General joy now illuminated every face.  It was, in itself, a great point gained to get the schooner into a perfectly safe haven, where her people could take their natural rest at night, or during their watches below, without feeling any apprehension of being crushed in the ice; but here was not only security, but the source of that wealth of which they were in quest, and which had induced them all to encounter so many privations and so much danger.  The crew landed to a man, each individual ascending to the summit of the barrier, to feast his eyes on the spectacle that lay spread in such affluent abundance, along the low rocks of the northern side of the island.

As there were yet several hours of light remaining, Roswell, still attended by Stimson, each armed with a sealing spear or lance, not only as a weapon of defence but as a leaping-staff, set out to climb as high up the central acclivity of the island as circumstances would allow him to go.  He was deceived in the distances, however, and soon found that an entire day would be necessary to achieve such an enterprise, could it be performed at all; but he did succeed in reaching a low spur of the central mountain that commanded a wide and noble view of all that lay to the north and east of it.  From this height, which must have been a few hundred feet above the level of the ocean, our adventurers got a still better view of the whole north coast, or of what might have been called the sealing quarter of the island.  They also got a tolerably accurate idea of the general formation of that lone fragment of rock and earth, as well as of the islets and islands that lay in its vicinity.  The outline of the first was that of a rude, and of course an irregular triangle, the three principal points of which were the two low capes already mentioned, and a third that lay to the northward and westward.  The whole of the western or south-western shore seemed to be a nearly perpendicular wall of rock, that, in the main, rose some two or three hundred feet above the ocean.  Against this side of the island in particular, the waves of the ocean were sullenly beating, while the ice drove up ‘home,’ as sailors express it; showing a vast depth of water.  On the two other sides, it was different.  The winds prevailed most from the south-west, which rendered the perpendicular face of the island its weather-wall; while the two other sides of the triangle were more favoured by position.  The north side, of course, lay most exposed to the sun, everything of this nature being reversed in the southern hemisphere from what we have it in the northern; while the eastern or north-eastern side, to be precisely accurate, was protected by the group of islands that lay in its front.  Such was the general character of Sealer’s Land, so far as the hurried observations of its present master enabled him to ascertain.  The near approach of night induced him now to hasten to get off of the somewhat dangerous acclivities to which he had climbed, and to rejoin his people and his schooner.