I must observe to you, that all that has been said of the fruitfulness of the Greenland soil is to be understood of the latitude of 60° to 65°, and differs according to the different degrees of latitude. For in the most Northern parts you find neither herbs nor plants; so that the inhabitants cannot gather grass enough to put in their shoes to keep their feet warm, but are obliged to buy it from the Southern parts.
Of Greenland metals or minerals I have little or nothing to say. It is true, that about two Norway miles to the South of the colony of Good Hope, on a promontory, there are here and there green spots to be seen, like verdigris, which shows there must be some copper ore. And a certain Greenlander once brought me some pieces not unlike lead ore. There is likewise a sort of calamine, which has the colour of yellow brass. In my expedition upon discoveries, I found, on a little island where we touched, some yellow sand, mixed with sinople red, or vermillion strokes, of which I sent a quantity over to the directors of the Greenland company at Bergen, to make a trial of it; upon which they wrote me an answer, that I should endeavour to get as much as I could of the same sand; but to theirs as well as my own disappointment, I never was able to find the said island again, where I had got this sand, as it was but a very small and insignificant one, situate among a great many others; and the mark I had taken care to put up was by the wind blown down. Nevertheless there has been enough of the same stuff found up and down in the country, which, when it is burnt, changes its former colour for a reddish hue, which it likewise does if you keep it awhile shut up close.
Whether or no this be the same sort of sand as that of which Sir Martin Frobisher is said to have brought some hundred tons to England, and was pretended to contain a great deal of gold; and again (as we have above taken notice of) of which some of the Danish Greenland Company’s ships returned freighted to Copenhagen in the year 1636, is a question which I have no mind to decide. However, thus much I can say, that by the small experience I have acquired in the art of chemistry, I have tried both by extraction and precipitation if it would yield any thing, but always lost my labour. After all I declare, I never could find any other sort of sand that contained either gold or silver. But as for rock crystal, both red and white, you find it here: the red contains some particular solis, which can only be produced by the spagyric art.
Stone flax, or what they call asbestos, is so common here, that you may see whole mountains of it: it has the appearance of a common stone, but can be split or cloven like a piece of wood. It contains long filaments, which, when beaten and separated from the dross, you may twist and spin into a thread. As long as it has its oily moisture it will burn without being consumed to ashes.
Round about our colony of Good Hope there is a sort of coarse bastard marble of different colours, blue, green, red, and some quite white, and again some white with black spots, which the natives form into all sorts of vessels and utensils, as lamps, pots to boil in, and even crucibles to melt metals in, this marble standing proof against the fire[25]. Of this marble there was brought a quantity over to Drontheim in Norway, which they made use of in the adorning of the cathedral of that city, as we have it from Peter Claudius Undalin[26].
Amongst the produce of the sea, besides different shells, muscles, and periwinkles, there are also coral trees, of which I have seen one of a fine form and size.
CHAP. IV
Of the Nature of the Climate, and the Temperament of the Air.
THE natives of Greenland have no reason to complain of rains and stormy weather, which seldom trouble them; especially in the Bay of Disco, in the 68th degree of Latitude, where they commonly have clear and settled weather during the whole summer season: but again, when foul and stormy weather falls in, it rages with an incredible fierceness and violence, chiefly when the wind comes about Southerly, or South West; and the storm is laid and succeeded by fair weather as soon as the wind shifts about to the West and North.
The country would be exceeding pleasant and healthful in summer time, if it was not for the heavy fogs that annoy it, especially near the sea coast; for it is as warm here as anywhere, when the air is serene and clear, which happens when the wind blows Easterly; and sometimes it is so hot, that the sea water, which after the ebbing of the sea has remained in the hollow places of the rocks, has often, before night, by the heat of the sun, been found coagulated into a fine white salt. I can remember, that once, for three months together, we had as fair settled weather and warm sunshine days as one could wish, without any rain.