230 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



the lower band gradually thinned away to nothing. 

 This hill is very conspicuously placed, and can not 

 fail to be recognized by any future visitor to the 

 upper part of Stour Fiord. 



The other hill I imagine to be a truncated cone 

 of Plutonic rock, and of it I can hardly hope to give 

 a sketch that will convey any idea of its singular- 

 ly grand and picturesque appearance. It seemed 

 to be about 600 feet high, and two or three miles 

 in circumference at the base ; and the lower two 

 thirds of its height consisted of a steep talus of de- 

 tritus, covered with beautifully variegated mosses, 

 while the upper third was composed of a series of 

 bright russet-colored columns of rock, arranged per- 

 pendicularly, and looking exactly like a number of 

 half-decayed trunks of enormous trees bound togeth- 

 er in a sort of Titanic fagot. 



27th. After myself and my boat's crew had had 

 five hours 1 sleep, we started again on another trip, 

 my intention being to penetrate well into Walter 

 Thymen's Straits, a narrow passage of twenty or 

 five-and-twenty miles long and five or six in breadth, 

 which divides East Spitzbergen into two nearly 

 equal halves. 



When there is ice in this strait it is a great thor- 

 oughfare for seals and sea-horses passing from the 

 East Sea into Stour Fiord, and we were in hopes 

 that ice would by this time have been driven into 

 it by the current from the east. It is considered a 

 dangerous place for vessels, on account of the vio- 



