274 SPITSBERGEN chap, xx 



rock, broken into points and draped with whitest snow 

 mantles, seemed able to defy alike raging sea and splitting 

 frost. The mountains all around were of the same bold 

 type, but at the foot of those that form Amsterdam Island 

 is a wide low spit of ground jutting out into the bay, and 

 carrying the ruins and graves of what was Smeerenburg. 

 This shore was well adapted for drawing up the carcasses 

 of whales, killed either in the bay itself or in the neigh- 

 bouring seas. Here the blubber was cut from them and 

 boiled down in one of the "tents," or factories, whose very 

 foundations have long disappeared. 



A heavy mist lay low down, and cast leaden shadows upon 

 the smooth water. Only the bases of the hills could be 

 seen. On these the imagination was free to pile whatever 

 mighty towers it pleased. It was easy to fill the scene with 

 high-pooped Dutchmen riding at anchor, whilst the shore 

 was thronged with busy crowds. For many thousands of 

 men and women, in the palmy days of the whale fishery in 

 the seventeenth century, annually resorted here to catch 

 the fish or handle the produce of the fishery. Large glacier 

 fronts protrude into the sea on the east coast of the bay. 

 A blaze of white light, a true ice -blink, gleamed in the 

 mist over the level glacier surface that comes down with 

 almost imperceptible slope from the unexplored inland ice. 

 All around was grey — grey water, grey sky, grey rocks — 

 save for faint blue breaks in the glacier fronts, and one 

 incredibly deep-blue castle of stranded ice, whose colour, 

 like a rich note of music, seemed to throb in and through 

 the soft and tender harmony of grey. 



Our first need was to steam due north and find the ice- 

 pack. The last news we had of it was, that about July 28 

 its south margin was in lat. 8i° 40' N. But a strong north 

 wind had been blowing continuously ever since, and there 

 was unfortunately little doubt that the ice had by now 



