The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3Whymper, Frederick
History
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3
Whymper, Frederick
Adventure and adventurers; Arctic regions; Ocean; Voyages around the world
celebrated in Arctic history in connection with the Franklin search, is
now in the employ of this Company.
The Greenland coasts at this season are described as beautiful in the
extreme, a broken, serrated line of high, rugged mountains rising abruptly
out of the water to a height of 3,000 feet. Over these the sun and
atmosphere combine to produce the most fantastic effects of colour, while
ever and anon glimpses of that mighty sea of ice which has overwhelmed
Greenland are to be caught. Captain Young, in his progress up the coasts
was met by several kyacks—skin canoes—whose occupants had travelled, or
rather voyaged, fifteen miles at sea merely to barter their fish for
tobacco, biscuit, or coffee. “Imagine a man getting into a canoe and
paddling across the English Channel from Dover to Boulogne or Calais in
order to sell half-a-dozen trout!” They were thoroughly drenched with the
water dashing over them, but had very little in the kyacks, so closely
does the skin jacket they wear fit the round hole in the top of the canoe.
They were rewarded with a glass of rum, and sold about fifty-five pounds
of delicious fish for half a pound of tobacco and a couple of dozen small
sea biscuits.
[Illustration: DISCO.]
At Disco they were again warmly welcomed by the Danes; and if MacGahan has
not been carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, the young ladies
must indeed be something delightful. He avers that their small hands and
feet would make an English or American girl die with envy, and that they
dance like sylphs. Of one he says, gushingly, “It was a pure delight to
watch her little feet flitting over the ground like butterflies, or
humming-birds, or rosebuds, or anything else that is delicate and sweet
and delightful. It was not dancing at all: it was flying; it was floating
through the air on a wave of rhythm, without even so much as touching
ground.” What more could be said after this? He states, however, that they
were all very well behaved. They allowed the men not even a kiss or a
squeeze of the hand, and knew as well how to maintain their dignity and
keep people at a proper distance as any other young ladies. They are all
good Christians and church-going people, belonging, as do all the
Esquimaux of Greenland, to some form of the Lutheran faith, to which they
have been converted by the mild and beneficent influence of the kindly
Danes.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE MUSIC HALL, DISCO.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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