36 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



There are some old ruinous Russian huts on this 

 promontory, one of which we made use of as a post- 

 office by hanging the bottle up inside of it. 



It was very difficult to get the boat through the 

 ice along shore, and the whole country was cover- 

 ed with deep slushy snow ; we saw nothing ashore 

 but a few Brent geese and Eider ducks. 



Sd. Thinking the sloop had not yet reached 

 Spitzbergen, I determined to sail up the great gulf 

 or sound called "Stour Fiord 11 or "Wybe Jan's 

 Water, 11 to a place called "Thymen's Straits, 11 

 about forty miles distant, in hopes of getting a few 

 reindeer for provisions, as we were now subsisting 

 on a bull, which, in the absence of any thing bet- 

 ter, I had purchased in Hammerfest. 



Hitherto the fiord had appeared quite clear of 

 ice, except a little about the shore, but on sailing 

 about twenty miles north we sighted a long, low, 

 white line of ice, extending like a wall apparently 

 right across the fiord ; we thought at first that this 

 was a sheet of fixed or "fast 11 ice, but on approach- 

 ing it we discovered that it was drift ice, mostly in 

 small pieces, and very open. We saw two small 

 vessels, which we made out to be a brig and a 

 sloop, or "jagt, 11 at some distance among the ice. 

 Thinking the sloop might either be our own, or be 

 able to give us some intelligence of her, we sent a 

 boat on board during a calm. They knew nothing 

 of our sloop, and reported an indifferent "fishing 11 

 hitherto ; no vessel that they knew of had killed 



