The late Dr. Scoresby, from personal observations made in the course of
twenty-one voyages to the Arctic Regions, thus describes these striking
characteristics:
The coast scenes of Greenland are generally of an abrupt character,
the mountains frequently rising in triangular profile; so much
so, that it is sometimes not possible to effect their ascent. One
of the most notable characteristics of the Arctic lands is the
deception to which travellers are liable in regard to distances.
The occasion of this is the quantity of light reflected from
the snow, contrasted with the dark colour of the rocks. Several
persons of considerable experience have been deceived in this way,
imagining, for example, that they were close to the shore when in
fact they were more than twenty miles off. The trees of these lands
are not more than three inches above ground.
Many of the icebergs are five miles in extent, and some are to be
seen running along the shore measuring as much as thirteen miles.
Dr. Scoresby has seen a cliff of ice supported on those floating
masses 402 feet in height. There is no place in the world where
animal life is to be found in greater profusion than in Greenland,
Spitzbergen, Baffin’s Bay, and other portions of the Arctic
regions. This is to be accounted for by the abundance and richness
of the food supplied by the sea. The number of birds is especially
remarkable. On one occasion, no less than a million of little hawks
came in sight of Dr. Scoresby’s ship within a single hour.
The various phenomena of the Greenland sea are very interesting.
The different colours of the sea-water--olive or bottle-green,
reddish-brown, and mustard--have, by the aid of the microscope,
been found to be owing to animalculæ of these various colours:
in a single drop of mustard-coloured water have been counted
26,450 animals. Another remarkable characteristic of the Greenland
sea-water is its warm temperature--one, two, and three degrees
above the freezing-point even in the cold season. This Dr.
Scoresby accounts for by supposing the flow in that direction of
warm currents from the south. The polar fields of ice are to be
found from eight or nine to thirty or forty feet in thickness. By
fastening a hook twelve or twenty inches in these masses of ice, a
ship could ride out in safety the heaviest gales.