The Countries On Both Sides The Straits Lie Very High, With Rough
Stony Mountains, And Great Quantity Of Snow Thereon.
There is very
little plain ground, and no grass except a little, which is much
like unto moss that groweth on soft ground, such as we get turfs in.
There is no wood at all.
To be brief, there is nothing fit or
profitable for the use of man which that country with root yieldeth
or bringeth forth; howbeit there is great quantity of deer, whose
skins are like unto asses, their heads or horns do far exceed, as
well in length as also in breadth, any in these our parts or
countries: their feet likewise are as great as our oxen's, which we
measure to be seven or eight inches in breadth. There are also
hares, wolves, fishing bears, and sea-fowl of sundry sorts.
As the country is barren and unfertile, so are they rude, and of no
capacity to culture the same to any perfection; but are contented by
their hunting, fishing, and fowling, with raw flesh and warm blood,
to satisfy their greedy paunches, which is their only glory.
There is great likelihood of earthquakes or thunder, for there are
huge and monstrous mountains, whose greatest substance are stones,
and those stones so shapen with some extraordinary means, that one
is separated from another, which is discordant from all other
quarries.
There are no rivers or running springs, but such as through the heat
of the sun, with such water as descendeth from the mountains and
hills, whereon great drifts of snow do lie, are engendered.
It argueth also that there should be none; for that the earth, which
with the extremity of the winter is so frozen within, that that
water which should have recourse within the same to maintain springs
hath not his motion, whereof great waters have their origin, as by
experience is seen otherwhere. Such valleys as are capable to
receive the water, that in the summer time, by the operation of the
sun, descendeth from great abundance of snow, which continually
lieth on the mountains, and hath no passage, sinketh into the earth,
and so vanisheth away, without any runnel above the earth, by which
occasion or continual standing of the said water the earth is opened
and the great frost yieldeth to the force thereof, which in other
places, four or five fathoms within the ground, for lack of the said
moisture, the earth even in the very summer time is frozen, and so
combineth the stones together, that scarcely instruments with great
force can unknit them.
Also, where the water in those valleys can have no such passage
away, by the continuance of time in such order as is before
rehearsed, the yearly descent from the mountains filleth them full,
that at the lowest bank of the same they fall into the next valley,
and so continue as fishing ponds, in summer time full of water, and
in the winter hard frozen, as by scars that remain thereof in summer
may easily be perceived; so that the heat of summer is nothing
comparable or of force to dissolve the extremity of cold that cometh
in winter.
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