THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 649, 30 May 1882, Page 3

THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN.

Mr Isaac Sharp, a missionary, delivered a very interesting lecture in Dunedin the other night. Speaking of Greenland, the home of frost and ice, the lecturer after describing the effect produced on the minds of travellers when they first witnessed the sun shining at midnight, remarked that in far Northern, as in other lands, the amor j>alrioe prevails, and, in the views l of the -people, they are the chief of the race, 7 and foreigners barbarians. A painter, however, whose name we did not catch, astonished a chief in this frozen land by skilfully forming a fragment of ice into a burning lens and

lighting his tobacco with it. It was something beyond the Greenlander’s comprehension, and shut him up. Iceland was described as a land of negatives. In it, notwithstanding it is inhabited by 70,000 people, there is “ no dissent, no army, no navy, no prisons, no roads, no inns, no carriages, no trees, no poultry, no snakes. Travelling and internal traffic is done with ponies, and sometimes as many as 300 of these little animals will convey their riders to a place of worship. As, however, there are no means of securing them, through there being nothing to tether them to, their tails, which are unpolled, are converted into loops by tying a strong knot on them, and then the animals are tethered in threes —the head of one to the tail of another. By this means they cannot travel except in a circle, and thus are prevented straying. The people are generally well educated, and many, even in the humbler walks of life, are able to read Latin and speak other languages. Their own language —the Norse—has been jealously preserved, so that it has become almost a foreign tongue to the Norwegians, from whom it is derived ; the latter having admitted additions from other tongues, which has enlarged and enriched their vocabulary, while in Iceland it is stationary.