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. About
the same period as when the party of Dutch sailors were
left at Jan Mayen, a similar experiment was tried in
Spitzbergen. At the former place it was scurvy, rather
than cold, which destroyed the poor wretches left there
to fight it out with winter; at Spitzbergen, as well as
could be gathered from their journal, it appeared that