the eye could reach. All hands came up to look at the amazing spectacle,
but the more experienced soon perceived that the myriads of swans were
simply infinite fields of ice, through which however they were able to
steer their course without much impediment, getting into clear sea beyond
about midnight, at which hour the sun was one degree above the horizon.

Proceeding northwards two days more they were again surrounded by ice,
and, finding the "water green as grass, they believed themselves to be
near Greenland." On the 9th June they discovered an island in latitude,
according to their observation, 74 deg. 30', which seemed about five
miles long. In this neighbourhood they remained four days, having on one
occasion a "great fight which lasted four glasses" with a polar bear, and
making a desperate attempt to capture him in order to bring him as a show
to Holland. The effort not being successful, they were obliged to take
his life to save their own; but in what manner they intended, had they
secured him alive, to provide for such a passenger in the long voyage
across the North Pole to China, and thence back to Amsterdam, did not
appear. The attempt illustrated the calmness, however, of those hardy
navigators. They left the island on the 13th June, having baptised it
Bear Island in memory of their vanquished foe, a name which was
subsequently exchanged for the insipid appellation of Cherry Island, in
honour of a comfortable London merchant who seven years afterwards sent a
ship to those arctic regions.

Six days later they saw land again, took the sun, and found their
latitude 80 deg. 11'. Certainly no men had ever been within less than
ten degrees of the pole before. On the longest day of the year they
landed on this newly discovered country, which they at first fancied to
be a part of Greenland. They found its surface covered with eternal
snow, broken into mighty glaciers, jagged with precipitous ice-peaks; and