FOG AGAIN. 171 



sea-horses frequenting this part of the Spitzbergen 

 coast come down from the northeast ; and I have 

 often suspected that Gillies' Land, or some other un- 

 known country in that direction, must be the grand 

 emporium which supplies them. A great many 

 are known to exist about the northeast corner of 

 Spitzbergen, which, as I mentioned before, is rarely 

 accessible. No vessel has ever succeeded in circum- 

 navigating Spitzbergen, and, although separate voy- 

 ages have been made which overlap one another in 

 this direction, still, very little indeed is known about 

 those parts of the Spitzbergen archipelago marked 

 in the charts as "Nordost Land" and "New Fries- 

 land." 



On the 9th and 10th there was a dense fog, with 

 both barometer and thermometer high. 



Rather dull work. We have read all our books ; 

 we can not see forty yards from the deck ; and the 

 smell from the hold is getting almost intolerable. 

 It changes silver to the color of copper, and cop- 

 per to that of iron, and actually turns white paint 

 black. 



On the 11th a slight breeze sprung up, and, clear- 

 ing off the fog, enabled us to ascertain the very un- 

 satisfactory fact that we are exactly in the same 

 place as we were before the fog came on. Some 

 streams of good ice, however, lie in different direc- 

 tions around, but no seals or sea-horses in sight. 



The fog returned as bad as ever on the 1 2th, but 

 the 13th was a trifle clearer, and, being in among 



