Mr Scoresby’s Excursion to Jan Mayen's Island. 
object into insignificance. A solid mass of ice capped its sum- 
mit, and an almost uninterrupted stratum of the same extended 
to tlie water’s edge, about a league to the eastward of us. The 
blackness of the rocks, the delicate greenness of the ice, and the 
whiteness of the snow, formed a contrast at once bold, delicate, 
and beautiful. In the valleys, the snow presented a surface 
pure and unbroken ; on the sides of the hills the naked rocks 
protruded their black points through the surface of the snow ; 
and on the peaks of the loftier mountains, ice and snow harmo- 
nized together, and appeared to be firm and indissoluble as the 
rocks themselves. 
The colour of the cliffs near where we landed, was brownish- 
black, purplish-black, greenish-black, yellowish-brown, reddish- 
brown, or ferruginous red. The brownish-black consisted part- 
ly of soil and partly of rocks of iron clay ; the greenish-black of 
the same, with an admixture of yellow clay; the yellomsh- 
brown of indurated or half-baked yellow-clay, and the reddish- 
brown of baked, friable, or burnt red clay. 
A rocky hill, with a precipitous side towards the south-west, 
appearing at a little distance to the westward of me, I de- 
scended from the mouth of the crater, and proceeded towards it 
with the expectation of finding some primitive or at least unal- 
tered rocks; in this, however, I was disappointed. Though I 
visited the foot of the precipice as well as the top, (which was 
probably two or three hundred feet high,) I found that it uni- 
formly consisted of a friable yellow clay, containing many cry- 
stals and grains of olivine and augite. On the top it was soft 
and marl}^, but harder and more ponderous below. Between 
this precipice and the sea, the beach exhibited numerous hillocks 
of floetz-trap rock. 
A piece of ironstone, which appeared to have been smelted 
in the furnace of nature, and converted into iron, was found near 
the volcanic mount ; it was laid aside by our party as we ascend- 
ed, but unfortunately left behind us when we quitted the 
shore. 
When w e landed, we could not perceive the least sign of ve- 
getation on any part of the beach or neighbouring land ; but, on 
ascending the sides of the volcano, we saw several plants in 
flower, specimens of each of which I collected ; and, on my re- 
turn to the ship, had them placed in a box of earth and san(T 
