VICTORY. 
297 
grow the pale lilac peaks, warming into a rosier tint as 
we approach. Ice still stretches toward the land on 
the starboard side; but we don’t care for it now—the 
schooner’s head is pointing E. and by S. At one o’clock 
we sight Amsterdam Island, about thirty miles on the 
port bow; then came the “ seven ice-hills”—as seven 
enormous glaciers are called—that roll into the sea 
between lofty ridges of gneiss and mica slate, a little to 
the northward of Prince Charles’s Foreland. Clearer 
and more defined grows the outline of the mountains, 
some coming forward while others recede; their rosy 
tints appear less even, fading here and there into pale 
yellows and greys; veins of shadow score the steep 
sides of the hills; the articulations of the rocks become 
visible; and now,* at last, we glide under the limestone 
peaks of Mitre Cape—past the marble arches of King’s 
Bay on the one side—and the pinnacle of the Vogel 
Hook on the other, into the quiet channel that separates 
the Foreland from the main. 
It was at one o’clock in the morning of the 6th of 
August, 1856, that after having been eleven days at 
sea, we came to an anchor in the silent haven of English 
Bay, Spitzbergen. 
