186 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



to load up with drift-wood, quantities of which, of 

 excellent quality and in every stage of preserva- 

 tion, strewed the shores of this island. 



While they were so engaged I walked about and 

 geologized. The island was in every respect sim- 

 ilar to those which I have already described; a 

 great deal of drift-wood lay far above high-water 

 mark, and in positions where it could not possibly 

 have been driven by storms in the present relative 

 levels of land and sea. 



Numbers of whales 1 bones also lay upon this 

 island from the sea-level up to the top of the rocks, 

 which may have been thirty-five to forty feet in 

 height. Those bones lying high above the sea- 

 level were invariably much more decayed and 

 moss-grown than those lower down. Some of 

 them were of enormous size. In one slight de- 

 pression of the island, about ten feet above the 

 sea-level, I counted eleven enormous jaw-bones, all 

 lying irregularly and mixed indiscriminately with 

 many vertebra?, ribs, and pieces of skulls. Of course 

 it will be understood that these bones which I men- 

 tion in different parts of this narrative were not 

 fossilized. We found them in many parts of Spitz- 

 bergen, and at all elevations up to that of two 

 hundred feet above the sea. I brought home many 

 specimens, which are now in the Museum of the 

 Geological Society. Could an approximation to 

 the age of these bones be in any way arrived at, 

 they would give some chronological data for determ- 



