The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1886-07-22
nlanitowoe pilot.
THURSDAY, JULY %, 1886.
GREENLAND.
Some Facts About the Region of Rocks
and Snow.

Some Facts About the Region of Rocks
and Snow.
$50 YOU want to know something
about Greenland said veteran tourist
| and explorer 1--WE been there Pro-
pound your conundrums. Is it easy
getting there?' Why, as easy as it is to
get from here TO Coney Island. Ice?
Yes, you meet some, and so you do
when you 90 to England, but the fast
steamer ram right ahead all the same.
l went up in July, and navigation was
easy enough then, though l only touch
ed at the settlements on the west coast.
But have been quite well up l was
within sixty miles of where they found
Greeley, and | shouldn't have any hest
tation in going there again. if | had an
other, or two other, stanch vessels with
me. That's the way TO carry on arctic
explorations. Let a little fleet 90 up,
and not send little 400-ton ship there
all by herself. That's the way the res
cue party worked up through Smiths
Sound. After you get that far you
might as well turn around and come
home again, unless you are anxious to
beat Greeley's record, for at that point
you bring up against ice that's simply
impenetrable. 1t may be 100 feet thick,
and your vessel may be nipped for the
entire Winter. Whalers are often frozen
in. But if you went in Summer, and
didn't try to go up the fancy attitudes,
think you would enjoy Greenland-a
few weeks of it. The scenery is fine;
grand. sometimes. There are great
cliffs and steep mountains along the
shore, often too nearly perpendicular
for snow to lie on, even in Winter, and
the colors that they take on in the light
of the midnight sun-a kind of contin-
ual sunset-are something wonderful.
Most people imagine (and | used to
think the same) that Greenland is
buried under snow and ice the whole
year round. Wait until / open this
portfolio. There, do you see those dried
MOSES and flower? They would hardly
grow in snow, would they? Well, I
picked those in Greenland, and not in
the most southern part either. Berries
grow there, and dwarf willows. In Sum-
mer for a distance of two to twenty
miles back from the sea there are valleys
opening into the mountains that are
beautiful, they are SO full of green moss.
Mosquitoes I've seen there in clouds
No, the temperature isn't torrid, but
dressed as those people are, and living
in tightly built houses or closely sheath
ed vessels, they don't suffer any more
from cold than we do down here in
Winter. The weather is often disagree
able in Southern Greenland, particular
iy in Spring and Fall. on account of
rain and fogs, and in Winter everything
is showed up, but the Summer suits me
a blamed sight better than some of the
New York Summers. Fancy in August
when the thermometer didn't 90 beyond
So or 60 degrees. How does that strike
you? The idea that Greenland Was cov-
cred with ice and snow comes, | sup
pose, from the fact that the interior has
never been explored, and that it seems
to be, in fact, Eve no doubt it is, cover
ed by q tremendous glacier starting
near the pole, and giving off little side
branches that came down through the
fjords of canyons opening from the sea-
These branch glaciers supply the ice
bergs. The ice current pushes out until
it reaches water deep enough to float it,
and then it breaks off in mountainous
chunks, and goes south with the current.
One of the crawliest feelings | ever had
| was when | climbed a gOodiSh sort of
hill near Godthaab to take the bearings
of things. There was open water on
the west, and little valleys that looked
pretty enough to camp out in, and there
was the settlement with its church, brick
| church. mind you. Oh, they can put
! on style. Then when you turned the
other way there was a long line OF snowy
1 laiCrl,+l, IIn,l~ .,,1 ,l,rl1ot,
ed to lead away and away till you
| couldn't stand it to think of the horri-
! BILE chill and loneliness. There was a
| long white line that might have been
| fifty miles of, and that was the horizon,
nothing brit ice. 1t made me feel
| homesick for while. The interior
| mountains don't make much of an
exhibition, though if the glacier
was to be lifted off suppose they would
| show up for quite respectable hills.
Some of the cliffs along the coast must
| be 1000 feet high, and on the east side
| believe there's peak that's put down
at 1000 feet As to living, they all
| seem to have enough up there, such as
1t is. The Esquimaux eat fish and most
| any kind of meat they can get and the
Danish settlers live on much the same
sort of grub. A government steamer
goes from Denmark twice q year with
letters. cheese, flour. potatoes, beef wood
and bad butter. There are no cows or
horses. Stop! | did see a COW, | think
it was at Godthaab. that's the biggest
! settlement; nearly 1000 people. The
| critter had been sent from Denmark to
the parson there, and was picking up
living on bunch grass and barrel hoops.
Not great deal of money changes
hands in Greenland. A man can live
on what he can catch. and stuff isn't
awfully dear up there. The Danish
Governors are pretty square fellows
not much like our Indian agents-and
they don't dare to charge more than the
rates fixed by the schedule. You can
hardly say that there are any industries
in Greenland. There's cryolite mine;
that's about all. A few coal mines are
worked just enough to supply the settle
ments, but not 70 export anything OF
course there's whaling and sealing and
fishing, but not much hunting, for the
land animals have nearly been killed
off. Perhaps there's field for the enter
prlslng agrlculturist who will 90 up
there and raise things under glass. a
man in Frederickshaab told me he had
eaten native strawberries, and | have
seen lettuce and radishes growing under
cover and doing pretty well. had
quantity of canned stuff with me, or |
couldn't have stood it. Seems to me a
man would not only get scurvy but get
off his base entirely from eating grease
and fish and salt horse continually. The
people? They're mostly Esquimaux and
half-breeds, with a seasoning of Danes
Well, now, if you imagine that the Es-
qumaux are bowling savages. that is
where you are off, as the commoners
say. Thep are the mildest and politest
people that | ever met, and | wish |
could say as much for some highly civil
lied people nearer home. They're q
good deal like the Chinese, and | think
they came from the same Tartar stock.
They have no whisky. the wives are
,,Sua llx- 70 III fy,l IN tbair husbands +bor