Book contents
- Frontmatter
- INTRODUCTION
- PART THE FIRST VOYAGE INTO SPITZBERGEN AND GREENLAND
- PART THE SECOND CONTAINING THE DESCRIPTION OF SPITZBERGEN
- CHAP. I Of the External Face and Appearance of Spitzbergen
- CHAPTER II Of the Sea
- CHAPTER III Of the Ice
- CHAPTER IV Of the Air
- PART THE THIRD
- PART THE FOURTH OF THE ANIMALS OF SPITZBERGEN
- LIST OF THE ANIMALS OF SPITZBERGEN
- DESCRIPTION OF GREENLAND
- INDEX
- Plate section
CHAPTER IV - Of the Air
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- INTRODUCTION
- PART THE FIRST VOYAGE INTO SPITZBERGEN AND GREENLAND
- PART THE SECOND CONTAINING THE DESCRIPTION OF SPITZBERGEN
- CHAP. I Of the External Face and Appearance of Spitzbergen
- CHAPTER II Of the Sea
- CHAPTER III Of the Ice
- CHAPTER IV Of the Air
- PART THE THIRD
- PART THE FOURTH OF THE ANIMALS OF SPITZBERGEN
- LIST OF THE ANIMALS OF SPITZBERGEN
- DESCRIPTION OF GREENLAND
- INDEX
- Plate section
Summary
The frost is unconstant in our country, but it is not so in Spitzbergen. In the month of April at seventy-one degrees, it was so cold that we could hardly keep warmth within us. They say that in this month as also in May, the hardest frosts happen every year.
All the rigging, by reason of its being wet, is covered over with ice, and stiff.
They do not send their ships so soon as they did a few years ago, and yet they come time enough there, for if they arrive too early, there is nothing for them to do, because the ice is not yet dissipated, and therefore but few ivhales to be seen.
In the two first summer months of Spitzbergen, their teeth chatter in their heads commonly, and the appetite is greater than in any other countreys.
The sun sets no more after the third day of May, and we were about seventy-one degrees, when we could see as well by night as by day. I cannot say much of constancy of the weather in these two first months, for it changed daily; they say also, if the moon appears cloudy and misty, with a streaky sky, that then there commonly follows a storm. Whether the moon doth prognosticate such storms, I cannot tell, because we have observed, that after we have seen the moon, in a clear sky, the air has grown foggy, which happeneth often, chiefly if the wind changes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Collection of Documents on Spitzbergen and GreenlandComprising a Translation from F. Martens' Voyage to Spitzbergen, a Translation from Isaac de La Peyrère's Histoire du Groenland, and God's Power and Providence in the Preservation of Eight Men, pp. 38 - 44Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010