FIRST GLIMPSE OF SPITZBERGEN. 
287 
space between their edge and the sea, illuminated by 
the sinister brilliancy of the iceblink. In an easterly 
direction, this belt of unclouded atmosphere was 
etherealized to an indescribable transparency, and up 
into it there gradually grew—above the dingy line of 
starboard ice—a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so 
pale, that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness 
of their outline, one could have deemed them as unsub¬ 
stantial as the spires of fairyland. The beautiful 
vision proved only too transient; in one short half hour 
mist and cloud had blotted it all out, while a fresh 
barrier of ice compelled us to turn our backs on the very 
land we were striving to reach. 
Although we were certainly upwards of sixty miles 
distant from the land when the Spitzbergen hills were 
first observed, the intervening space seemed infinitely 
less; but in these high latitudes the eye is constantly 
liable to be deceived in the estimate it forms of dis¬ 
tances. Often, from some change suddenly taking place 
in the state of the atmosphere, the land you approach 
will appear even to recede; and on one occasion, an 
honest skipper—one of the most valiant and enterprising 
mariners of his day—actually turned back, because, 
