Identifier: lettersfromhighl00duff (find matches)
Title: Letters from high latitudes : being some account of a voyage, in 1856, in the schooner yacht "Foam" to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Dufferin and Ava, Frederick Temple Blackwood, Marquis of, 1826-1902
Subjects: Arctic regions Iceland -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : J. Murray
Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MBLWHOI Library

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Suffice it to say,that by dint of sailing north whenever the ice would permitus, and sailing west when we could not sail north, we foundourselves on the 2nd of August, in the latitude of thesouthern extremity of Spitzbergen, though divided from theland by about fifty miles of ice. All this while the weatherhad been pretty good, foggy and cold enough, but with afine stiff breeze that rattled us along at a good rate when-ever we did get a chance of making any Northing. Butlately it had come on to blow very hard, the cold becamequite piercing, and what was worse—in every directionround the whole circuit of the horizon, except along itssouthern segment,—a blaze of iceblink illuminated the sky.A more discouraging spectacle could not have met oureyes. The iceblink is a luminous appearance, reflected onthe heavens from the fields of ice that still lie sunk beneaththe horizon; it was, therefore on this occasion an unmis-takable indication of the encumbered state of the sea infront of us.
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au EdXh ft l;lf! lllllllllllliii: XL) FIRST SIGHT OF SPITZBERGEN. 177 I had turned in for a few hours of rest, and release fromthe monotonous sense of disappointment, and was alreadylost in a dream of deep bewildering bays of ice, and gulfswhose shifting shores offered to the eye every possible com-bination of uncomfortable scenery, without possible issue,—when a voice in my dreaming ear shouted LandT andI awoke to its reality. I need not tell you in what doublequick time I tumbled up the companion, or with whatgreediness I feasted my eyes on that longed-for view,—theonly sight—as I then thought—we were ever destined toenjoy of the mountains of Spitzbergen ! The whole heaven was overcast with a dark mantle oftempestuous clouds, that stretched down in umbrella-likepoints towards the horizon, leaving a clear space betweentheir edge and the sea, illuminated by the sinister brilliancyof the iceblink. In an easterly direction, this belt of un-clouded atmosphere was etherealized to

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