152 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
island is volcanic), shooting straight up out of the 
sea to the height of 6,870 feet, not broad-based like 
a pyramid, nor round-topped like a sugar-loaf, but 
needle-shaped, pointed like the spire of a church. If 
only my Hull skipper were as good a draughtsman as 
he seemed to be a seaman, we should now be on our 
way to one of the wonders of the world. Most people 
here hold out rather a doleful prospect, and say 
that, in the first place, it is probable the whole 
island will be imprisoned within the eternal fields of 
ice, that lie out for upwards of a hundred and fifty 
miles along the eastern coast of Greenland; and next, 
that if even the sea should be clear in its vicinity, the 
fogs up there are so dense and constant that the chances 
are very much against our hitting the land. But the 
fact of the last French man-of-war which sailed in that 
direction never having returned, has made those seas 
needlessly unpopular at Reykjavik. 
It was during one of these fogs that Captain 
Fotherby, the original discoverer of Jan Mayen, stumbled 
upon it in 1614. While sailing southwards in a mist 
too thick to see a ship’s length off, he suddenly heard 
the noise of waters breaking on a great shore, and 
