The Land of Desolation, a Personal Narrative of Adventure in Greenland (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1871. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI. A WEEK IN GODHAVN. We returned to Godhavn on September 10, and for a week thereafter travelled about the Island of Disco as we found opportunity and inclination. To the geologist, as previously intimated, Disco presents a most interesting field of study, and the professor was accordingly busy all the while, pursuing his researches with characteristic enthusiasm. The artists were constantly at work with camera and pencil. In this, the metropolis of Greenland, it was not difficult for the pleasure-seekers to find opportunity to amuse themselves; and the captain whiled away the time by tearing to pieces the wreck of a whale-sbip which had been run aground at the mouth of the harbour, as rumour had it, in order to secure insurance money. If such was the case, her people certainly took good care to insure their own lives, for the vessel was within sight of the town on a sandy beach, where the sea never breaks, and full a quarter of a mile out of the channel. The people were sent home in the Danish ships, and if they obtained their insurance they surely did not get their deserts. To Governor Hansen I was again indebted for aid in such investigations as I desired to make--especially in relation to the coal-fields, which are chiefly interesting because of their being so far north. Vast quantities of vegetable matter were deposited here in a remote geological epoch, which goes to show that Greenland would once have deserved its name had human beings existed there to give it the one which is now as absurdly inappropriate as Achilles to an organ-grinder. I was enabled to obtain a good collection of specimens, many of which I owed to the politeness of Inspector Smith, and among others of particular interest, a fragment of a cone of an evergreen, that had ripened...