BUCHAN AND FRANKLIN. 95 



foxes would not touch the eggs tainted with it. Foxes 

 and bears are everywhere found on the shore and on 

 the ice ; and the sea about Spitzbergen is as much alive 

 as the land, from the multitude of burgomasters, stront- 

 jaggers, malmouks, kittiwakes, and the rest of the gull 

 tribe, while the amphibious animals and the fish enliven 

 both the ice and the water, from the huge whale to the 

 minute clio on which it feeds, swallowing perhaps a 

 million at a mouthful. In this respect of animal life, 

 the Arctic regions of the globe essentially differ from 

 those within the Antarctic Circle, where all appears to 

 be stillness, silence, and solitude. 



On the 7th of June the ships left Magdalena Bay, and 

 were hampered with fragments of ice, usually called 

 brash-ice, which, as they proceeded, became thicker and 

 more solid, and, indeed, impenetrable ; but a breeze 

 opened and dispersed it, and carried the ships into clear 

 water. In going westerly they fell in with several 

 whale-ships, by which they learned that the ice in that 

 quarter was quite compact, and that fifteen vessels were 

 beset in it. Buchan, therefore, stood to the northward. 

 They passed Cloven Cliff, a remarkable isolated rock, 

 which marks the north-western boundary of Spitzbergen, 

 and also Ked Bay, when they were stopped by the 

 ice closing the channel between it and the shore, and 

 became firmly fixed. By great exertions, however, 

 they got into the floe of ice, where they remained thir- 

 teen days, whei the field began to separate, and to set 

 to the southward, at the rate of three miles an hour, 

 and the ships got into an open sea, where, however, 

 they were not long permitted to remain, and took 

 shelter in Fair Haven. 



Finding, from the view afforded by the hills, that the 

 ice was driving to the northward, they again put to sea 

 on the 6th of July, and Bailed as far as 80 15' N. ; where 



