NOVA ZEMBLA AND LANDS BEYOND. 77 
‘On the 1s: of July he again made Bear Island, and here 
he and Rijp agreed to separate. Of the latter we know 
only that he was unsuccessful in an attempt to find an 
opening in the ice on the east of Greenland, and that he 
returned to Holland in the same year. Of the former the 
narrative is painfully full and interesting. 
‘Quitting Bear Island, he reached Novaia Zemlaia on 
the 17th of July, sighting the coast in lat. 74° 40’ N. 
Keeping along it with characteristic perseverance until the 
7th of August, he passed Cape Comfort ; but only to find 
himself once more face to face with the dreary spectacle of 
the far-reaching Polar ice. It so hemmed and fenced him 
in on every side that he was unable to extricate his vessel 
from it; and being driven into a bay, which he named 
Ice Haven, “ there they were forced, in great cold, poverty, 
misery, and griefe, to stay all the winter,” For the heavy 
pack-ice drifting into the bay closed it up, and closed 
around the ship until she was held fast as in iron bonds. 
‘Barents and his sixteen followers now prepared to 
encounter with a good heart the trials of the long Arctic 
winter night. They displayed, in truth, a courage, a 
patience, and a good fellowship which were heroic. Find- 
ing a large supply of drift-wood, they constructed, with the 
help of planks from the poop and forecastle of the vessel, 
a sufficiently commodious house, into which they removed 
all their stores and provisions They fixed a chimney in 
the centre of the roof; a Dutch clock was set up, and duly 
struck the weary hours; the sleeping-berths were ranged 
along the walls; a wine-cask was converted into a bath. 
All these ingenious devices, however, availed but little 
against the terrible feeling of depression which is induced 
by the continuance for so many weeks of a blank and 
cheerless darkness. 
‘The sun disappeared on the 4th of November, and the 
cold thereafter increased until it was almost intolerable. 
Their wine and beer were frozen, and lost all their strength. 
By means of great fires, by applying heated stones to their 
feet, and by wrapping themselves up in double fox-skin 
