On the 11th, we made Fair Foreland, or Vogel Hook, the northern extremity of Charles’ Island and on the 13th, we reached the southern extremity of the westernmost cape, forming Cross-bay in Spitzbergen, at a short distance from which, we were made fast to a large iceberg.
Spitzbergen is a general appellation given to a vast assemblage of frozen islands, lying between South Cape, in 76° 30´, and Verlegan Hook, in 80° 7´ north latitude. Its greatest breadth is from the westernmost part of Mauritius, or Amsterdam Island, called Hackluyt’s Headland, to the extreme east point of North-Eastland, comprising from 9° to nearly 24° east longitude.
The inhospitable nature of this frozen climate has prevented Spitzbergen from being properly explored. The best charts that have been published are extremely defective, and its larger divisions are but imperfectly defined. It could nowise interest the reader to peruse a dry catalogue of headlands or straits; and a few general observations may suffice to exhaust all that is interesting in its appearance.
The general aspect of this gloomy and sterile country, affords a scene truly picturesque and sombre. The shores are rugged, bold and terrific, being in many places formed by lofty, black, inaccessible rocks, some of which taper to exceedingly 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[9] sharp-pointed mountains, some of which rear their summits above the clouds, and are capped 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;