ARCTIC FLORA.
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.
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
