A "VOYAGE TO SPITZBERGEN, ETC. • 141 



sinuous course down the valleys, or cutting for themselves fresh 

 channels to the sea. The sea-front of many of these glaciers was 

 of great height, perhaps two huncbed or three hundred feet sheer, 

 and protruded some distance heyond the coast line. The whole 

 coast swarmed with incalculable quantities of sea-fowl, and huge 

 "Knner" Whales or Eorquals, Balmnoptera musculm, were fre- 

 quently descried. A good idea of the immense length of these 

 leviathans was conveyed by the distance between the erect dor- 

 sal fin, the only part visible, and the point at which the spray, 

 or " spouting" from their submerged nostrils rose from the sea. 

 This distance often appeared to be at least fifty feet, which would 

 give, roughly, a total length of perhaps seventy or eighty feet. 

 Plate III. 



At midnight on the 26th we steamed up the magnificent en- 

 trance to Ice Fjord, and anchored in a creek called Green Haven. 

 The shores of this haven consisting chiefly of glaciers, bare rocks, 

 or snow-covered hills, its name must have been chosen on the 

 " lucus a non hicendo' principle. Here we commenced a series 

 of more or less successful expeditions after Reindeer. These 

 Deer are tolerably numerous in the open valleys, and spend the 

 morning resting on the higher slopes of the hills, lying down as 

 often on a patch of snow as on the drier ground. Towards after- 

 noon (I need not remind my readers that there is no visible 

 difference between midday and midnight) they come down into 

 the valleys and lower ground, where they find abundant pastur- 

 age in the mosses and Arctic vegetation, which springs up 

 rapidly in the short summer. The Reindeer were very fearless, 

 and took little or no notice of the report of a rifle, provided the 

 sportsman kept well out of sight. They probably mistook it 

 for the sounds caused by the cracking and splitting of the glaciers, 

 noises which ceaselessly reverberated around. One of our party 

 assured me he fired, I think i£ was, eight or nine shots at four 

 Bucks, and when one or two of them fell, the others coolly 

 walked up and began sniffing curiously at the bodies of their late 

 companions. I noticed the same indifference in the Arctic Ptar- 

 migan, LaffojMS hemileucurus, of which bird I fell in with four on 

 our first landing. They sat down on a steep moraine, where I 



