A better prospect, however, greeted us behind the town. A beautiful valley lay there, nestling between the cliffs, and rich in Arctic vegetation. It was covered with a thick turf of moss and grasses, among which the _Poa Arctica_, _Glyceria Arctica_, and _Alopecurus Alpinus_ were most abundant. In places it was, indeed, a perfect marsh. Little streams of melted snow meandered through it, gurgling among the stones, or dashing wildly over the rocks. Myriads of little golden petaled poppies (_Papaver nudicaule_) fluttered over the green. The dandelion (_Leontodon palustre_), close kindred of the wild flower so well known at home, kept it company; the buttercup (_Ranunculus nivalis_), with its smiling, well-remembered face, was sometimes seen; and the less familiar _Potentilla_ and the purple _Pedicularis_ were dotted about here and there. The saxifrages, purple, white, and yellow, were also very numerous. I captured not less than seven varieties. The birch and crowberry, and the beautiful _Andromeda_, the heather of Greenland, grew matted together in a sheltered nook among the rocks; and, in strange mimicry of Southern richness, the willows feebly struggled for existence on the spongy turf. With my cap I covered a whole forest of them. [Sidenote: VALUE OF DOGS] I had been in Pröven in 1853, and the place had not changed in the interval. The old ex-trader Christiansen was there, a little older, but not less frugal than before. He complained bitterly of Dr. Kane not having kept his promises to him, and I endeavored to mollify his wrath by assuring him that Dr. Kane had lost his vessel and could not return; but his life had been made unhappy during seven long years by visions of a barrel of American flour, and he would not be comforted. He was scarcely able to crawl about; but, when I sent ashore to him the coveted treasure, he found strength to break the head out of the cask, to feast his eyes on the long-expected gratuity. His sons, each with a brood of Esquimaux visaged, though flaxen-haired children, crowded around the present. My diary records that they were the best hunters in the settlement, and that they had the best teams of dogs; and it also mentions, with a little chagrin, that they would not sell one of them. I attributed this obstinacy, at the time, to their cross old paternal relative; but there were better reasons than this. They knew by bitter experience the risks of going into the long winter without an ample supply of dogs to carry them over the ice upon the seal hunt, and to part with their animals was to risk starvation. I offered to give them pork and beef and canned meats, and flour and beans; but they preferred the seal and the excitement of the hunt, and refused to trade.