hauled into the wharf the sun came down hot upon the fog and broke it up ; and as the tattered fragments floated slowly away before a light wind, the lofty hills and the noble entrance to the bay came out boldly on the left, while on the right the quaint old town got unrobed so quickly that it seemed, with streets and houses clambering one above the other up the hill, as if a painted curtain had dropped down in some transformation scene.

The harbor of St. John’s is in shape more like a modern lady’s boot than anything else I can compare it to ; the leg being the narrow inlet through which you come directly From the open sea. There is no outside roadstead, and you must point your vessel fair and keep her steady if you would get safe inside ; and while you pass it seems almost as if you could toss a biscuit on the rocks to right or left, while you head directly for the boot’s high heel, where there are many busy wharves, and vessels lading and unlading.

The bay, or the instep of the boot, is crowded with all manner of little fishing-craft. One of her Majesty’s ugliest ships of war, of hitherto unheardof shape, but altogether harmless look, rides at anchor there ; and near by there is a jolly, jaunty little English fruiterer, fresh from the Azores, with the perfume of oranges about her ; and yonder neat steamer “ blowing off” is the famous “ Gulnare,” a surveyingship that has done much noble service on the coast, of late, under the skilful direction of the accomplished and courteous Staff-commander J. H. Kerr, of the Royal Navy.

Then for a mile away the sole of the boot is a line of lively-looking wharves and stores ; and off in the distance the pointed toe strikes up against some mills, the clattering wheels of which are turned by a rushing stream tumbling in a multitude of falls and rapids from the numerous lakes which speckle the lofty upland region west and southwest of St. John’s.

Of the town itself there is not much that you will wish to see. A grand old cathedral overlooks it from the hill, and may be seen on a clear, bright day miles and miles away, through the harbor’s mouth.

If you have courage to climb for half an hour or so up a hill, down which the houses seem to be meditating a slide, you may go into the cathedral, and be well repaid for your toil. The people of St. John’s are in great part Catholics, and the cathedral appears to be the church building in most general use.

Near it there is a pretty park, in which stands the Government House. The governor will receive you cordially; but he is on the wing for Vancouver’s Island, and he is in as great disgust as any other mortal man that has to pack his trunks.

Your call upon the governor and the archbishop ended, yon will linger for a while around the old cathedral; and then you will return hungry to your hotel codfish. Or it may be that you will chance not upon codfish, but upon a boiled leg of Newfoundland mutton, garnished with a Newfoundland potato ; and, if you have brought along from Heyward’s a choice bottle of his famous Newfoundland port, you will find yourself in very good humor with St. John’s.

And now you have “ done ” the town ; but you will drive about the country, and you will come unexpectedly upon many strange, wild bits of nature,— at Logi Bay, at Quidi Vidi, at Topsail, at Petty Harbor, at Portugal Cove ; and you will overlook the great blue sea from above the fog cloud which girdles the land. At rapid intervals you will look from a lofty height down into narrow fissures in the solid rock, up from whose gloomy depths the wild moan of the breaking waves comes like a blast from a trumpet. Look closely, and down in their crimson shades, perched on rocky ledges above the troubled waters, you will find human families, huddled in damp and misery, gathering from the sea the annual codfish harvest.

The “ stages ” of these fishermen are indeed to be found almost everywhere, at least wherever there are any outside rocks at all, to give them the least chance for a harbor. They are the lightest, frailest-looking things that ever were seen, built of small cedar poles and covered with cedar brush, on which the fish are spread to dry. Below these stages is the salting and preparing shed, one side of it perched on slender piles, the other with but a feeble hold upon the rocks. Beneath it lies a boat, from which a father and his sons are, with pitchforks, tossing up into the shed the catchings of the day ; and in the shed the mother and the daughters “ gut and head ” the fish, and carry them away and pile them up in great solid heaps with salt ; and when this work is over, you see them tear down other piles of fish that have lain in salt ten days, and then coming out in their drabbled, bloody, ragged gowns, carry the heavy load up to the stages, and on the cedar brushes spread their burden in the warm sun to dry.

These wild haunts of men are pleasant things to the eye ; they are always picturesque and wondrously attractive. Pity you cannot see the little boats swarming in and out, and watch the busy life without the feeling that close acquaintance with the people can leave no other association than one of pain and sadness.

Verily the life of a Newfoundland fisherman is hard. He is always poor. He is never out of debt to his merchant master. A bad season drives him to despair and beggary ; and many are the notes of woe that rise from the gloomy gorges with the voice of the wailing sea.

I know not whose fault it is, or whether anybody’s ; but it does seem to me that something might be done to make the lives of these hardy, daring people more tolerable. A handful of merchants transact the business of the island, and with rare exceptions they are adventurers. They are there to gather what they can and gather while they may; and when they go home they carry everything away, leaving not a dollar behind to bless the land and labor that have made them rich.

Human nature is much the same everywhere. Is it so very surprising that the merchants should hold the fisherman in the clutch of poverty, and thereby be certain of his services, or that the fisherman should not see his interest, but tamely wear his chains ?

Perhaps “ confederation,” which is to cure all manner of colonial ills, may bring about the fisherman’s millennium. Let us in conscience hope it. Every one of them will have the right to vote, and who knows but he may vote himself a farm upon the land, in lieu of a harvest-ground upon the sea ?

II. THE PANTHER.

THE “ Panther ” is a steamship, and therefore, in this instance, not a wild beast. She lies midway between the heel and toe of St. John’s Harbor.

We are very curious about the “ Panther,” and are anxious to see her, for we purpose spending three months aboard of her. We visit her before we climb the hill, or see the cathedral, or call upon the governor, or eat, or drink, or sleep. The question was, would she do ? She had been chartered without being seen ; and now was she all the fancy and the bond had painted her? The transaction had been made between the artist whom I have mentioned, and a leading firm of St. John’s, perhaps the most enterprising on the island, if we except one over at Harbor Grace, the head of which is, like the manager of the other, as hearty and as generous a gentleman as you will meet the world over; and both are patriotic citizens of Newfoundland, in the best sense of the word ; that is to say, they have the interests of the province at heart as well as their own.

Down through the smell of codfish, which is as pervasive as the fog, in Newfoundland, − past whole acres of dried codfish, piled up in stacks like shingles from a mill, or spread to dry on the wharves, on the roofs of houses, on the decks of vessels, on stages temporarily rigged out over the water, − everywhere, − we made our way to the Panther, accompanied by her owner. On board we met her captain, and

He received us after the hearty fashion of a thoroughbred sailor; and yet withal you could detect a twinkle of the eye which showed him not less curious about us than we were about him and his craft. No master of a ship cares to have on board with him the man who has chartered her. Nevertheless, the mutual inspection was in the end mutually satisfactory. The “ Panther” would do, and the captain of the “ Panther” was just what the captain of the “ Panther ” should be. That he did not then and there throw up his command is evidence enough that for him we too would do.

The “ Panther ” was built expressly for a sealer. In the stormy month of March she goes down to the ice to gather up a cargo of innocent little “ baby ” seals, which, in countless thousands, are brought into the world on the floating rafts at that season, seemingly for no other purpose than to have their brains speedily knocked out with a “ gaff” for man’s benefit. The region of this murderous work reaches from a little way above St. John’s to “ the Labrador.”

For this service a ship must needs be strong ; and the " Panther ” was the best and strongest of her kind. Her sides were of solid timber, twentyseven inches thick. She had eight feet of solid “ dead wood ” bolted in her “eyes.” She had huge beams across her hold, that her sides might not be squeezed together in a “nip.” She had extra knees and beams everywhere, that she might not shake herself to pieces when she “ took the ice.” Outside she was sheathed with the famous “ iron-wood ” of Australia, which is so hard that you can scarcely cut it with a knife. Her stem was flush and wide, and covered with enormous plates of iron, and had an immense “ rake,” so that she would rise upon the ice and crush it down. Wood and iron could do no more for her ; and she was safe as safe could be. She was bark-rigged, heavily sparred, and carried a fine spread of canvas. She was too heavy and too stiff to be fast; but she could sail eight and steam six miles the hour, which was quite satisfactory. She was just small enough to be handy and large enough to be comfortable; that is to say, in the quaint language of the mercantile service of her Britannic Majesty, she was duly set down as a bark of three hundred and fifty tons’ register, − a measurement which gave her a carrying-capacity of four hundred and fifty tons ; and that quantity of soft bituminous coal from Cow Bay, Nova Scotia, was already below her hatches. Her hold was so full, from the keelson to the deck-timbers, that a live rat would hardly have found room to turn round in.

From the “ Panther” to her owner. I have said that he dealt in codfish ; but, better than that, he belongs to a small group of young men known as the “small merchantables,” a name now gloried in as an honorable distinction. In the codfish trade, a “ small merchantable ” is the smallest possible bit of shingly hardness that will sell; so the name was not originally given in compliment.

At Harbor Grace flourish the “ merchantables ” ; and the “ small merchantables ” of St. John’s are to give the hand of fellowship to the “ merchantables” of Harbor Grace. We are invited to go along, and, glad of such an excellent opportunity to see the island, we accept the invitation. We cross the country nine miles, past some pretty lakes, and then from Portugal Cove we cross Conception Bay in a tug. We see some fine scenery, especially on Belle Isle, whose perpendicular walls are full of gloomy caverns and wild gorges, and whose top is covered with forests, pretty farms, and little villages. The rock is sandstone, − the only stratified rock that I saw; and it appears to be what is left of a great deposit, the remainder having been washed away by the sea.

Socially the day was one perpetual lunch, and the night an endless dinner; and I came from Harbor Grace, sharing with others the opinion that the “ small merchantables ” deserve a better name. They closed the doors, and never a codfish got by any chance inside ; and in the excellence of some native venison we buried the recollection of codfish breakfasts and codfish dinners and codfish suppers without end; and with a lively sense of gratitude therefor, and for once a pleasant impression on the palate, we went aboard the “Panther” on the following day, and steamed away into the chill waters which come, ice-freighted, from the regions of the Pole.

III. THE LAND OF DESOLATION.

ON a gloomy day in the month of July, 1585, Captain John Davis, in the ship “ Sunshine,” of fifty tons, fitted out by “ divers opulent merchants of London, for the discovery of a northwest passage,” came “in a thick and heavy mist to a place where there was a mighty roaring as of waves dashing on a rocky shore.” Putting off in a boat to discover what it all meant, Davis found that he was embayed in fields and hills of ice, the crashing together of which made the fearful sounds thathad been heard. And now through fog and ice, on every hand beset with peril, the “Sunshine” drifted through the night and when the morning came the people saw the tops of mountains, white with snow and of a sugar-loaf shape, standing above the clouds. “ At their base the land was deformed and rocky, the shore was everywhere beset with ice, which made such irksome noise that the land was called the Land of Desolation.”

On a gloomy night in the month of July, 1869, the ship “Panther.” of three hundred and fifty tons, was in like manner lost in fog and beset with ice. But she had steam, which the “Sunshine” had not, and she made some “way” through the water at “ dead slow.” We passed very near to many icebergs. An iceberg here, − “ Starboard the helm.” An iceberg there, − “ Port, port.” An iceberg dead ahead, − “ Stop her, back astern.” And thus she drifted through the night; and when the morning came, she was not only lost in fog and beset with ice, but she was actually among the breakers, the sound of which came to us, dulled by the mist. We had been swept by the current inside some unknown skerries, on which the waves broke behind us.

There was nothing for us to do now but wait for better weather; yet we were drifting on, we knew not where. We thought ourselves near the mouth of the harbor of Julianshaab, but in the uncertain current we were in great doubt.

It was for Julianshaab that we were bound, and we fired a gun for a Julianshaab pilot; but no pilot came. As well have tried to raise the dead as to signal for a pilot there.

A boat was sent away into the fog, but it returned having discovered nothing. The fog lifted a little by and by, disclosing the surf to which we had listened with so much alarm, to right, to left, in front, behind us. Then the shore came out gloomy and forbidding, and iceberg after iceberg appeared obscurely in the gloom. Then a break was discovered in the land ; it appeared to be a wide inlet, and we made for it at “dead slow,” with the lead-line going constantly.

We proved to be right in our conjecture. It was a deep inlet; but its mouth was full of islands and sunken rocks. We passed one island close aboard with forty fathoms and no bottom, and another on the other hand with thirty.

A little bay opened to the right, and we made for it, hoping to find a harbor. We carried thirty-five, forty, forty-five fathoms along with us, and were almost on the rocks at its farther end before we got eighteen fathoms and let an anchor go.

A light wind now sprung up, and with the rising sun the fog broke and fled away, and the land came out, “ deformed and rocky ” ; great ragged mountains, “ white with snow and of a sugar-loaf shape,” pierced the clouds, and the breaking sea and grinding ice made an “ irksome noise.” We needed no pilot now to tell us where we had come. The “ Panther ” had drifted, as the “Sunshine ” had done two hundred and eighty-four years before, to the self-same spot, in the self-same way. It was Davis’s “ Land of Desolation.”

And well does it deserve its name. Mountain-peaks more desolate never reared their ghastly shapes above a sea more wild or valleys more absolutely sterile ; nor did ever bleaker cliffs frown down on fog-bound ship than those which rose around our anchorage.

I have never seen a land so utterly devoid of life. We saw no living thing. It was everywhere as naked as the icefield that pounded on the shore. Great wide-mouthed caverns opened in the hills and cliffs. Vast heaps of stones that had crumbled from above lay piled up in the gorges. In one of these an enormous rock had wedged itself, and on it other rocks had fallen down, and formed a natural bridge, beneath which we passed, after landing from our boat below, and thence emerged into the mouth of a deep, unfathomed cave at the base of a cliff a thousand feet in height.

In a couple of hours after we had dropped our anchor, the light wind of the morning changed to a heavy blow, and the fog was followed by light rain. In the afternoon the rain was changed to hail. In the night the wind freshened, and by the next morning blew a gale.

There was something awfully grand in the aspect of the mountains now, as the storm-clouds swept along this Land of Desolation, alternately hiding and disclosing the line of angry surf, and the hills and cliffs, with the cold, harsh curtain of the hail and rain.

But what was that ?

The heavy surge of a dragging anchor is not a pleasant sound.

The gale had brought in a high sea, too strong for the rocks and skerries to keep back from us, and the swell rolled into our little harbor through the white rampart of the spray, and the “ Panther ” pitched and tugged at her anchor fiercely.

Another surge. The ship fell back before the gale so quickly that it seemed as if the anchor had dropped from a ledge to deeper water, and was “coming home” without anything to offer the least resistance.

The captain shouted, “ Heave the lead.”

“ Ay, ay, sir ” ; and the lead was hove.

“ What water ? ”

“ Forty-two fathoms.”

“ Give her chain.”

They gave her twenty fathoms, and still she dragged the anchor.

The lead was hove again.

“ What water now?

“ Nineteen fathoms.”

“ Let go the other anchor.”

But this anchor held no better than the first, and steadily we neared the rocks. The fires were “banked,” not out. In fifteen minutes we could have steam up, not before. In steam now seemed to lie our only safety, yet the captain said the anchors would bring up on the rising ground. She would not drag them up hill. And, sure enough, one of them caught a rock.

“I told you so,” said the captain; and he walked the deck, and faced the driving hail with the greatest unconcern.

But the anchor did not hold long, and again we neared the rocks. The anchor-stock only had caught, and this was broken short off with the violent heaving of the ship.

Four fathoms at last under her stern, and the surf hissing beneath the counters.

Then came a report that “steam is up.”

“ Ahead full speed,” was the order of the captain’s bell.

A slight jar and tremble of the ship told that the screw was working. We watched the rocks and saw the vessel move : we saw the distance widen between us and the shore, slowly but surely and steadily. And now how we blessed the luck that gave us coals to burn so freely ! How soon, in the sense of danger which we had experienced, we forgot the previous discomfort of its smoke and soot ! We had wished every day and hour before for harder coals ; but now we would never more abuse “ Cow Bay.”

We were not long in picking up our anchors, and in a more sheltered part of the harbor we sought a better holdingground, and again let go the unbroken anchor. But the bottom was rocky as before, and again the anchor dragged. Once more we picked it up. But there was no use in dropping it again, nor could we stay where we were. The seas were coming in heavier every minute ; so there was nothing left for us but to run the gauntlet of the rocks, and get farther up the inlet. The atmosphere was not too thick to enable us to see half a mile. Fortunately, any rock that we could touch, the waves would break upon.

The ship was wheeled about, and pointed for the dangerous entrance, where the sea was but a mass of foam and breakers. Guided by the lead-line, however, we got safely through, and then ran up the inlet, which proved to be several miles broad, with numerous islands. Behind a group of these we found the sea quite smooth, and in fifteen fathoms we again let go the anchor. Again we found only a smooth, rocky bottom, and, the force of the gale still increasing, the anchor dragged again, and we were driven wildly toward the shore. But we had steam up now, and this saved us from the rocks.

Again we picked the anchor up; again we dropped it ; again we dragged it; and again we picked it up, to find this time that, like the other one, the stock of it was gone. And now, without an anchor down or to put down, the ship’s head was put into the wind’s eye, and then, sometimes at full speed, sometimes at half-speed, we held our own against the howling gale with steam. A sailing-vessel would have stood no chance at all.

III. JULIANSHAAB.

HAVING been spared the inconveniences and dangers of shipwreck on the Land of Desolation, we did not feel disposed to delay our departure for the port which we were so anxious to reach ; and, therefore, as soon as the wind subsided and the atmosphere cleared, so that we could see where we were going, the “ Panther ” was headed for the open sea, which we did not reach without several narrow shaves on the sunken rocks. Once outside, however, we shaped our course due east, skirting the islands which line the coast there, and form an extensive archipelago. In fact, the whole Greenland coast-line is much the same everywhere. It is one of the most remarkable coasts in the world. There are very few places where the mainland comes down to the sea. A vast congeries of islands studs the waters along its border, and among these islands the icebergs gather as they come down the fiords of the mainland from the great snow-formed glaciers.

These fiords are often of immense depth, − narrow, winding inlets with deep water and precipitous shores, sometimes as much as sixty or seventy miles in length. There is no such coast-line elsewhere.

Julianshaab stands at the very head of one of these deep inlets or fiords, on an island twenty miles from the open sea. Outside of it are many other islands, some of them inhabited by men, but for the most part given over to the birds, vast numbers of which flock there to breed in the arctic summer. Among these islands we have to make a tortuous course before we reach the town, and as we approach we are anxiously looking for a pilot.

Meanwhile we are dodging the icebergs and ice-fields. There is no harbor on the whole coast more difficult to make than Julianshaab. April and September are the best months. June and July are the worst; for then the moving ice from the Spitzbergen side of Greenland comes clown with the great Polar current, a branch of which sweeps around Cape Farewell into Baffin’s Bay, and up the coast beyond the Land of Desolation.

Hence it is that the islands of the coast are so barren from the coldness of the sea, which in July is often a mass of solid ice for thirty miles away. But the inland region is very different. The fiords in the immediate vicinity of Julianshaab have not been reached by glaciers, and but little ice is seen inside the islands in the summer. There is, therefore, a pleasant climate and a surprisingly rich vegetation. For miles and miles the grass grows knee-high, and the juniper and birch reach a respectable size. If the Land of Desolation had given us a sorry view of Greenland, and the other islands that line the coast were but little better in appearance, we knew that within this rocky wall of barrenness there was a little paradise to greet us, and to repay us amply for all the buffetings of the past few days.

The southern coast of Greenland makes almost a right angle on its western side. One corner of the triangle is Cape Farewell, another is the Land of Desolation, and at the right angle stands Julianshaab. From Julianshaab to Cape Farewell is eighty miles, from Julianshaab to Desolation sixty ; that is to say, the town which we were seeking lies in latitude 60° 44' north, and in longitude 45° 54' west.

Why “ Julianshaab,” any more than anybody else’s haab, might puzzle any one to know, who should happen to be ignorant of the fact that a king once sat on the Danish throne who had a queen named Juliana, and that the Danes, when they founded a colony here, thought to pay a compliment to her Majesty; and so they called it her haab, which is to say in English, hope. Julia’s-Hope it would be with us. In gratitude for this, Queen Juliana gave their little church a pretty little organ, which is preserved and used even to the present time ; and I would not exchange the memory of its melodious notes, as I heard them in the peaceful dell where the church stands, for any other church-music in the world.

From all which it will be rightly inferred that, despite the Land of Desolation and the ice, we reached Julianshaab in the end. But we did not do it without much perplexity. A pilot was not an easy thing to find, and when found he proved to be a sorry one to look upon, and the captain did not seem over-confident of his skill.

“Could he take the ship safely in to Julianshaab ? ”

“ Ab, ab! me pilot Danskir skip.”

Well, if the Danish captain would trust him, might not we ? and so we steamed between the islands as he directed.

it was a lucky accident that gave him to us, else we should have stayed outside all night, dodging among the ice. He had been out in his frail canoe, hunting seals, and he saw us in the distance and pulled for us, no doubt with bright visions of rum, coffee, and tobacco in his mind to spur him on. And indeed, though long exposed, he never asked for food. Rum, coffee, and tobacco was the burden of his song, as it is among all those savages everywhere, whom it is our boast that we have civilized. The native Esquimau has none of these things, − nothing whatever to smoke, and no intoxicating or stimulating drinks of any kind, but he is not slow to learn their use.

It was late in the night when we entered among the islands, and steamed through the tortuous passages. Night, I say, but it was hardly deserving the name, for even at the midnight hour it was twilight; and to this was added the soft lustre of the moon, which now silvered the snow-clad summits of the distant mountains, now mirrored itself in the still waters, now threw upon us the dark shadows of the cliffs, and everywhere around glistened on the crystal surface of the icebergs. It was a scene long to be remembered. The solemn night was broken only by the voice of the steamer, the ripple of the waters which she disturbed, and the hollow gurgle of the waves of her making as they broke within the caverns of the ice.

We passed through one narrow strait into which the light of the moon did not fall, and after a little time emerged suddenly from this gloomy place through

a cluster of fantastic icebergs out upon a broad sheet of silvery water. Many of the icebergs towered above our masts in spires and turrets and all manner of strange shapes. Impressive as such a group would be anywhere, it was there, in the stillness and moonlight, simply wonderful and grand.

We reached the little harbor of Julianshaab at two o’clock in the morning, and the blowing off of the steam, after the anchor was down, was answered by some voices on the shore, and then by a wild concert of astonishment from two hundred human throats; for that number of people dwell there, and they were all aroused, and proved to be half washed, and civilized in the same proportion.

In the morning we went ashore, and passed up to the Government House between two files of those odd-looking and oddly dressed people. I believe every man, woman, and child of the colony was there, staring at us with curious eyes.

I found that the governor spoke English, as do most educated Danes ; and with him I called upon the pastor, in whom, to my great surprise, I discovered an old acquaintance, − the former pastor of Upernavik ; and now, as in the little parsonage where I had seen him, farther north, the room bore evidence of a lady’s taste and care, redolent now as then with fragrant flowers that nestled in the sunlight behind the snow-white curtains of the windows. With the same gentle voice, and the same soft white hand, the pastor gave me welcome ; and the sister and the same good wife came in to complete the picture. A lovely girl and a brighteyed boy, that had been added to the family since 1861, were all I saw to make it seem as if eight years had passed, and that this was not the same place where I had first seen and enjoyed the hospitality of this good family. There was again a choice bottle of wine, choice coffee, Danish fare, and Danish heartiness, to remind me of the past.

In the afternoon we strolled into the valley behind the town, and came upon a charming little lake, bordered by extensive tracts of rich green pastures, on which were browsing a herd of cows and a flock of goats. About the houses there were neat little gardens ; and from these, at the pastor’s hospitable table, we had at supper some fine radishes and lettuce, and a bright bouquet of flowers. From the cows we had some Greenland butter and a bowl of milk. The stream that flows past the pastor’s door from the lake supplied some luscious trout; some venison we had from the upland region near the glacier; and we had, too, a steak of Greenland beef: and now, when after a while, a glass of good old Santa Cruz punch had settled all these comfortably in their place, and an old Dutch pipe was brought to keep it company, and the governor and assistant-governor had come in to join us, we fell into a lively talk of Greenland and its legends ; and I have rarely, indeed, passed a more pleasant evening, or one more profitable.

Although Julianshaab is a modern colony, it stands on classic ground. In its immediate vicinity there once flourished extensive settlements of the hardy Northmen, numbering seven thousand souls. Pagans and vikings they were, after the most approved Norse code, but in the end they all became Christians, built churches and a cathedral, and comfortable houses ; they cultivated the land, raised sheep and cattle in great numbers, even shipping large quantities of beef to the Norway market.

This colonization began in the year of our Lord 985, under the leadership of a famous Norseman named Eric Roude, or Eric the Red, and his two sons. They landed near where Julianshaab now stands, with the crews of fourteen ships, and at once proceeded to construct permanent residences. The ruins of these, together with those of their churches, are scattered everywhere along the banks of the fiords, and some of them are still in a tolerable state of preservation. One of the most perfect of these, at Krakartuk, I was particularly desirous of visiting, and indeed that was our chief purpose in putting into Julianshaab; and we did not quit our friends at the pastor’s house until we had planned an expedition to the place where Red Eric dwelt, and the church wherein he worshipped, in those latter days of his life, when he had forgotten his war-god Odin for the Prince of Peace.

But a description of the journey, which came off on the following day, we must defer to another chapter.