302 
A VOYAGE TO SPITZBERGEN. 
of at home, and an Arctic winter must not he trifled 
with if we mean to go. The rest have already gone. 
The Norwegians have many superstitious beliefs to 
compel them to hasten home, and besides they have 
scant provision for the voyage, only intended to last 
them till October. They go back, poor fellows, empty 
this season to begin again later in the year along 
their own coast with the herring fishery, when we 
hope they may have such luck as will repay them 
for their ill-spent time in these desolate waters of 
the Spitsbergen Islands. Now our acquaintance 
with wild nature grows more limited every day. 
The wild geese begin to wing their way to the far 
south ; most of the migratory birds have gone, and we 
turn to look again upon a land, uninhabited no doubt, 
but a land full of pleasant recollections : the climate, 
with all its threatening aspect, so well suited to the 
manly sports we entered on by land and sea; the 
whole region, rough beyond compare, but still a region 
of enchantment and delight. It is a world in itself, 
of which the traveller who has not seen it can form 
no conception whatever—where the light of heaven 
is so unlike what we elsewhere experience, that we 
are unable to describe it. Its ice blinks and auroras, 
its heavy blue reflections against which the prismatic 
ice glitters in the purest light of day ; and all the 
