Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/79

58 Sterry so quickly made a fire. A result followed, however, that we little expected. The abundance of such fuel around caused the fire to spread rapidly, and as a strong breeze was now blowing, it soon got beyond our control. Sterry, however, very calmly said, "Never mind; let it burn. Of what use is this to anybody, hemmed in here by these mountains?" So I very quietly made myself content, and sat down to the primitive meal—a carpet of heather for our table, and huge precipices yawning close by, with high broken mountains, that pierced the sky, grimly looking down upon us.

There is philosophy in everything, especially in eating. The world eats too much. Learn to live—to live as we ought. A little food well eaten is better for anyone than much badly eaten. Our pleasures have a higher relish when properly used. Thus we thoroughly enjoyed our food, and, after a short nap, started on the return journey.

As we passed along, I noticed several large rocks, thousands of tons in weight, that had evidently fallen from the tops of two lofty mountains, the detached portions corresponding in shape to the parts vacated. Everywhere was seen the effects of the freezing of the water that percolates into the crevices. The tremendous workings of Nature in these mountains of Greenland during the arctic winter often result in what many of the inhabitants think to be earthquakes, when, in fact, the freezing of water is alone the cause! In descending, we encountered several little clear babbling brooks, innumerable flowers, and shrub-fuel in abundance. Peat was also plentiful. Fox holes in numbers were seen, and a natural canal, with an embankment, in appearance much like the levee at New Orleans.

On arriving at the beach, which was a quarter of a mile long, we found it as smooth and inviting as that of Cape May. The limit of this beach was next to an abrupt bank with millions of broken shells upon it, and covered with driftwood ten feet above high-water mark. One piece was twelve feet long. Here, from a boat that took us off, we heard that the town of Holsteinborg was much alarmed about