ICEBERG IN JACOBSHAVN FIORD.
CHAPTER XI.
A WEEK IN GODHAVN.
We returned to Godhavn on the 10th of September, and for a week thereafter travelled about the Island of Disco as we found opportunity and inclination. To the geologist, as previously intimated, Disco presents a most interesting field of study, and the professor was accordingly busy all the while, pursuing his researches with characteristic enthusiasm. The artists were constantly at work with camera and pencil. In this, the metropolis of Greenland, it was not difficult for the pleasure-seekers to find opportunity to amuse themselves and the captain whiled away the time by tearing to pieces the wreck of a whale-ship which had been run aground at the mouth of the harbor, as rumor had it, in order to secure insurance money. If such was the case, her people certainly took good care to insure their own lives, for the vessel was within sight of the town on a sandy beach, where the sea never breaks, and full a quarter of a mile out of the channel. The people were sent home in the Danish ships, and if they obtained their insurance they surely did not get their deserts.
To Governor Hansen I was again indebted for aid in such investigations as I desired to make—especially in relation to the coal-fields, which are chiefly interesting because of their being so far north. Vast quantities of vegetable matter were deposited here in a remote geological epoch, which goes to show that Greenland would once have deserved its name had human beings existed there to give it the one which is now as absurdly inappropriate as Achilles to an organ-grinder. I was enabled to obtain a good collection of specimens, many of which I owed to the politeness of Inspector Smith, and among others of particular interest, a fragment of a cone of an evergreen, that had ripened here in the era of the lower miocene of Europe. In relation to these coal deposits of Greenland, Professor Oswald Kerr has made many important discoveries, and from his able report I make the following extract:
“Among the most interesting specimens” [collected by himself] “were the flowers and fruit of a chestnut—the latter, however, in a very imperfect condition. The discovery of these proves that the deposits in which they are found were formed at different seasons—in spring as well as in summer. The known miocene plants of Greenland have now reached the number of 137 species; and those of the Arctic miocene flora altogether number 194 species. Of the Greenland species 46, or exactly one-third, agree with those of the miocene deposits of Europe. The determination of the age of the beds as lower miocene has been accordingly ascertained.”
These coal-measures of Greenland are not confined to Disco Island. Extensive veins crop out as well on the main-land. On the north side of the Waigat coal is found in abundance, and also around the margin of the Great Omenak Fiord. This latter is, with the exception of Melville Bay, the most thickly studded with icebergs and glaciers of any part of the Greenland coast, and while viewing them it seems strange to behold in immediate proximity great black streaks of carboniferous deposits, suggestive of a former condition of life and heat instead of cold.
I had the more occasion to feel indebted to Mr. Hansen for his assistance, that he was busily engaged with preparations for returning to Copenhagen, with his wife and their little son Fred, a bright Greenland-born boy of four years. I found him well posted in the doings of naturalists. He even knew that there was a “Central Park Museum;” and at his request I took charge of a present he desired to make them—a commission which was duly executed, and politely acknowledged. I likewise did the same with the Smithsonian Institute, with a like result. Among those that went to the latter was a pair of gyrfalcon skins, which Mr. Hansen sent more than fifty miles to get for me. He was equally generous with his collection of native curiosities, and to a member of the party, who valued such things more than objects of natural history, he freely offered almost every thing he had; and I much fear there were a good many friends disappointed in Copenhagen that winter when the governor’s empty boxes were exposed. This generosity was the greater that such articles have a commercial value at home.
The event of our week’s stay in Godhavn, however, was the ascent of the cliffs facing the town, to the summit of Lyngmarkens Fjeld. Mr. Hansen could not accompany us on account of pressing business; and, in fact, he had no faith whatever in the success of the undertaking. Our party, when made up, consisted of the two young ladies mentioned in a previous chapter; the inspector and his secretary; and half a dozen adventurers from the Panther, including of course, the captain and the Prince. Armed each with a pocketful of lunch, we sallied forth at nine o’clock in the morning, and crossing the bay under as bright a sun as ever shone, in a most delicious autumnal atmosphere, we landed on a broad green slope, which we ascended to the base of the first crest or ridge of trap rock, where we paused to rest.