The coldest country in the world is Spitzbergen: it lies in the 78th degree of north latitude, and is entirely formed of small peaked mountains; these mountains are composed of gravel, and flat stones somewhat like slate, heaped one on the other; which, it is affirmed by navigators, are raised by the wind, and increase so quick, that new ones are discovered every year. The rein-deer is the only animal seen here, which feeds on a short grass and moss. On the top of these little mountains, and at more than a mile from the sea, the mast of a ship was found with a pully fastened to one of its ends, which gives room to suppose that the sea once covered the tops of these mountains, and that this country is but of modern date; it is uninhabited, and uninhabitable; the soil of these small mountains has no consistence, but is loose, and so cold and penetrating a vapour strikes from it, that it is impossible to remain any length of time thereon. The vessels which go to Spitzbergen for the whale fishery, arrive there early in the month of July, and take their departure from it about the 15th of August, the ice preventing them from entering the sea earlier, or quiting it after. Prodigious pieces of ice, 60, 70, and 80 fathoms thick are seen there, and there are some parts of it where the sea appears frozen to the very bottom[329:A]: this ice, which is so high above the level of the sea, is as clear and transparent as glass. There is also much ice in the seas of North America, as in Ascension Bay, in the Straits of Hudson, Cumberland, Davis, Forbishers, &c. Robert Lade asserts that the mountains of Friezeland are entirely covered with snow, and its coasts with ice, like a bulwark, which prevents any approaching them. "It is, says he, very remarkable, that in this sea we meet with islands of ice more than half a mile round, extremely high, and 70 or 80 fathoms deep; this ice, which is sweet, is perhaps formed in the rivers or straits of the neighbouring lands, &c. These islands or mountains of ice are so moveable, that in stormy weather they follow the track of a ship, as if they were drawn along in the same furrow by a rope. There are some of them tower so high above the water, as to surpass the tops of the masts of the largest vessels."[330:A] In the collection of voyages made for the service of the Dutch East India Company, we meet with the following account of the ice at Nova Zembla:--"At Cape Troost the weather was so foggy as to oblige us to moor the vessel to a mountain of ice, which was 36 fathoms deep in the water, and about 16 fathoms out of it.