LONG ROCKY PROMONTORY. 231 



lent current running through it ; so I preferred go- 

 ing in the boat to risking my yacht itself in the 

 straits. 



It seemed by the chart as if we had not more 

 than ten or twelve miles to go, as in the chart there 

 is laid down at the northwest corner of the straits 

 what appears to be a bank with 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 submarine 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, published two centu- 

 ries 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 constructed, and that it has since been gradu- 

 ally 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 promontory 



