Flirting with the first ice we saw, it soon appeared that the training of the uninitiated, like puppies, was to be a very formal and lengthy piece of business. Thanks to an immense deal of water, and very little ice, the steamers eventually towed the "Resolute" and the transport (a lively specimen of the genus), into the Whale-Fish Islands,--a group of rocky islets, some twenty miles distant from the excellent Danish harbour of Godhaab on the Island of Disco.
We did as our forefathers in anchoring at the Whale-Fish Islands, but would strongly recommend those who visit this neighborhood to go to Godhaab rather. Its anchorage is good, communication with Europe a certainty, and the hospitality of the Danish residents, few though they be, cheering and pleasant to ship-sick wanderers.
Having thus expressed my total dissent from those who, with steam vessels, go to Whale-Fish Isles, it will be but fair for me to stay, that I arrived at this our first stage in the journey to the Nor'-West, in far from good humour. We had been twenty-four days from Greenhithe to Cape Farewell, and sixteen days from the latter point to our anchorage; hurry being out of the question when a _thing_ like the "Emma Eugenia" was pounding the water in a trial of speed with perfect snuff-boxes, like the "Resolute" and "Assistance." Patience and a four-day tow had at last finished the work: and to all our anxious inquiries about the prospect of the season, as to where Penny was, and whether any intelligence had reached the settlements? not an answer was to be obtained from a besotted Danish carpenter, whose knowledge appeared to be limited to a keen idea of changing, under a system he called "Trock," sundries (with which the Danske Koeing had intrusted him) into blubber and seal-oil.
After a day of coal-dust, I landed with some others to see what was to be seen, and to load, as we were taught to believe, a boat with wild fowl. The principal settlement having been pointed out, we landed on the slope of one of the islands, on which a coarse rank vegetation existed amongst the numerous relics of departed seals, sacrificed to the appetites of the Esquimaux and the _trocking_ of the Governor, as he was facetiously styled. The said individual soon appeared, and in spite of copious libations of Her Britannic Majesty's "Pure Jamaica," of which he had partaken, was most polite and hospitable. From him I discovered that he and a cooper were the only Danes residing here, and they, together with a cross-breed who did the double duty of priest and schoolmaster, constituted the officials of Cron-Prin's Islands. The native population amounted perhaps to one hundred souls: and it was in supplying their wants, and in affording a market for their superfluous skins and blubber, that the Danes derived a profit, under a strict system of monopoly; no foreigners being allowed to trade with the Esquimaux, and they, on the other hand, having strict injunctions to lodge every thing they do not require for private use, in the public store. The quantity of seal-blubber in store, which was equal to as much oil, amounted to nigh upon 100 tons; the number of seals annually destroyed must be enormous: this says much for the industry of the natives.
