46 THE JEANNETTE ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



"Kellet, who discovered this island in 1849, and landed 

 on it under unfavorable circumstances, describes it as an 

 inaccessible rock. The sides are, indeed, in general, extremely 

 sheer and precipitous all around, though skilled mountain- 

 eers would find many gullies and slopes by which they might, 

 reach the summit. I first pushed on to the head of the gla- 

 cier valley, and thence along the backbone of the island to 

 the highest point, which I found to be about one thousand 

 two hundred feet above the level of the sea. This point is 

 about a mile and a half from the northwest end, and four 

 and a half from the northeast end, thus making the island 

 about six miles in length. It has been cut nearly in two l>v 

 the glacial action it has undergone, the width at this lowest 

 portion being about half a mile, and the average width about 

 two miles. The entire island is a mass of granite, w T ith the 

 exception of a patch of metamorphic slate near the center, 

 and no doubt owes its existence with so considerable a height 

 to the superior resistance this granite offered to the degrad- 

 ing action of the northern ice sheet, traces of which are 

 here plainly shown. . . . This little island, standing, as it 

 does, alone out in the Polar sea, is a fine glacial monument. 



"The midnight hour I spent alone on the highest summit, 

 one of the most impressive hours of my life. The deepest 

 silence seemed to press down on all the vast, immeasurable, 

 virgin landscape. The sun near the horizon reddened the 

 edges of belted cloud-bars near the base of the sky, and the 

 jagged ice-bowlders crowded together over the frozen ocean 

 stretching indefinitely northward, while more than a hun- 

 dred miles of that mysterious Wrangel Land was seen blue 

 in the northwest a wavering line of hill and dale over the 

 white and blue ice-prairie and pale gray mountains beyond, 

 well calculated to fix the eye of a mountaineer; but it was 

 to the far north that I ever found myself turning, where the 

 ice met the sky. 



"I would fain have watched here all the strange night, 

 but was compelled to remember the charge given me by the 

 captain, to make haste and return to the ship as soon as I 



