“Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the de-lighted[13] spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbèd ice.”
The narrator goes on to say that it is usual to make ice idols or ice demons for their carnivals; and ice palaces like those often constructed in Russia are also common in winter. He further says that Greenland extends to the Pole and far beyond it, and ends his narrative by stating that at the date on which he writes—May 22nd, 1861—he had been eleven months on the polar continent, and had no desire to leave it.
So much for a canard, amusing at least from the mock earnestness of the writer. But that a detached colony of descendants from the Northmen might be found at some more distant point of Greenland with which we are at present not familiar, is at least possible, and that the climate of the Pole is comparatively temperate has been the belief of some authorities, although, most assuredly, the intense cold experienced by the expedition under Captain Nares at the high latitude attained will not bear out the assertion.
THE ARCTIC YACHT PANDORA.