A yacht voyageLetters from high latitudes; being some account of a voyage, in 1856, in the schooner yacht "Foam," to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen . pening was reported fromthe mast-head, a mile or so away on the port-bow, and bynine oclock we were spanking along, at the rate of eightknots an hour, under a double-reefed mainsail and staysail—down a continually widening channel, between two wave-lashed ridges of drift ice. Before midnight, we had re-gained the open sea, and were standing away To Norroway,To Norroway over the faem. In the forenoon I had been too busy to have our usualSunda
A yacht voyageLetters from high latitudes; being some account of a voyage, in 1856, in the schooner yacht "Foam," to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen . pening was reported fromthe mast-head, a mile or so away on the port-bow, and bynine oclock we were spanking along, at the rate of eightknots an hour, under a double-reefed mainsail and staysail—down a continually widening channel, between two wave-lashed ridges of drift ice. Before midnight, we had re-gained the open sea, and were standing away To Norroway,To Norroway over the faem. In the forenoon I had been too busy to have our usualSunday church ; but as soon as we were pretty clear of theice I managed to have a short service in the cabin. Of our run to Hammerfest I have nothing particular tosay. The distance is eight hundred miles, and we did itin eight days. On the whole, the weather was pretty fair,though cold, and often foggy. One day indeed was per-fectly lovely,—the one before we made the coast of Lap-land,—without a cloud to be seen for the space of twenty-four hours j giving me an opportunity of watching the sunperforming his complete circle overhead, and taking a m^. VIIL] TO NORROWAY, OVER THE FAEMr 149 ridian altitude at midnight. We were then in 70° 25 l^Jorthlatitude ; i. e., almost as far north as the North Cape; yetthe thermometer had been up to 80° during the afterwards the fog came on again, and nextmorning it was blowing very hard from the eastward. Thiswas the more disagreeable, as it is always very difficult,under the most favorable circumstances, to find ones wayinto any harbor along this coast, fenced off, as it is, fromthe ocean by a complicated outwork of lofty islands, whichin their turn, are hemmed in by nests of sunken rock, sownas thick as peas, for miles to seaward. There are no pilotsuntil you are within the islands, and no longer want them,—no light-houses or beacons of any sort; and all that youhave to go by is the shape of the hill-tops ; but as, on
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Keywords: ., bookauthordufferin, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookyear1883
