"Do you know, Peter, I am not certain that what David says is altogether wrong," he remarked, in a mysterious manner. "I have just been reading in a book an account of a voyage made many centuries ago by a Danish captain to these seas. His name was Rink, but I forget the name of the ship. His crew consisted of eighty stout brave fellows; but when they got up here, some of the bravest were frightened with the wonders they beheld--the monsters of the deep, the fogs, the snows, and the mountains of ice--and at last they saw at no great distance a high picturesque land on which they wished to land, but though they sailed rapidly on, or appeared to sail, they got no nearer to it. This increased the alarm they already felt. One-half of the crew were of opinion that the land itself moved away from them; the others that there were some powerful loadstone rocks somewhere astern, which kept the ship back. At last Captain Rink finding a northerly breeze spring up, and being somewhat short of provisions, put up the helm and ran home, every one on board giving a different account of the wonders they had seen, but all agreeing that it was a region of ice-demons and snow-spirits, and that they would never, if they could help it, venture there again." For some hours we continued much of Captain Rink's opinion, till at last I had an opportunity of asking Andrew what he thought about the matter. He then told me that, on account of the clearness of the atmosphere, and the brightness of the snow-covered hills or icy plains, they appear to a person unaccustomed to look on them to be very much nearer than they really are. He assured me that it would be a long time before I should be able to judge of distances; and that he had known a person mistake a few stunted shrubs appearing above the snow a few yards off for a forest in the distance, while land many miles off appeared, as it had to me, close at hand. It was evening, or I should rather say near midnight, when we really got close in, when we found that the valleys were magnificent fiords, or gulfs running far inland, and that the rocks and icebergs were of vast height. As we sailed along the coast, nothing could be more beautiful than the different effects of light and shade--the summits of the distant inland ranges shining in the sunlight like masses of gold, and the icebergs in the foreground tinged with the most beautiful and dazzling colours. Beautiful as was the scene, I had no idea that any civilised beings dwelt in such a region of eternal snows. What was my surprise, then, to find the ship brought to an anchor off a small town called Leifly, belonging to the Danes! They have several small colonies along the coast, at each of which are stationed missionaries engaged in the pious work of converting the Esquimaux to Christianity.