chap, in TO SPITSBERGEN 41 



1896 was the three-hundredth anniversary of the discovery 

 of Spitsbergen by Barendsz, the ship was gaily dressed with 

 bunting. Fog threatened to prevent us from completing the 

 celebration by beholding the island itself, but about eight P.M. 

 the fog lifted, and we saw, some twelve miles or more away 

 to the ESE., the bases of the hills about Horn Sound and 

 part of Mount Hedgehog, the whole deeply clothed in snow, 

 creamy white in the sunshine, and faint blue in the shadows, 

 but too distant to be picturesque or at all striking. Ice 

 thickly fringed the coast, and Horn Sound was seen from 

 the crow's-nest to be blocked with it. Slowly we crept 

 along up the coast through the scattered drift ice, sometimes 

 forced to move farther out to sea, but always trying to edge 

 back towards land as soon as possible. 



By midnight the sea was absolutely and divinely calm, 

 with the gentlest heave coming across it, a bright grey flat, 

 silver grey under a lighter grey sky. Scattered about in it 

 were the loveliest masses of ice, blue, indescribably blue 

 below, with caverns of darker blue and white surfaces above 

 — things fairy-like, bathed in the soft grey air, melting away 

 in the distance, yet strangely defined and clear, with a soft 

 definition and a clearness as of gossamer fabrics. Land- 

 ward was just a stripe of faint yellow, where the snowy 

 foot of hills appeared, illumined by the pale midnight sun. 



Next morning when we came on deck there was a great 

 transformation, for the day was absolutely clear, and we were 

 anchored off Cape Starashchin at the mouth of Ice Fjord. 

 The sight that met our eyes was a vision of beauty so 

 radiant and glorious as to seem past the possible perfection 

 of this world. Turquoise blue was the sea, dotted about 

 with white ice-masses, each a thing of beauty. Snowy hills 

 framed the water, white hills with sharp rock aretes and 

 boldly-bedded slopes. Southward the Russian Valley pene- 

 trated the land, divided by the blade-like mass of Mount 

 Starashchin from the sea, and by a carboniferous ridge 



