THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

They proceeded to so high a latitude, that the sun, at midnight, illuminated the tops of the mountains with its rays.  In some places the ice was close in-shore, so that they had to place their tent and boat upon a sledge, and draw it across the ice by dogs.  They described the people on the east side as taller than those on the west, and that they had black hair and large beards.  The inhabitants were numerous, and the animals, on which they subsisted, plentiful.

The land at this time surveyed and projected (including fifteen miles of coast to the southward and twenty-five to the northward) is mountainous, dark, and sterile in the extreme.  Nothing can be conceived more rugged than it is; yet nothing that I have ever seen equals it in bold grandeur, and interesting character.  There is nothing in it that is tame, smooth, or insignificant.

Scoresby/Voyage