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BACSTROM’S VOYAGE TO SPITSBERGEN. 615
We failed from London in the latter end of March 1780, and, as is ufual with Green-
landmen, called at the town of Larwick, the capital of the Shetland ifles, where we
found a moft hofpitable reception. A Mr. Innes, the moft opulent inhabitant of that
country, kept an open table for every mafter of a veflel and his furgeon; and no lan-
guage can convey a proper idea of the kind and difinterefted manner in which he re-
ceived and entertained his guefts. We lay there fourteen days wind bound. The
country has a bleak barren appearance, the furface being generally rocky, or covered
with turf, which is the fuel employed there; but the benevolence and hofpitality of
the more opulent, and the decency, fobriety, and good conduct of all the inhabitants,
even thofe of the loweft clafs, more than compenfate for the barrennefs of the foil.
Provifions of every kind, the finer vegetables and fruit excepted, are very abundant
here, and extremely reafonable. The price of a good fowl was three-pence, of a dozen
of new-laid eggs one penny ; and as much excellent fifh, cod, haddock, halibut, mack-
erel, &c. could be bought for one fhilling, as would coft at leaft ten pounds at Billing{-
gate, or as ufed to dine our whole fhip’s company and the cabin. Potatoes, turnips,
&c. are not more common there than peaches and apricots in England. Wheat flour
is alfo a rare article, but the inhabitants in general prefer bread made of oatmeal.
The town of Larwick confifts of about two hundred houfes, of one, or at moft of
two itories, which form a narrow crooked lane on the fea-fide, badly paved with flat
ftones. All the houfes are built of quarry ftone: thofe of the rich are roomy, ftrong,
convenient, and well furnifhed ; thofe of the poor are {fmall, and very {moky, for want
of a proper arrangement of the chimnies.
Though the place lies in 60° north latitude, the winters are not fevere; they are,
however, wet and ftormy. ‘The harbour is very capacious and fafe, and the anchoring
ground good. About twenty or more Englifh Greenlandmen were lying here at an-
chor, and feveral Dutch herring buffes. Having filled our empty water-cafks, and laid
in a {tock of fowls, eggs, geneva, &c. we took leave of our kind friends on fhore, and,
the wind being foutherly, hove up our anchor, and fet fail for the ice.
As we advanced to the northward the night became fhorter till we came near North
Cape in lat. 71° 10’, when we had no night at all. We were overtaken in that lati-
tude by a moft tremendous gale of wind trom the north-eaft, which lafted three days
and nights. Our fhip lay more than once on her beam-ends, and every one on board
thought fhe could never right again; but providentially we weathered the gale. A
ftorm in thofe high latitudes is fo intenfely cold, when it blows from the north or north-
eaft, that it is impoffible to look in the wind’s eye, as the cold is fuch as literally to
tear the fkin off the face.
In about 76° northern latitude we meet with ice floating in fmall round cakes, by the
failors called pancakes: you fail through this ice in perfeétly fmooth water; which,
from being of a green colour in the North Sea, blue to the northward of Shetland and
Ferro, grows gradually of a darker colour, and looks now of a deep black dye. We
failed feveral days through thefe floating ice-cakes. When in a {till higher latitude,
an open black-looking water re-appears; and when you reach about 77° or 78’ you
pafs through large mafles of floating ice twenty or thirty fathom thick, and fome of them
five or fix times bigger than your own veffel. Great care is taken to avoid ftriking
again{t thofe mafles, which fometimes are fo clofe that there remains only a narrow
channel, for the fhip to fail through. I have feen this continue for twenty-four hours or
longer. When this is the cafe, the commander ftands in the main or fore-top, and fome-
times higher, and calls down to the men at the wheel how to fteer. This navigation is at-
tended with great danger, as the ice projects under water fometimes two or three fathoms,
; After
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