A VOYAGE TO SPlTZBEEGEN, ETC. 147 



''bay-ice," slowly drifting seawards, and here too swarmed the 

 Eock-birds in bewildering profusion. Wherever the eye rested, 

 there were the Alcadsean hordes. Ice, air, and sea equally were 

 filled with them, hurrying past, swimming in black phalanxes, 

 or sitting in serried ranks bolt upright on the ice. 



We remained here some days, and obtained several Eeindeer 

 and Seals. Five of the former were shot one day in a valley off 

 Axel Bay. In this latter Sound we witnessed a magnificent 

 Arctic spectacle. The mouth of the inlet is almost closed by a 

 small rocky island of upheaved vertical strata, and as the fast- 

 ice in the upper waters broke up, the detached floes, drifting 

 outwards, soon blocked the narrow outlet. Then the accumu- 

 lating masses of ice imprisoned behind and propelled by a strong 

 ebb drove irresistibly forward, and at the outlet a terrific struggle 

 ensued. Piled up, block upon block, the roaring, grinding, 

 crushing mass of congested ice was upheaved again and again, 

 almost to the level of the low ridge where we sat, only to fall 

 back each time with a crash like thunder. The background 

 was appropriately formed by a huge ''stratified" glacier, occu- 

 pying all the opposite shore of the narrow channel. Only its 

 grim and lofty front was visible to us, for, low on its green con- 

 vex back rested a mass of dense grey cloud, while above this 

 again rose the peaks of barren snow-streaked mountains. The 

 whole spectacle formed one of J^ature's most majestic scenes — 

 utterly beyond my power to describe — and I lingered long in 

 admiration, wishing, perhaps, that a grand climacteric might be 

 added by the appearance of a Polar Bear on the scene. But it 

 is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, for presently I 

 was recalled by my '■'■ compagnons de voyage,^'' who broadly rated 

 me for my long absence, infamously suggesting that I had been 

 making a secret descent on th^ "Bottled Beer" which lay in the 

 boat ! The ice struggle continued unabated till the slack of the 

 tide, when we proceeded in our boat into the upper Sound in 

 quest of Deer. 



The Seals shot were of the Ringed species, Phoca hispida, 

 and were killed either on the ice or in the water. In the latter 

 case, the instantaneous arrival on the scene of the harpoon, as 



