Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 2.djvu/289

 Cape Chidley was doubled during the night with a favoring breeze, and suddenly the high mountains of Disko rose to view. The Bay of Godavhn, where the Governor-General of the Danish settlements resided, was left on the right.

Isle Disko is also called Whale Island. It was from this place that Sir John Franklin wrote his last letter to the Admiralty, on the 12th of July, 1845, and it was there that McClintock touched on his return, on the 27th of August, 1859, bringing incontestable proofs of the loss of the expedition.

The shore was one continuation of icebergs, of the most peculiar fantastic shapes, so firmly cemented to the coast that the most powerful thaws had been unable to detach them.

Next day, about three o'clock, they sighted Sanderson Hope, to the N.E. Land was on the starboard side, about fifteen miles off, the mountains looking brownish-red in the distance. In the course of the evening, several whales of the species called finners, which have their fins on the back, were seen disporting themselves among the ice, blowing out large volumes of air and water through the apertures in the head.

During the night of the 5th of May, the Doctor observed the luminous disc of the sun, for the first time, appear completely above the horizon, though from the 31st of January there had been constant daylight.

To those who are not accustomed to it, there is something in this continual day which excites wonderment at first, but soon gives place to weariness. One would hardly believe how necessary the darkness of night is for the preservation of the sight. The Doctor felt the constant glare positively painful, intensified as it was by the dazzling reflection of the ice.

On the 5th of May the Forward passed the seventy-second parallel. Two months later, she would have fallen in with numerous whalers about to commence their fishing, but at present the Straits were not free enough to allow their vessels to get into Baffin's Bay.

The next day the brig arrived in sight of Upernavik, the most northerly of the Danish settlements on the coast.