74 
ingly high points, and are altogether 
bare, and almost destitute of vegetation. 
The entire face of the country exhibits 
a wild, dreary landscape, of amazingly 
high * sharp-pointed mountains, some of 
which rear their summits above the 
clouds, and are capt with strata of snow, 
probably coeval with the creation of the 
world. 
So Zembla’s rocks (the beauteous work of frost), 
Rise white in air, and glitter o’er the coast: 
Pale suns, unfelt, at distance roll away, 
And on th’ impassive ice the lightnings play; 
Eternal snows, the growing mass supply, 
Till the bright mountains prop th’ incumbent sky; 
As Atlas fix’d each hoary pile appears, 
The gather’d winter of a thousand years. 
The mountains of Spitzbergen have 
been observed, by voyagers, to decline 
in altitude towards the east; neither are 
the eastern mountains so black, steep, or 
* The altitude of one near the Black point, south 
end, was found, by the megameter, to be 1503 yards. 
Phipps’ Voyages, p. 87. 3 
