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At last the hour of liberation came: a purer light seemed gradually to penetrate the atmosphere, brown turned to grey, and grey to white, and white to transparent blue, until the lost horizon entirely reappeared, except where in one direction an impenetrable veil of haze still hung suspended from the zenith to the sea. Behind that veil I knew must lie Jan Mayen.
One is the direct northerly route to the Pole, which will take us to the eastward of Iceland, straight to the island of Jan Mayen, and thence, between Greenland and Spitzbergen, into an icy sea which has been but little explored.
'Tis true the king has lost two battles, the battles of Kunersdorf and Mayen, but the Prussians do not despair; for if the king has lost two battles, he will win four to make up for them, and the Austrians, French, and Russians will flee before him, as they did at Zorndorf and Rossbach.
In 1615, Fotherby started with the intention of renewing the attempt to sail across the north pole, but after encountering many dangers he also was forced to return. It was during the course of his homeward voyage that he fell in with the island of Jan Mayen.
All of these are of volcanic origin, and among them are numerous active volcanoes. The Island of Jan Mayen contains an active volcano, and Iceland contains thirteen, and not improbably more; the Azores have six active volcanoes, the Canaries three; while about eight volcanoes lie off the west coast of Africa.
According to his survey and observations, Jan Mayen is about sixteen miles long, by four wide; but I hope soon, on my own authority, to be able to tell you more about it. Certainly, this our last evening spent in Iceland will not have been the least joyous of our stay. The dinner on board the "Reine Hortense" was very pleasant.
With his arms folded across his back, he walked slowly and thoughtfully backward and forward, then stood before a large table at which a monk was occupied in unfolding letters and maps. "This, your worship," said the monk, opening a new paper, "is an exact plan of the region around Mayen; we have just received it, and the positions of the two armies are plainly marked down.
We had already made upwards of three hundred miles since leaving Iceland: it could not be much above one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty more to Jan Mayen; and although things looked unpromising, there still seemed such a chance of success, that I could not find it in my heart to give in; so, having run up a jack at the fore all writing on our board was out of the question, we were so deluged with spray I jumped down to wake Fitzgerald and Sigurdr, and tell them we were going to cast off, in case they had any letters to send home.
They learnt from them that navigation was completely free this year round the whole of Iceland; that the ice-field resting on Jan Mayen Island, and surrounding it to a distance of about twenty leagues, extended down the south-west along the coast of Greenland, but without blocking up the channel which separates that coast from that of Iceland.
According to the track he had jotted down for me on the chart, the ice in front stretched right away west in an unbroken line, to the wall of ice which we had seen running to the north, from the upper end of Jan Mayen.
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