202 Mr. A. Newton on the Birds of Sjntsbergen. 



As we slowly sailed along, I thought I had never beheld a 

 fairer spectacle. The calm blue sea, wherein floated icy blocks 

 of fantastic form, the dazzling white of their surfaces relieved by 

 the brilliant hues of sapphire and emerald which gleaned from 

 their waterworn and cavernous sides. In the distance to the left, 

 the peaks of Prince Charles' Foreland were peering through the 

 soft northern haze, while ahead there was the Sound stretching 

 far away to the eastward, hill rising beyond hill in endless suc- 

 cession until the furthest were so velied by the mists that their 

 outlines ceased to be discernible. Nearer at hand was abundance 

 of life — White Whales rolling rapidly and easily across our bow — 

 multitudes of birds. Guillemots, Rotches, and Dovekies, Ful- 

 mars, Kittiwakes, and Burgomasters, Geese and Eider-Ducks, 

 some busily seeking their food in the water, others congregated 

 on the ice-floes, resting from their parental cares, others, again, 

 hurrying to and fro with bustling anxiety, but all lending the 

 charm of animation to what, without them, would have been a 

 desolate scene, notwithstanding that the polar sun shone brightly 

 over the whole. 



Presently we rounded the low point I have just mentioned, 

 and then there opened to our sight a small rectangular bay, 

 some two miles or more across by about five in depth. Its head 

 was terminated by a glacier; while on our left were two more, 

 one, like the first, reaching to the water's edge, and presenting 

 a perpendicular face more than one hundred feet in height, the 

 other suspended on the hill-side, and at that time almost entirely 

 covered up with snow. This bay is named — and well named — 

 Safe Haven. Here we came to an anchor, a short distance from 

 a small schooner, which our pilot at once recognized as that of 

 the Swedish expedition. 



On the morning of the 9th of July, two of our party proceeded 

 in the cutter to Coal Bay in quest of Reindeer. Just before 

 starting, an Ivory-Gull, attracted by some off'al thrown from the 

 Swedish schooner, came round us, and, alighting on a block of 

 floating ice, became the firstfruits of our Spitsbergen fangst. I 

 forthwith set ofi" for the great range of clifi^s we had passed the 

 preceding night, to see what could be done in ornithology. On 

 landing, we found the ground not entirely free from snow ; and 



