Wa

prising an area of more than 1,600,000 square miles. tered by innumerable rivers, all of which are tributary to the Mississippi, and blest with a pre-eminently productive soil; this region possesses a capacity for improvement beyond any other on the surface of the globe. It is by far the richest portion of North America; and may, one day, perhaps, contain a population of nearly 100,000,000 of inhabitants. With New Orleans for foreign commerce; and the mouth of the Ohio for the centre of its greatest activity; this great vale may, and most probably will, afford the most delightful picture of industry, the world has ever witnessed: and the more so, since there are not only extensive salt-springs, but mines of coal, limestone, iron, and lead. At present it offers the beautiful prospective of 2000 years for the active industry of man.

servers.

Now let us turn our eyes to GREENLAND and the northern regions. There we shall behold a melancholy picture of a waste of frigidity, forming a bird's-eye contrast to the waste of torridity in Asia and Africa. It seems a woe-struck region; but it has phenomena, exceedingly striking to curious obThe sun does not go down in summer for many months: Captain Ross beheld continued day from the 7th of June to August the 24th; making an interval of 1,872 hours. The sun moves in a circle round the horizon: and shadows point to all parts of the compass. At this season, the earth is farther from the polar star, than it is at the winter solstice, by 180,000,000 of miles. This sunshine is succeeded by long twilights. In winter, the moon is constantly above the horizon every alternate fortnight; and the hemisphere is perpetually illuminated by the Auroral coruscations, and the northern constellations. In those regions, too, are seen vast icebergs: some two miles in circumference. These are frequently aground even at the depth of 300 fathoms; they are often 367 feet high: and if reduced to a plane of one inch in thickness, they would cover an area, equal to 21,000 miles;

a

and if weighed by measurement they would equal the result of 1,292,397,670 tons!

Cradled, as it were, in the womb of Nature, and nurtured in the midst of privation, the name of want is yet scarcely known to the Greenlanders. The whale chiefly constitutes their food; as its oil furnishes them with light. And here, in a region, cold and sterile even to a proverb, and where the breath becomes visible to the eye, we behold men, whose virtues, in many engaging points, would honour the latitude of Italy. They have no laws; no magistrates; no discipline; and they have little occasion for either. The head of every family is its father, magistrate, and sovereign: and the courts of equity and law reside in every house. Thefts are so little known amongst them, that locks and bolts are useless. In their conduct to the foreigners, who frequent their shores for their own purposes, however, they are not so scrupulous: but their urbanity towards them is said to equal that of any other nation. In their temperaments they are placid and content; and peculiarly averse to altercation. They have no written laws; yet they enjoy an almost perfect security of property; and are so attached to their country, relatives, and friends, that no argument and no reward can induce them to leave their native shores. In the northern parts of this country, there is little or no grass; -The peasants are, therefore, obliged to buy it from the southern parts, in order to put in their shoes to keep their feet warm. But, unlike the inhabitants of every other northern region, they have a fixed aversion to every kind of spirituous liquor.

In the ARCTIC regions iron is found so soft and ductile, that it may be cut with a hard stone. The natives called glass ice; when they saw a watch, they took it for an animal; they could count only to the number of their fingers; and before they saw Captain Ross, they believed themselves to be the only inhabitants of the universe; and the globe, to be enb Egede, p. 44-7.

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tirely composed of snow and ice, except the small portion they inhabited. When they saw the English ships they took them for birds, having sails for wings: and they had no conception where they could come from, unless from the sun or the moon.

The object of exploring the polar regions is to discover a nearer route to China, than by Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope. The latter of these routes is 5,500 miles; by the polar one, if it exist, only 2,598: a saving, therefore, would be effected of 2,902 miles: that is, more than one-half of the whole distance.

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A green sea is the most clear of ice; a blue one the fullest but Scoresby has proved, that the existence of land is not essential for its production. In fine weather the water is so transparent, that the bottom may clearly be seen, even at the depth of fourteen fathoms. The icebergs themselves are frequently of a bright verdigris blue, varied with tints of red; some near their bases of sea-green; with summits snow-white.

One astonishing peculiarity of these regions consists in the number of medusæ. They are indeed incalculable. They lie about a quarter of an inch from each other: and it has been calculated, that a cubic mile of them contains not less than 23,888,000,000,000,000.

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At Cape Farewel the eye is presented with spiral rocks, rising amid blue mountains, striking the spectator with delight or with horror, in proportion to the cloudiness or brilliancy of the sun. The ice, in the neighbourhood of these scenes, as well as in Spitzbergen, is frequently shivered with the sound, wafted from fire-arms. Similar effects, from the concussion of the air, are witnessed among the Alps; and the

a Ross's Voy. of Discovery to the Arctic Regions, p. 93, &c. 4to.
b Purchas' Pilgrimes, vol. iii. p. 564.

Memoirs of the Wernerian Society, vol. ii. part ii. p. 294.

d Ellis's Voy. to Hudson's Bay, p. 296.

'Pickergill's MSS. Barrow, p. 322.

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Scoresby.

report of a gun has the effect of occasioning a fall of snow among the Himalaya mountains.

In the vast reservoirs of ice in these seas, myriads of herrings seek refuge, for the purpose of breeding in security. In the middle of winter, having deposited their spawn, they quit their recesses; and pour in vast columns along the coasts of America, Ireland, and Great Britain; emitting brilliant reflections, like those of the rainbow. In October they return to their icy habitations.

Capt. Parry passed through LANCASTER SOUND; proceeded westward, and took up his winter quarters in a harbour of Melville Island. This island he supposed to be 150 miles long, and from 30 to 40 broad. He saw many fragments of snow and ice, resembling what Freminville beheld in other parts of the arctic regions, viz. steeples, towers, colonnades, castles, and fortresses. The animals, seen on this desolate coast, were deer, foxes, white mice, and one American musk ox, having a mane large and shaggy, like that of a lion. The vegetables consisted of grass, poppies, and saxifrage in tufts and patches and the birds were the glaucus, the king-duck, and the ptarmigan. These birds were seen only in summer; but owls, in full beauty of feather, were observed during the whole of their stay.

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It has been remarked ", that the western shores of continents are more warm than eastern ones. An east wind is, in fact, dreaded in most countries. The cold is frequently intense in Kamschatka, when on the opposite shore of America it is comparatively warm. The western part of Iceland is free from those enormous glaciers and mountains of snow and ice which so much deform the eastern shore; and on the east coast of Britain a pea-blossom is scarcely known in May, while in the west, myrtles, and even fuchsias, grow in the open air, throughout the winter. In this island, dry autumns and summers, with warm springs and abundant showers, have Humboldt. Dampier. b Barrow's Polar Regions, p. 372.

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been the most remarkable for plentiful years and, upon reference to meteorological observation, we find, that in those years western winds have principally prevailed. In winter, the north and north-east winds are generally productive of frost, and a south-west wind of thaw.

But climates frequently vary, even in the same province; a variation caused by soil, comparative absence or prevalence of woods and stagnant waters, the pernicious effects of which steam from vegetable and animal decomposed substances. In Canada the ground freezes so hard in winter, that no graves can be dug; dead bodies are, therefore, kept till the commencement of a thaw; when the vegetation is so exceedingly quick, that the grass may be almost seen to grow. In other regions of America soil and heat produce an equal sterility, and moisture an equal luxuriance of growth; but, for the most part, America has temperatures, differing from regions, occupying the same parallels of latitude. Its general climate is more islandic than continental; and yet its coldness and its moisture cannot be caused entirely by the proximity of two oceans; since we find islands in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian seas, still warmer, and equally as dry. That America, if we except the western coast, is colder and more moist, than corresponding latitudes, in other countries, is certain and that those qualities may arise, in some degree, out of the neighbourhood of two such vast oceans, as the Atlantic and Pacific, and a comparative height above the level of their surfaces, is highly probable. But these causes are assisted in producing their results by the vastness of the forests, the length and breadth of the rivers, the imperfect state of cultivation, the nature of the soil, and certain peculiarities of electrical phenomena.

In tropical climates, the flesh of animals has neither the succulence nor the flavour of those of Europe; but they abound in cooling fruits. Insects, reptiles, birds, and some quadrupeds are, also, very vigorous, and grow to a great size.