278 SPITSBERGEN chap, xx 



A universe of death, which God by curse, 



Created evil, for evil only good, 



Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, 



Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, 



Abominable, inutterable, and worse 



Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, 



Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire." 



A few hours later the remote Seven Islands appeared 

 ahead, matching in form the bold bluff of North Cape 

 Island's northern front. 



We did not run directly for the islands, but headed to 

 pass them to the west, hoping to steam round and find 

 again the edge of the pack, which had bent away and left 

 open sea all about us. If the north coast of Spitsbergen 

 had seemed bleak, these islands, as we neared them, seemed 

 yet bleaker, yet more desolate and aloof from man. First 

 came Walden, an arete - crested mound of hardest rock, 

 defying the inroads of the sea. Beyond it we saw, as one 

 mass, the larger islands of Parry, Phipps, and Martens— all 

 cliff-sided, bare, and lonely. The reader will find it hard 

 to share the emotions evoked by the sight of these islands 

 in the mind of one to whom, by much reading of books 

 of Arctic travel, they had long become, if inaccessible and 

 remote, yet definite realities, associated with the doings, the 

 struggles, and the disappointments of great explorers, memor- 

 able in the annals of daring and human achievement. There 

 they lay silent, cold, and still, under their pall of cloud 

 and snow, with the gloom of the north enshrouding them. 

 Hardly a bird skimmed the surface of the forsaken sea, 

 wherein only ice-blocks floated. To the north-west, beyond 

 the three larger islands, a few lonely rocks stood forth, 

 joining clouds and sea — the two Table Islands and Ross 

 Island — last outposts of land towards the Polar Ocean, which, 

 a few miles farther, sinks to a depth of 1370 fathoms, as 

 Nordenskjold discovered. 



