196 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [XI. 



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 ther- 

 mometer 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 appear- 

 ance 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 Spitz- 

 bergen, as well as could be gathered from their journal, it 

 appeared that they had perished from the intolerable severity 

 of the climate, — and the contorted attitudes in which their 

 bodies were found lying, too plainly indicated the amount 

 of agony they had suffered. No description can give an 

 adequate idea of the intense rigour of the six months' winter 

 in this part of the world. Stones crack with the noise of 

 thunder ; in a crowded hut the breath of its occupants will 

 fall in flakes of snow ; wine and spirits turn to ice ; the snow 

 burns like caustic; if iron touches the flesh, it brings the 

 skin away with it ; the soles of your stockings may be burnt 

 cff your feet, before you feel the slightest warmth from the 



