Mr. A. Newton on the Birds of Spitsbergen. 201 



gian coast. On the 5th we saw numerous Alcida, and thence 

 concluded we were not far from Bear or Cherie Island, though 

 the thick state of the weather hid it from our sight. On the 

 evening of the 6th we made the land off the South Cape of 

 Spitsbergen; but almost at the same time we encountered a 

 great deal of floating ice, and our pilot informed us it was useless 

 attempting to reach our place of destination in the large inlet 

 generally marked on English charts as Wibelan's Water, but 

 now-a-days more commonly known as the Stor Fjord, a name 

 which I shall here use. We accordingly stood away to the west- 

 ward, and next morning we saw Rotches, Bruennich's Guille- 

 mots, and Burgomasters* round the ship. About midday the 

 land broke out through the fog, revealing the high mountains 

 near Bell Sound, for the entrance of which we accordingly 

 steered, only, however, to find it still closed by the ice, as we 

 had previously discovered the Stor Fjord and, in the interim, 

 Horn Sound to be. The yacht's head was again kept to the 

 north, and towards midnight of the 8th of July we were entering 

 Ice Sound, passing through belts of floating ice into a magnifi- 

 cent inlet, on the northern shore of which rose a grand mass of 

 snow-capped cliffs, fronted in regular order by a uniform series 

 of buttresses formed of disintegrated rock, its sky-line varied by 

 peaks and pinnacles of greater or less size, till towards its south- 

 eastern end it ceased almost abruptly, and shooting out into a 

 mighty horn, with an edge like that of a knife, descended to a 

 long low point almost on the sea-level. 



* In a narrative such as the present, I think it is more convenient to use 

 the names locally applied to the animals one sees, rather than those by 

 which they are termed in books of natural history. As the principle of ver- 

 nacular is totally different from that of scientific nomenclature of species, 

 there is, I apprehend, the less objection to this practice. Talk to a sailor 

 of a Little Auk, a Black Guillemot, or a Glaucous Gull, and he will set you 

 down at once for a " sea-lawyer " ; but speak of a Rotche, a Dovekie, or a 

 Burgomaster, and he will understand what you mean. The practice, how- 

 ever, has its limits ; and 1 am obliged to use the name Bruennich's Guille- 

 mot, because that species is not distinguished by seafaring men from the 

 ordinary Loom of more southern latitudes ( L^ria troile). The names Fulmar 

 and Mallemuck seem to be indifferently applied ; I have here preferred the 

 first, though it has not the recommendation of antiquity, because the second 

 is now-a-days so commonly misapplied to Diomedea melanophrys. 



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