WANDERINGS ON SHORE. 93 the sea. The bay we entered, on the 3rd of May, was named after a very shrewd Dutch woman, Mary Muss, whose energy and industry entitled her to rank amongst the foremost merchants of Rotterdam in this lucrative trade; this intelligent woman was the first to send a ship provided with all the necessary appliances for boiling the blubber on the coast after the whales were captured, and the oil and whalebone so obtained gained a higher market price than could be obtained after the blubber had lost some of its most valuable qualities by being stowed away in its crude state. Our companion, with one sailor, landed here, whilst we and. another ascended a mountain ridge, about a mile to the northwards. On the way we noticed several patches of rich vegetation, and we gathered specimens of the botanical productions, such as they were. One plant we found growing in great abundance, we regarded as a species of saxifrage or arenaria. We had some idea of making a long detour, and of joining our friends at a point somewhere on the eastern slope of the island. But the labour and risk involved in such an adventure was so great, owing to the slippery state of the snowy ledges and the exceedingly rough volcanic nature of the ground, composed for the most part of scoriæ, cinders, and blocks of lava, which crumbled beneath our weight as we endeavoured to force our way over the uneven surface, that we were soon compelled to relinquish our attempt, so there was nothing for it but to retrace our steps and endeavour by some short cut to join the others on the sandy beach below. Getting down again we struck across a kind of lagoon, rough with frozen snow, called by arctic travellers "bay ice;" for three miles our way lay across this flat, which lies at the base of the mountains, and is fringed by the sea-shore. We found our friends at length, and enjoyed with them the prospect they were contemplating. A pyramidal rock shot up into the air about 1,200 feet above us; its otherwise bleak and wall-like face was cut up by stratification into a series of narrow ledges inaccessible to all save the winged denizens of the air, who here found a secure resting-place and a nursery where they might bring up their callow brood, safe from the approach of the cunning foxes, evidences of whose presence on the island were to be observed everywhere. We found no difficulty in spreading alarm amongst these airy colonists by throwing stones at the cliff, and when we succeeded in setting on the wing a myriad of sea-fowl, the flocks circling round and passing over our heads really darkened the air above us, and, as they swept along like a thick cloud, wheeling suddenly in their flight, produced a curious effect, the dull-looking OBJECTS OF THE SEA-SHORE. 95 mass by a rapid change shone out in the clear air, white as a snowdrift, and then cohort after cohort would float past again in another cloud-like mass. The noise, too, of so many wings, and the wild, scared cries from a host like this, was much greater than could be imagined, much less described in words. The temperature of the water at the surface was 32°, the air 321° Fahr. The beach itself was not without its wonders. Here lay scattered an accumulation of flotsam and jetsam, curious in their diversity. We picked up the little glass floats used by the Norwegian herring fishermen for buoying up their drift nets, that had evidently drifted from Iceland; bits of whale-boats, reduced to matchwood by the frightful action of the boisterous seas; fragments of wrecks of ships that once fought bravely against the ice, but, beaten at last in some dread encounter, everywhere lie shattered on these sands; bits of what once had been the masts of merchant ships, now fit for nothing but the fire; huge piles of driftwood, once stately trees on the side of some Siberian river, torn down by one of those periodical inundations which devastate the northern lands of the earth, and, hurried along by the torrent, floated out into the open seas, where the climate is mild enough, and the temperature of the water is |