old Vikings,--their colonies in Snaeland, our Iceland,--their discovery
of Greenland,--and the legend of the pirate Biarni, who forestalled
even the great Columbus in his discovery,--were all associated with the
region through which we were now sailing.

Without compass, without chart, full three centuries before the Genoese
crossed the Atlantic, the Norsemen, in frail and open barks, braved the
dark and angry sea (which was so sorely tossing even our proud
vessels); and, unchecked by tempest, by ice, or hardship, penetrated
probably as far as we could in the present day. This, and much more,
throws a halo of ancient renown around this lonely land; moreover, I
had long loved Nature's handiworks, and here assuredly her wonders
reward the traveller. Here, methought me of the mighty glacier,
creeping on like Time, silently, yet ceaselessly; the deep and
picturesque fiord pent up between precipices, huge, bleak, and barren;
the iceberg! alone a miracle; then the great central desert of black
lava and glittering ice, gloomy and unknown but to the fleet rein-deer,
who seeks for shelter in a region at whose horrors the hardy natives
tremble; and last, but not least, the ruins of the Scandinavian
inhabitants, and the present fast disappearing race of "the Innuit," or
Esquimaux. Dullard must he be who sees not abundance here to interest
him.

Flirting with the first ice we saw, it soon appeared that the training
of the uninitiated, like puppies, was to be a very formal and lengthy
piece of business. Thanks to an immense deal of water, and very little
ice, the steamers eventually towed the "Resolute" and the transport (a
lively specimen of the genus), into the Whale-Fish Islands,--a group of
rocky islets, some twenty miles distant from the excellent Danish
harbour of Godhaab on the Island of Disco.

[Headnote: _WHALE-FISH ISLANDS._]

We did as our forefathers in anchoring at the Whale-Fish Islands, but
would strongly recommend those who visit this neighborhood to go to
Godhaab rather. Its anchorage is good, communication with Europe a
certainty, and the hospitality of the Danish residents, few though they
be, cheering and pleasant to ship-sick wanderers.

Having thus expressed my total dissent from those who, with steam
vessels, go to Whale-Fish Isles, it will be but fair for me to stay,
that I arrived at this our first stage in the journey to the Nor'-West,
in far from good humour. We had been twenty-four days from Greenhit