Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/104

100 mosses; I have waded through grass and sulphur-flowered buttercups up to the knee and plunged my hands deep into velvet banks of rich green and red mosses, while my eyes have feasted on a brilliant display of green, white, gold, and purple. Other Arctic explorers have had the same experiences—Scoresby, in Jameson's Land (71° N.) on the east coast of Greenland, says, "the ground was richly dotted with grass, a foot in height," and, he continues, "more inland, my father, who explored this country to a great extent, discovered considerable tracts that might justly be denominated greenland, patches of several acres, occurring here and there of as fine meadow-land as could be seen in England. There was a considerable variety of grasses and many other plants in a beautiful state" (Journal of a Greenland Voyage, by Wm. Scoresby, junior, F.R.S.E., 1823, p. 214). In Grinnell Land (79° N.) in 1875 the British Arctic expedition met with "luxuriant vegetation," and in 82° 30′ N. Captain Markham (The Great Frozen Sea) says, "Some of the hills surrounding these lakes were beautifully carpeted with the pretty little purple saxifrage, a Draba, a Potentilla and other wild flowers, while the valleys were covered with patches of luxuriant vegetation, consisting of grasses and delightfully soft moss." Speaking of the island of Waigatz, Colonel Feilden