The high mainland was distinctly visible four or five miles to the northward.
At five o'clock we were off a small, low islet,--scarcely more than a broad ledge, rising at no point more than ten feet above the sea.

It was several miles from the island next above it, however, and girdled by a glittering ice-field, the remains of last winter's frost, not yet broken up.

Altogether the islet and the ice-field about it was perhaps two or two miles and a half in diameter.

On the west it was separated from the island below it--a high, black dome of sienite--by a narrow channel of a hundred and fifty yards.

Hundreds of seals lay basking in the sun along the edges of the ice-field; and, as we were watching them, we saw a bear swim across the channel and climb on to the ice-field.