4 o SPITSBERGEN chap, hi 



A ship intended to face ice is always built of wood, and, 

 if a steamer, furnished with a two-bladed propeller. Our 

 vessel was of iron, and her propeller had more blades than 

 two. It was therefore absolutely essential to avoid coming 

 in contact with the drift ice. We wound about amongst the 

 masses, but the further we advanced the more numerous 

 they became, so that we were at last compelled to steam 

 south-west for an open place visible from the crow's-nest. 

 Before reaching it a band of larger ice-masses had to be 

 passed, floes a quarter of an acre in area or more, which had 

 been crushed up, one upon another, and piled into strangely 

 contorted forms. On one of these floes lay half-a-dozen 

 young saddle-back seals, which let us come so near that we 

 were about to launch a boat and attempt to harpoon them, 

 but they awoke, slipped off into the water, and were gone. 

 Plenty more seals appeared during the day. They often 

 held themselves up high out of the water, hideously humanly, 

 and gazed at the ship, before diving and hurrying away. 



However interesting our surroundings may have been, 

 and they were sometimes even exciting, what all were pre- 

 eminently conscious of was the cold. Passing strange were 

 the costumes adopted. One and another would vanish below 

 and return with some additional wrap. Studley became quite 

 stylish in corduroy breeches of the most fashionable hunting 

 cut, wherewith his long rubber boots, stuffed out with hay, 

 by no means harmonised. Trevor-Battye produced Samo- 

 yede pimmies. Coats of leather, furs, and every kind of thick 

 outer covering appeared ; but the greatest variety was in caps, 

 which ranged from a thick Kashmiri turban through every grade 

 of fur head-dress to the ordinary sou'-wester. In the baggage 

 were four pairs of enormous fur-lined boots brought by mis- 

 take, and which we intended to return unused. They were all 

 appropriated early in the day with thankfulness, and we slid 

 and waddled about in them, awkward but comfortable. 



When attention was called to the fact that this 17th of June 



