AN AUTUMN VISIT TO SPITZBEKGEN. 441 



where, according to these authorities, nothing hut glacier exists ! 

 There is a glacier at the N.W. point of the bay, where it is marked 

 " Scotts glac." in the Swedish map. After a bit we saw our old 

 acquaintance of the 22nd, and, going into the bow of the boat, 

 I presently had a long shot at it, and hit it, apparently, in the 

 back. Rabot had the next turn at it when an opportunity offered, 

 but missed. After again coining up once or twice, much too far 

 off, I got a second shot at it and again hit it. Each time we shot 

 it threw its tail well up out of the water, as it dived. After a 

 long wait there was a tremendous splash close to the boat, but 

 it was down before we could turn our rifles to it. Later, there 

 was a similar splash, but not so loud, but again we had not time 

 to fire, and within a few minutes another splash close to the boat ; 

 this time we were ready, and Rabot fired, killing a " Snad." It 

 floated on its back for about ten seconds, and then went down 

 like a stone before we could row the few yards and harpoon it. 

 We waited until nearly dark in hopes of seeing the Great Seal 

 again, and returned on board just as a snow-storm began. A 

 Fulmar found out the oil coming from the Great Seal, and then 

 another found out that from the Ringed Seal. The tenacity of 

 life in the Great Seal struck me as very remarkable, as although 

 I cannot say where either of the two bullets hit him, yet as they 

 were both expanding bullets, fired from an Express rifle, any one 

 who has had experience of them will know what a wound they would 

 make wherever they struck, and the amount of blubber coining 

 from him — sufficient to attract the attention of a wandering 

 Fulmar — shows that one at least of the wounds was severe, and 

 yet it had strength to behave as I have mentioned, and finally 

 swim off, though it may possibly have died soon afterwards. We 

 saw three or four young Mandt's Guillemots, a family of Eiders, 

 and several Purple Sandpipers flying about the Fjord, and a few 

 on the west shore. As we rowed across the bay we saw a flock of 

 about a dozen geese flying in the distance on the west shore — 

 perhaps the birds Rabot had seen previously. Before starting 

 in the boat this afternoon Rabot gave the live Glaucous Gull a 

 Purple Sandpiper, which it immediately swallowed whole. The 

 conversation on board to-night taking a funereal turn — a propos 

 of the skull — Arnesen told me that Johannesen, of the 'Lena,' 

 opened the grave of Tobiesen (the well-known walrus-hunter), in 

 Novaija-Zemlya, seven years after he was buried, and found him 



