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