124 Mr Scoresby’s Excm'sion to Jan MayeiCs Island. 
at the summit, prodigious blocks of the same, ranged along th® 
soutliern margin, gave the mountain a castellated form of no small 
magnificence. Beyond these rocks of red clay on the top of the 
mountain, we beheld the crater, forming a basin of five or six 
hundred feet in depth, and six or seven hundred yards in dia- 
meter. It seemed perfectly circular at the top, and sloped on 
the sides with a similar steepness as the exterior of the moun- 
tain, so that the descent was by no means difficult or hazardous. 
The bottom of the crater was filled with alluvial depositions, 
to such a he^ht that it presented a horizontal flat, of an ellipti- 
cal form, measuring about 400 feet by 240. A subterranean 
cavern was here seen penetrating the side of the crater, from 
which issued a spring of water, which, after running a short 
distance towards the south, disappeared in the sand. 
The summit of this volcanic mountain, which was from 1000 
to 1500 feet in elevation, afforded a view interesting and grand. 
To the north appeared Beerenberg, now first distinctly seen 
free from clouds, rising in majestic importance by a steep and 
increasing slope from the very verge of the sea on the south, to 
the height, apparently, of the highest clouds. At the foot of the 
mount on the south-eastern side, near a stupendous accumula- 
tion of lava bearing the castellated form, was another basin or 
crater of a volcano, of smaller dimensions than the one already 
described, situated on a level very little above that of the sea. 
Towards the north-west a thick fog obscured the prospect, 
^yhich 5 as it advanced with majestic grandeur towards us, gra- 
dually drew the curtain over the distant scenery, until at length 
the nearest mountains were wrapped in impenetrable gloom; 
at the same time, the atmosphere of above half the hemisphere 
lying towards the south, east, and west, was altogether free from 
obscurity, and the sun shone with resplendent blaze. On the 
west the whole of the eastern shore of the island was distinctly 
seen to the south-western point, where it abruptly terminates ; 
and a rock lying at a distance from the shore, exhibited a re- 
semblance so strikingly like that of a ship under sail, that it 
called forth from the sailors the frequent exclamation of ‘‘ a 
ship"’ or a sail.” Excepting the interest excited by the vol- 
cano, on the ridge of whose summit we long admired the sub- 
limity of the prospect around us, J^eerenberg sunk every other 
