LONG ROCKY PROMONTORY. 253 



shallow water over it, protruding a long way 

 into Stour Fiord. We had a fine day, with a 

 strong, though bitterly cold breeze of east 

 wind, and I steered the boat close along shore, 

 hoping, as it was near high tide, that we might 

 have sufficient depth of water to enable us to 

 make a short cut by sailing over this bank. 

 On reaching the edge of the bank, however, 

 I found to my surprise that it was not a sub 

 marine bank at all, but an immense flat plain 

 of dry land edged with a reef of rocks several 

 feet above high tide mark, and we had to make 

 a long detour to get round it. 



As there has been no survey of Spitzbergen 

 in recent times, and all the charts are copied 

 from an ancient Dutch or Danish one, pub 

 lished two centuries or more ago, I think it is 

 highly probable that this point of land was 

 actually under water (as the chart seems to 

 represent it) at the time the latter was con 

 structed, and that it has since been gradually 

 elevated to its present level. Enormous quan 

 tities of drift-wood lay upon the reef of rocks 

 above the sea-level. 



When we had got round this long pro 

 montory and about six miles into the straits 

 it fell calm,- and we encountered such a strong 



