h stations on the coast of Greenland, he found Godhaven,
which is only a poor village, and is used as a depot by dealers in oil
and the furs of the country. At this time of the year the cold is not
more severe than at Stockholm or Noroe. But Erik and his friends beheld
with surprise the great difference between the two countries, both
situated at the same distance from the pole. Godhaven is in precisely
the same latitude as Bergen. But whilst the southern port of Norway is
in April covered with green forests and fruit trees, and even cultivated
vines trained upon trellises above green meadows, Greenland is still in
May covered with ice and snow, without a tree to enliven the monotony.
The shape of the Norwegian coast, deeply indented by forests and
sheltered by chains of islands, which contribute almost as much as the
warmth of the Gulf Stream to raise the temperature of the country.
Greenland, on the contrary, has a low regular coast and receives the
full shock of the cold blasts from the pole, consequently she is
enveloped almost to the middle of the island by fields of ice several
feet in thickness.

They spent fifteen days in the harbor and then the "Alaska" mounted
Davis' Straits, and keeping along the coast of Greenland, gained the
polar sea.

On the 28th of May for the first time they encountered floating ice in
70 15' of north latitude, with a temperature two degrees below zero.
These first icebergs, it is true, were in a crumbling condition, rapidly
breaking up into small fragments. But soon they became more dense, and
frequently they had to break their way through them. Navigation,
although difficult, was not as yet dangerous. By a thousand signs they
perceived, however, that they were in a new world. All objects at a
little distance appeared to be colorless, and almost without form; the
eye could find no place to repose in this perpetually changing horizon,
which every minute assumed a new aspect.

"Who can describe," says an eye-witness, "these melancholy surroundings,
the roaring of the waves beating beneath the floating ice, the singular
noise made by the snow as it falls suddenly into the abyss of waters?
Who can imagine the beauty of the cascades which gush out on all sides,
the sea of foam produced by their fall, the fright of the sea-birds who,
having fallen asleep on a pyramid of ice, suddenly find their
resting-place overturned and themselves obliged to fly to some other
spot? And in the morning,