THEIR JOURNAL. 
155 
Huge fleets of ice beleaguered the island, the sun 
disappears, and they spend most of their time in 
“ rehearsing to one another the adventures that had 
befallen them both by sea and land.” On the 12th 
of December they kill a bear, having already begun 
to feel the effects of a salt diet. At last comes New 
Year’s Day, 1636. “ After having wished each other a 
happy new year, and success in our enterprise, we went 
to prayers, to disburthen our hearts before God.” On 
the 25th of February (the very day on which Wallen¬ 
stein was murdered) the sun reappeared. By the 22d of 
March scurvy had already declared itself: “For want 
of refreshments we began to be very heartless, and so 
afflicted that our legs are scarce able to bear us.” 
On the 3d of April, “there being no more than two 
of us in health, we killed for them the only two 
pullets we had left; and they fed pretty heartily 
upon them, in hopes it might prove a means to recover 
of corn having been formerly grown, as well as of the existence of 
timber of considerable size, though now it can scarce produce a 
cabbage, or a stunted shrub of birch. M. Babinet, of the French 
Institute, goes a little too far when he says, in the Journal des 
Debats of the 80th December, 1856, that for many years Jan Mayen 
has been inaccessible. 
