Tordenskiold's words were no sooner uttered than a person walked up to him, and demanded how he came to speak so confidently on the subject. "Dare you thus address a Danish admiral, sir," replied Tordenskiold with great warmth. "Yes" returned the person who put the question, at the same time raising his stick in a menacing attitude, " for I am the man who possess the snake, I am colonel Stael in his Swedish majesty's service."" Then, sir, you are the arrant knave I declared you to be before I was personally acquainted with you; and I will immediately prove my words with effect," said Tordenskiold; snatched the stick out of the Swedish colonel's hand, gave him a sound beating with it, broke the stick and threw the fragments out of the window. A challenge was sent by colonel Stael, which Tordenskiold justly considered beneath his dignity to accept. Some officious persons, with a ridiculous tenderness for Tordenskiold's character, if not for baser motives, however interfered, and Tordenskiold agreed to meet colonel Stael, but declined settling the matter by means of pistols, conceiving that he should certainly possess an undue superiority over his antagonist; for Tordenskiold was confessedly the best shot of his day. Unfortunately, however, he carried his romantic sense of honour still further, and took with him only a dress sword, while colonel Stael brought a large sword. Skilfully, however, as Tordenskiold handled his weapon, fortune, as Holberg expresses it in his Latin epitaph on Tordenskiold, left him in a private quarrel, whom she had never abandoned in public strife.

Colonel Stael did not however long enjoy what he vauntingly proclaimed a national triumph. His line of life would naturally often involve him in disputes, and he fell some time afterwards by the hands of a Danish officer.

The body of Tordenskiold was conveyed to Copenhagen for interment in the Navy Church, where a monument has been erected to his memory, with the following inscription:

Conditur hac urna Borealis gloria Ponti,

Danorum plausus deliciæque breves,

Ferrea quem Lachesis raptum florentibus annis,

Dum numerat Palmas, credidit esse senem.

Which Mr. Walker has thus translated,

Here rests the glory of the Northern main,

Denmark's brief pride, unconquered Tordenskiold:
Fate broke in early youth his vital chain,

Yet, while she summ'd his actions thought him old.
Tordenskiold was but twenty-eight years old when he died.

A VOYAGE TO SPITZBERGEN;

Containing an account of the Country; of the Zoology of the North; of the Shetland Isles; and of the Whale Fishery. With an appendix, containing an historical account of the Dutch, English, and American Whale Fisheries; some important observations on the variation of the Compass, &c.; and some extracts from Mr. Scoresby's paper on "Polar Ice." By John Laing, surgeon. Second edition, corrected and

enlarged. 12mo. pp. 165. [From the Monthly Review.]

Mr. LAING has mixed with his own observations much that was before known, and has been rather abundant in quotations from works of natural history; but his remarks are presented in the modest form of a duodecimo volume, at the reasonable price of four shillings and sixpence; whereas, in the hands of publishers, more studious in such matters, they would probably have been deemed competent to the completion of a handsome octavo volume, at double the price.

"Not many years ago," says Mr. Laing, "Whitby sent upwards of twenty vessels to Greenland. The trade afterwards fell much to decay, until it was latterly revived by the persevering activity of captain Scoresby." He notices the small town of Marton, contiguous to Whitby, as being the birth-place of the great circumnavigator, captain James Cook;* whose barometer (that which he had used in his voyages of discovery) was on board the ship in which the author had engaged to serve as surgeon; and it was probably out of respect to the memory of captain Cook that the vessel was also named the Resolution.

This Greenland-ship, commanded by captain Scoresby, was new, stout-built, of about 400 tons burthen, and, besides being

* Captain James Cook was born October the 27th, 1728.

provided for the Greenland fishery, was fitted out as a letter of marque, or private ship of war. She had nine fishing boats, and a crew of between sixty and seventy men. She sailed from Whitby on the 23d of March, 1806, and on the 25th at noon, anchored in Bressay sound, opposite to Lerwick, the capital of the Shetland isles. According to Mr. Laing's estimation, Lerwick contained about one thousand eight hundred inhabitants; and two packets, having good accommodation for passengers, were generally in employ between this place and Leith. The harbour or sound of Bressay is formed by the mainland of Shetland, and the island of Bressay, and has two entrances. "On the outside of the north entry lies a sunken rock, called the Unicorn. On this rock was wrecked the Unicorn man-of-war, sent out in pursuit of the earl of Bothwell, who fled to Shetland, and hence the rock has its name." Two other small isles, near the isle of Bressay, are distant from each other thirty-two yards, and their height above the level of the sea is about five hundred feet. One of these is a steep and nearly perpendicular holm (by which name is signified any small island not inhabited, but used for pasture), having a small level at the top which produces excellent feed for sheep.

"To transport them there, however, might well have been thought impossible; but human ingenuity requires only the exhibition of difficulties in order to overcome them. An islander climbed up the rock, and having fastened some ropes to stakes he drove into the soil on the top, threw them across the intervening chasm to the headland, where they were in like manner fastened. A cradle or basket was then drawn along these ropes, and sheep are thus transported to, and from the holm; and the eggs or young of the sea-fowl, which there breed in vast numbers, fall an easy prey to the skill and industry of man.

"The adventurous islander who first ascended the holm, and showed the possibility of joining it to the island, from an excess of bravery, met with an untimely end. Disdaining to pass over in the cradle, and trusting that the same expertness which had conducted him to the summit of the rock would enable him to descend to its base, he fell and was dashed to pieces."

Those who desire cheap living more than they dread a severe climate, may find their account in making Shetland their abode; since a pig ready for the spit can be purchased for two shillings; and sheep, full grown, the breed indeed small, sell from four to

seven shillings each. The number of sheep on the Shetland isles has been estimated to be between 110,000 and 120,000. “The wool of these sheep is remarkably fine; but there is so much diversity in its quality, that some stockings at 21. 2s. per pair, and others at sixpence, are made from it. The very fine ones, esteemed superior in value to silk, will pass through a small finger ring. The sheep are not shorn, but early in June the wool is pulled off without injuring the animal; and in this process care is taken to leave the long hairs which grow among the wool, by which means the young wool is sheltered, and the animal kept warm and comfortable." The inclemency of the weather will not allow the introduction of a larger breed of sheep.

. Some description is also given of the husbandry practised in Shetland. Ships employed in the Greenland fishery generally sail from England short of hands, and fill up their complement of men at Shetland; and here the Greenland seamen supply themselves with mittens, caps, and "comforters." "The whole number of the inhabitants on the Shetland islands, according to the latest account (i. e. in 1807), was estimated to be 22,379 persons, and the whole land-rental amounted to about 50001. per annum. During his stay here, both in 1806 and 1807, Mr. Laing was asked to visit sick patients; and, medical advice and drugs being at an exorbitant price, captain Scoresby charitably allowed him to give medicines gratis to such as were objects of compassion; while Mr. L. as charitably took nothing for his trouble,

April the 12th, they came in sight of the island of Ian Mayen, and shortly afterward made the ship fast to one of those floating mountains of ice, called icebergs. Mr. L. thus accounts for the formation of such of the icebergs as are at the same time the most compact and the most transparent. "The sun, even in these high latitudes, has considerable power in melting the snow on the mountains, which running down into the vallies, and again congealing, segments frequently break off from the entire mass, and fall into the sea." It was observed, when the ship was fastened to one of the icebergs," that whilst from its great depth it drifted but little, the lesser fragments of ice were driven past it at the rate of two knots an hour." The fact of the surface of the sea freezing is thus circumstantially related:

“I had this day a complete proof of the fallacy of the opinion, which maintained that salt water did not freeze. All around the ship, ice was formed on the surface of the water; I observed the spiculæ darting with considerable velocity, and in an immense variety of forms. This ice, when newly formed, is of a bay colour, and when it has attained the thickness of window glass, is called by the sailors, bay ice. It is rough on the surface, and opaque; if the frost be not interrupted by a swell of the sea, or storm, the salt water ice often extends to an immense distance. It is by the Greenland sailors termed a field, when of such extent that the eye cannot reach its bounds. The smaller fragments of salt water ice are called sealmeadows, and on them these animals often sport by hundreds."

What will our continental travellers, who have seen the wonders of the Alps and Appennines, say, when they shall be told that the glaciers of those mountains are of an inferior order to the glaciers of Spitzbergen?

"The mountains of Spitzbergen," Mr. Laing says, “have been observed by voyagers to decline in altitude towards the east; neither are the eastern mountains so black, steep, or naked, as those more to the west.— This curious phenomenon is considered by some naturalists as a general law of nature. The mountains here are totally composed of one entire and single mass of granite. The only fissures discovered in their vast extent are formed by the intensity of the frost rending them asunder. They burst with a noise like thunder, and often huge fragments are torn from the summits, and rolled with great impetuosity to the base.

"The glaciers are the most astonishing of all the natural phenomena of this country. It would only convey a faint representation of their size and magnificence, to say, that they far surpassed those of Switzerland. Travellers who have been in both countries declare there is no comparison between them. Perhaps the most proper method to form a just conception of their magnitude, is by considering the size of the icebergs, which, as previously stated, are fragments of them. One of these masses, according to Phipps, has been found grounded in twenty-four fathoms water, while it towered above the surface to the height of fifty feet."

Spitzbergen, the most northern land which has yet been seen by the human race (its northern extreme being beyond the 80th parallel), is not entirely destitute of vegetation. "Some plants are found which brave the rigour of perpetual frost, and convey some faint representation of a more southern country. They are generally short, crabbed, and have a wretched appearance. The Salix herbacea, dwarf willow, the most vigorous of them all,