In the afternoon a “bo’sun” bird, and numbers of kittiwakes were flying about the ship, and several guillemots in the water dove to let us pass.
Thursday, Aug. 3d.—A foggy night and cold. This morning the sun shining through a low-lying fog, and a light, but particularly penetrating easterly breeze, the breath of the East Greenland ice inshore of us.
The noon sights showed us a little south of Sukkertoppen, and at 2 P. M. an opening in the fog showed us the Sukkertoppen Islands on the starboard bow. We are past the East Coast ice without seeing a cake of it. Since supper dense fog.
Friday, Aug. 4th.—Thick fog all night until about 6:30 A. M., when it began to lift, showing us the bold Greenland Mountains, near Holsteinburg. Not a piece of ice inshore or a berg in sight.
We crossed the Arctic Circle at two o’clock this morning, and Percy, the steward, asserts that the bump when the ship went over it, woke him up!!
In regard to smoothness of sea, peacefulness of weather, entire absence of ice, and scarcity of bergs, the voyage from Sydney to the Arctic Circle has been most unusual even for this season of the year. With the exception of the few rolls just outside of Sydney Harbour, there has not been enough motion of the ship to spill a glass of water.
The noon sights give us 67° 37′ north latitude. The water, like glass, and the cliffs of Disco visible 95 miles away. In 68° we passed through a fleet of twenty-seven bergs, the output of the Disco Bay glaciers. During the afternoon a few walrus and two whales were seen. The day has been one of typical Disco Bay summer weather.
Saturday, Aug. 5th.—A perfect Arctic summer night, clear and brilliant. At two this morning we passed Godhavn, the little place lying under the southward-facing cliffs of Disco, which is the capital of the northern inspectorate of Greenland. Here, nineteen years ago, I got my first taste of Arctic life, and made plans and indulged in dreams some of which have since materialised and others may. Several times since then I have anchored in the harbour, till I know the little settlement as I do the streets of Washington.
Though we are now over three degrees beyond the Arctic Circle, I am sitting in my cabin, with window and ports open, in my shirt sleeves, wearing clothing I wore in New York before I left, writing in entire comfort.
Later, a light breeze from the westward, keen after its passage over the middle pack, makes the blue waters look like frosted steel, and sharpens the western cliffs of Disco, along which we are steaming, into almost startling clearness.