A SPITZBEEGrEN WINTEE. 
313 
must be the result of his total disappearance beneath the 
horizon. The winter is, in fact, unendurable. Even in 
the height of summer, the moisture inherent in the atmo¬ 
sphere is often frozen into innumerable particles, so 
minute as to assume the appearance of an impalpable 
mist. Occasionally persons have wintered on the 
island, but unless the greatest precautions have been 
> 
taken for their preservation, the consequences have been 
almost invariably fatal. About the same period as when 
the party of Dutch sailors were left at Jan Mayen, 
a similar experiment was tried in Spitzbergen. At the 
former place it was scurvy rather than cold, which de¬ 
stroyed the poor wretches left there to fight it out with 
winter; at Spitzbergen, as well as could be gathered 
from their journal, it appeared that they had perished 
from the intolerable severity of the climate,—and the 
contorted attitudes in which their bodies were found 
lying, too plainly indicated the amount of agony they 
had suffered. No description can give an adequate 
idea of the intense rigour of the six-months winter 
in this part of the world. Stones crack with the 
noise of thunder; in a crowded hut the breath of 
its occupants will fall in flakes of snow; wine and 
