190 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [XL 



primeval forest each had grown, what chance had originally 

 cast them on the waters, and piloted them to this desert 

 shore. Mingled with this fringe of unhewn timber that 

 lined the beach lay waifs and strays of a more sinister kind ; 

 pieces of broken spars, an oar, a boat's flagstaff, and a 

 few shattered fragments of some long-lost vessel's planking. 

 Here and there, too, we would come upon skulls of walrus, 

 ribs and shoulder-blades of bears, brought possibly by the 

 ice in winter. Turning again from the sea, we resumed our 

 search for deer ; but two or three hours' more very stiff walk- 

 ing produced no better luck. Suddenly a cry from Fitz, 

 who had wandered a little to the right, brought us helter- 

 skelter to the spot where was standing. But it was not a 

 stag he had called us to come and look upon. Half im- 

 bedded in the black moss at his feet, there lay a grey deal 

 coffin falling almost to pieces with age ; the lid was gone — 

 blown off probably by the wind — and within were stretched 

 the bleaching bones of a human skeleton. A rude cross at 

 the head of the grave still stood partially upright, and a half 

 obliterated Dutch inscription preserved a record of the dead 

 man's name and age. 



VANDER SCHELLING .... 



COMMAN .... JACOB MOOR .... 

 OB 2 JUNE 1758 JET 44. 



It was evidently some poor whaler of the last century to 

 whom his companions had given the only burial possible in 

 this frost-hardened earth, which even the summer sun has no 

 force to penetrate beyond a couple of inches, and which will 

 not afford to man the shallowest grave. A bleak resting- 

 place for that hundred years' slumber, I thought, as I gazed 

 on the dead mariner's remains ! — 



' ' I was snowed over with snow, 

 And beaten with rains, 

 And drenched with the dews ; 

 Dead have I long been," — 



— -murmured the Vala to Odin in Nifelheim, — and whispers 



