North Foreland

“ He believed that there were still settlements on the inaccessible east coast of Greenland where descendants of the old Northmen lived, cut off from all the world, sunk into ignorance and godlessness,—men and women who had once known the true light,—and his heart yearned to go to their rescue. ”

“ It is at the north end of Le Petit Nord that St. Antoine is located.
The very character of the country and vegetation has changed. It is as if the great, forbidding fortress of St. John's Cape cut off the milder influences of southern Newfoundland, and left the northern peninsula a prey to ice and winds and fog. The people, too, have felt the influence of this discrimination of Nature. There is a line of demarcation between those who have been able to enjoy the benefits of the southern island, and those who have had to cope with the recurrent problems of the northland. ”

“ The tree that I planted on the grave-mound of my father—can it be that it lives now? Why do I linger in distant waves, taking tribute and conquering in war? My soul despises the glittering gold, and enough have I of renown.
"There's a flag on the mast and it points to the north, in
the north is the land I hold dear;
I will follow the course of the heavenly winds, and back
to the Northland I'll steer."
To his foster-brother Frithiof said: "Bjorn, I am weary of riding the sea. My heart longs for the firm earth of the Northland, and her lofty mountains are calling to me. ”

“ I was in the society of gentlemen whose lives had been passed in all portions of the great north, on the frozen shores of Hudson’s Bay, in the mountain fastnesses of the Chipewyan range, or midst the savage solitudes that lie where, in long, low-lying capes, and ice-piled promontories, the shore of America stretches out to meet the waves of the Northern Ocean. ”

“ Greenland, like the eastern coast of the continent, was duly colonised, its two chief settlements being one just round Cape Farewell, the other further north on the same coast. In those days the island, or chain of islands beneath an ice-cap, as many think it is, would appear to have had a milder climate than it has now. The colonies throve, their population becoming numerous enough to require a series of seventeen bishops, the last one dying about 1540, to superintend their spiritual welfare. ”

“ When the powerful North-West Fur Company became merged into the wealthier but less enterprising corporation of the Hudson’s Bay, they left behind them in the North a race of faithful servitors—men drawn in early life from the best rural habitans of Lower Canada—men worthy of that old France from which they sprung, a race now almost extinct in the north, as indeed it is almost all the world over. ”

“ The economic progress of North Island, so far as we have seen it, has consisted largely in the occupation 49 of the lowlands near the river mouths, and the gradual clearing of the forest further inland—a rather different forest from that of South Island, since the climate is warmer and drier. ”

“ THE NORWAY OF THE NEW WORLD By so many generations has Newfoundland been looked upon as an island of damp and dreary swamp that it will be many years before that erroneous impression is dispelled. And yet what a beautiful land it is! The inhabitants themselves do not fully appreciate the wealth of scenery with which Providence has so abundantly enriched them. It is true that one is not met by the garden-like scenery of England, to the making of which so many human hands have been devoted; but there is probably no country in the world that can present such a sublime panorama of natural scenery. ”

“ The widely-famed Far West is not to be compared with even the tamest portions of Scotland or Wales. You stand upon the prairie, and see the unbroken horizon all round you. You are on a great plain, which is like a sea without water. I am exceedingly fond of wild and lonely scenery, and believe that I have the faculty of being as much impressed by it as any man living. But the prairie fell, by far, short of my preconceived idea. I felt no such emotions as I do in crossing Salisbury Plain. ”

“ There are grand mountains and glaciers in Switzerland, but they do not rise directly out of the ocean as they do here in Scandinavia; and as to the scenery afforded by the innumerable fjords winding inland, amid forests, cliffs, and impetuous waterfalls, nowhere else can these be seen save on this remarkable coast. Like rivers, and yet so unlike them in width, depth, and placidity, with their broad mouths guarded by clustering islands, one can find nothing in Nature more grand, solemn, and impressive than a Norwegian fjord. ”

“ North of California, and south of British Columbia, there lies a vast region. Rich in forest, prairie, snow-clad peak, alluvial meadow, hill pasture, and rolling table-land. It has all that nature can give a nation; its climate is that of England; its peaks are as lofty as Mont Blanc; its meadows as rich as the vales of Somerset.
The Spaniard knew it by repute, and named it Oregon, after the river which we call the Columbia. Oregon was at that time the entire west of the Rocky Mountains, to the north of California. Oregon had long been a mystic land, a realm of fable. ”

“ The southern portion of the province is inhabited almost exclusively by natives. Only missionaries, tourists, and a few Government officials had hitherto traversed these interesting regions. The north of the island, on the other hand, is much better known. Numbers of European settlers inhabit the shores of the numerous bays of the northern Peninsula. The colonists themselves, by word of mouth, or written information, could furnish me with all the information I required respecting the natural history of those regions, not to speak of the specimens that were constantly being sent me. ”

“ The surpassing stateliness of much of the coast declines to be expressed in ink or paint. Even the Naerofjord of Norway, most justly famed throughout the earth, is distanced in wild and rugged grandeur by some of the lonely channels among the north isles of the group, restricted in extent though they be. ”

“ The impression of the North-west, thus far seen, is that of tremendous energy, material refinement, much open-mindedness, considerable self-appreciation,’ uncommon sagacity in meeting new problems, generous hospitality, the Old Testament notion of possessing this world, rather more recognition of the pecuniary as the only success than exists in the East and South, intense national enthusiasm, and unblushing and most welcome “Americanism.” ”

“ It has ever been the habit of explorers in the north-west of America, to imagine that beyond the farthest extreme to which they penetrate, there lay a region of utter worthlessness. One hundred years ago, Niagara lay on the confines of the habitable earth; fifty years ago a man travelling in what are now the States of Wisconsin and Minnesota, would have been far beyond the faintest echo of civilization. ”

“ Of the districts occupied by Scandinavian settlers in England the ones which show their presence most strongly are Cumberland, Westmorland, North Lancashire and Yorkshire in the old kingdom of Northumbria and the district of the Five Boroughs in the midlands. East Anglia was not so deeply affected by the Danish occupation. ”

“ In his disappointment, Hearne learned what every other discoverer in North America had learned—that the Great Northwest was something more than a bridge between Europe and Asia, that it was a world in itself with its own destiny. ”

“ In the North, an indented coast with many good harbors, a rugged soil, and a wintry climate, encouraged the development of a commercial and manufacturing life. Slave labor here proved itself scarcely profitable, neither the climate nor the nature of the work required, being suited to the frames and abilities of the African. As compared with the South, the North soon became thickly settled, and largely as a result of this, adopted the small area of the town or township as its most important unit of local government, instead of the larger area, the county, used in the South. ”

“ If the Northwest be plain like a picture in your mind’s eye, you can recall how in the far North the Cascades and Rockies are intermingled, and how, as we come down through British Columbia to our own soil, they gradually separate, slope apart, so that by the time they reach the latitude of Portland, Oregon, a wide, flat domain lies between them. ”

“ Making a good recovery, he set off in May to sledge across North Greenland through snow and over it, and over snow-arched crevasses, often, in cloudy weather, travelling in grey space with nothing visible beyond a foot or two around him. After fifty-seven days' journey to the north-east and along Peary Channel, the northern boundary of the mainland, he left the inland ice for a strange country dotted with snowdrifts and mostly of red sandstone, in which murmuring streams, roaring waterfalls, and the song of snow-buntings formed an agreeable change from the silence of the desert of snow. ”

“ The southward configuration and northward outspreading of North America are the same, but we cannot follow the northern portion to its boundary as we may that of Europe and Asia, both of which terminate in an Arctic Ocean. Greenland is remarkably like Scandinavia; Davis’s Strait, Baffin’s Bay, and Smith’s Sound corresponding with the Baltic and the Gulf of Bothnia. The deep fjords of Greenland, like those of Scandinavia, are on its western side, and the present condition of Greenland corresponds to that of Norway during the milder period of the last glacial epoch. ”

“ How impossible for a Northern State to think of doing what Alabama did last winter, pass a law designed to limit the circulation in that State of Northern newspapers and periodicals! What Southern men mean by "State pride" is really not known in the Northern States. All men of every land are fond of their native place; but the pride that Northern people may feel in the State wherein they happened to be born is as subordinate to their national feeling, as the attachment of a Frenchman to his native province is to his pride in France. ”

“ Westward the sun hung like a red shield, close to the horizon, over vast reaches of prairie billowing to the sky-line in the tide of a boundless ocean. Such was the discovery of the Canadian Northwest.
Doubtless the weary gaze of the tired voyageurs turned longingly westward. Where was the Western Sea? Did it lie just beyond the horizon where skyline and prairie met, or did the trail of their quest run on—on—on—endlessly? The Assiniboine flows into the Red, the Red into Lake Winnipeg, the Lake into Hudson Bay. Plainly, Assiniboine Valley was not the way to the Western Sea. ”

“ In approaching the capital of Norway by sea from Gottenburg, the Christiania fjord is ascended for a distance of seventy miles to its head, bordered on either side nearly the whole way by finely-wooded hills, and its surface dotted by emerald isles reflected in the deep mirror-like waters. It must be understood that a fjord is not a sound, nor is it a thoroughfare in the full sense of that word; it is a cul de sac. This of Christiania at its débouchure is just fifteen miles in width, and like many other Norwegian fjords is much deeper than the sea beyond its mouth. ”

“ A cleaner place can scarcely be found, and I also noticed, what is quite rare in the North, large square fountains or wells, at the intersection of all the principal streets. The impression which Drontheim makes upon the stranger is therefore a cheerful and genial one. Small and unpretending though it be, it is full of pictures; the dark blue fjord closes the vista of half its streets; hills of grey rock, draped with the greenest turf, overlook it on either side, and the beautiful valley of the Nid, one of the loveliest nooks of Norway, lies in its rear. ”

“ In possession of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Illinois, the Great Lakes, France controlled all avenues of approach to the Great Northwest except Hudson Bay. This she had lost through injustice to Radisson; and already the troublesome question had come up,—What was to be the boundary between the fur-trading domain of the French northward from the St. Lawrence and the fur-trading domain of the English southward from Hudson Bay. Fewer furs came down to Quebec from Labrador, the King's Domain, from Kaministiquia (Fort William) , the stamping ground of Duluth, the forest ranger. ”

“ The coast of Norway from the most southerly part which is known as the Naze, to the North Cape which is its extreme point in that direction, is bordered by innumerable rocky islands, and also by deep fjords winding inland from ten to fifty miles each among masses of rock forming lofty, perpendicular walls, often towering a thousand feet and more in height. The traveller is reminded by the aspect of these fjords of the striking scenery of the Saguenay River in North America. ”

“ In short, in the minds of many, Western Nebraska, with its river, its climate, and its expanse of sterile soil, was of no value except to hold other portions of the earth together. But there lay the great undeveloped West, its prairies and beyond these its mountains, an inert expanse ready to be developed into vast productive states rich in soil and minerals. ”

“ Northward from Holy Island, but on the mainland, lies Goswick, from whose red sandstone quarries came the material for building the Abbey of Lindisfarne. Further north we come in sight of the coal pits and smoke of Scremerston, while beyond it, Spittal and Tweedmouth bring us right up to Berwick-on-Tweed itself, that grey old Border town which has seen so many turns of fortune, and been harried again and again, only to draw breath after each wild and cruel interlude, and go calmly on its quiet way until it was once more called upon to fight for its very existence. ”

“ THE NORTHERN TERRITORY The Northern Territory is one of Australia’s many problems. How can the immense tract of rich and fertile country with its tropical northern area be cultivated, and its great resources developed, without the importation of coloured labour? The native black population, though they are useful and efficient with stock, are found to be unadapted for agriculture, and incapable of the steady methodical work essential to its success. ”