In this voyage the chief officer was his son, William Scoresby the younger, whose _Arctic Regions_ is the best book ever written on the northern seas. Sent by his father to Edinburgh University where he studied almost every branch of natural and physical science, he was thoroughly equipped for his task, and his practical experience as a whaling captain and trained observer stood him in such stead that his book is still the basis of all scientific Polar research. His description of the Spitsbergen coast as seen from a ship is as faithful to-day as when he wrote it. "Spitsbergen and its islands, with some other countries within the Arctic Circle, exhibit a kind of scenery which is altogether novel. The principal objects which strike the eye are innumerable mountainous peaks, ridges, precipices, or needles, rising immediately out of the sea to an elevation of 3000 or 4000 feet, the colour of which, at a moderate distance, appears to be blackish shades of brown, green, grey and purple; snow or ice, in striæ or patches, occupying the various clefts and hollows in the sides of the hills, capping some of the mountain summits, and filling with extended beds the most considerable valleys; and ice of the glacier form, occurring at intervals all along the coast, in particular situations as already described, in prodigious accumulations. The glistening or vitreous appearance of the icy precipices; the purity, whiteness, and beauty of the sloping expanse formed by their snowy surfaces; the gloomy shade presented by the adjoining or intermixed mountains and rocks, perpetually covered with a mourning veil of black lichens, with the sudden transitions into a robe of purest white, where patches or beds of snow occur, present a variety and extent of contrast altogether peculiar; which, when enlightened by the occasional ethereal brilliancy of the Polar sky, and harmonised in its serenity with the calmness of the ocean, constitute a picture both novel and magnificent. There is, indeed, a kind of majesty, not to be conveyed in words, in these extraordinary accumulations of snow and ice in the valleys, and in the rocks above rocks and peaks above peaks, in the mountain groups, seen rising above the ordinary elevation of the clouds, and terminating occasionally in crests of snow, especially when you approach the shore under the shelter of the impenetrable density of a summer fog; in which case the fog sometimes disperses like the drawing of a curtain, when the strong contrast of light and shade, heightened by a cloudless atmosphere and powerful sun, bursts on the senses in a brilliant exhibition resembling the production of magic."