Towards The Foot Of The Hill, An Expanse Of Snow Stretched Across The Line Of Descent.

This being loose and soft, we entered upon it without fear; but on reaching the middle of it, we came to a surface of solid ice, perhaps a hundred yards across, over which we launched with astonishing velocity, but happily escaped without injury.

The men whom we left below, viewed this latter movement with astonishment and fear."

So universally does this strange land bristle with peaks and needles of stone, that the views we ourselves obtained - though perhaps from a lower elevation, and certainly without the risk - scarcely yielded either in extent or picturesque grandeur to the scene described by Dr. Scoresby.

Having pretty well overrun the country to the northward, without coming on any more satisfactory signs of deer than their hoof-prints in the moss, we returned on board. The next day - but I need not weary you with a journal of our daily proceedings, for, however interesting each moment of our stay in Spitzbergen was to ourselves - as much perhaps from a vague expectation of what we might see, as from anything we actually did see - a minute account of every walk we took, and every bone we picked up, or every human skeleton we came upon, would probably only make you wonder why on earth we should have wished to come so far to see so little. Suffice it to say that we explored the neighbourhood in the three directions left open to us by the mountains, that we climbed the two most accessible of the adjacent hills, wandered along the margin of the glaciers, rowed across to the opposite side of the bay, descended a certain distance along the sea-coast, and in fact exhausted all the lions of the vicinity.

During the whole period of our stay in Spitzbergen, we had enjoyed unclouded sunshine. The nights were even brighter than the days, and afforded Fitz an opportunity of taking some photographic views by the light of a MIDNIGHT sun. The cold was never very intense, though the thermometer remained below freezing, but about four o'clock every evening, the salt-water bay in which the schooner lay was veneered over with a pellicle of ice one-eighth of an inch in thickness, and so elastic, that even when the sea beneath was considerably agitated, its surface remained unbroken, the smooth, round waves taking the appearance of billows of oil. If such is the effect produced by the slightest modification of the sun's power, in the month of August, - you can imagine what must be the result of his total disappearance beneath the horizon. The winter is, in fact, unendurable. Even in the height of summer, the moisture inherent in the atmosphere is often frozen into innumerable particles, so minute as to assume the appearance of an impalpable mist. Occasionally persons have wintered on the island, but unless the greatest precautions have been taken for their preservation, the consequences have been almost invariably fatal.

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