In three hours Ice Fjord was crossed and the beginning of the line of cliffs approached, west of Hyperite Hat. Here the wind failed, just where it always used to fail last year. A long row transferred the heavy boat to the low point outside the mouth of Advent Bay, down which a stiff breeze was hurrying. We sailed across to the farther shore, where I landed to walk to the tourist-hut, leaving Garwood, who is an enthusiastic sailor—which I am not—to beat round Advent Point to the landing-place.
The inn contained a merry party, just returned in the Kvik from a visit to Lomme Bay, Wahlenburg’s Bay, and Wijde Bay. They were full of pleasant talk and recent reminiscences of walrus, seal, and reindeer hunting. With their help our camp was soon pitched and our goods landed. More than three hours could not be spared to slumber, for, at 7.30 A.M. on the 23rd, the tourist steamer Lofoten came in from Norway, bringing mails. With her came perfect sunshine and delightful warmth. Not, indeed, that there was any time for mere pleasure. I had a solar observation to take, the baggage to overhaul, and a mail to despatch, whilst all was to be prepared for sailing next day in the Kvik for Kings Bay. There was no hitch.
In due course Advent Bay was again left behind, and we were on our way down Ice Fjord, once more with a few companions. Among them were the Swedish botanist, Herr Ekstam, and Mr. Baldwin, who was in Greenland with Lieut. Peary. Ekstam was to be left at Coles Bay, which I was thus enabled to visit. It is a dreary place, with a great extent of bogflat at its head, stretching far inland up a wide, desolate valley. At the end appears to be a pass to Low Sound. There are several similar valleys extending westward, one more uninviting than another. I suppose the bog near the bay is “Coles Park, a good place for venison, well known to Thomas Ayers,” as Pelham says, writing in 1631. Coal having in recent years been found in the bay, the name has been confused from Coles to Coal.
In the smallest hours of the morning of the 25th the Kvik entered Foreland Sound. I have traversed this waterway from end to end on four separate occasions without experiencing clear weather. This time there was the usual cloud-roof, but it was high, so that we became in some degree acquainted with the remarkably fine scenery of the passage. The mountain tops were covered, but the glaciers were disclosed, and it is the glaciers that give to the sound its distinctive character. At first they are only on the east coast, a series draining the mountains north of the Dead Man. When these come to an end there follows a dull front of bare slopes as far as the opening of St. John’s Bay, the Osborne’s Inlet of the early charts. The southern quarter of the Foreland, if the Saddle Mountain at its south cape be excepted, consists of a plain, almost absolutely flat, and raised but a few feet above sea-level. It may be called Flatland. I have been told that Russian trappers used to frequent it; but there does not appear to be any published account whatever of a landing on it. No more featureless or uniform expanse can be conceived. It covers an area of fifty square miles, according to the chart, which, however, is most inaccurate hereabouts. This plain is indicated by nature as the place for laying out a base whenever Spitsbergen shall be used for the measurement of a meridian arc. North of Flatland comes a well-defined mountain group containing fine peaks. It is bounded by a deep depression running from Peter Winter’s Bay in a south-west direction, right across the Foreland to the ocean. Peter Winter’s Bay is well to the north of St. John’s Bay, though marked south of it on the chart. It is indicated correctly enough by Giles and Reps on the remarkable Dutch chart published after 1707 by Gerard van Keulen. There it is named Zeehonde Bay, whilst a secluded anchorage in its north coast, just within the entrance, bears the designation Pieter Winter’s Baaytje. North of Peter Winter’s and St. John’s bays the glaciers follow one another in quick succession on both shores. On the east there are eight of them between St. John’s and English bays, whereof the two biggest, at the north and south ends, reach the sea. The opposite coast of the Foreland is an almost continuous glacier-front backed by a wall of snowy peaks.[6] The shallow place which stopped Barents and renders the channel impassable, except by small vessels, is off this glacier-front. The Expres used to run over it and bump if she felt inclined. The Kvik was navigated more gingerly, so that the passage over the Bar occupied a couple of hours, soundings being diligently taken all the time.
At the head of English Bay is a great glacier, flowing from the south-east and receiving many tributaries, noted later on. North of it come prominent hills with a wide lowland stretched before them, ending in a flat point named Quade Hook—that is, “the Evil Cape.” Rounding this cape, we slipped into Kings Bay and steered for its head, across the whole breadth of which was the great front of the Kings Glacier awaiting its first explorers. Clouds hung low down, and there was no distant view inland, not so much indeed as we had seen the previous year. We afterward came to know it well, so for clearness’ sake I may take the liberty of brushing the clouds away and describing the general arrangement of the hills and glaciers, with which the reader is invited to make closer acquaintance in the following pages.
KINGS BAY GLACIER.
Let him, then, return with me to the mouth of the bay, and, standing there, face to the east, with Quade Hook on his right hand. He will be looking straight up the bay. On his left hand will be Mitra Hook, so named from the pointed mitre peak which Scoresby climbed. This exit to the sea between Mitra and Quade hooks is common to both Kings and Cross bays, which are divided from one another by a rectangular mountain mass. Cross Bay is unknown to me. It is said to be one of the finest bays in Spitsbergen. The mountains on either side of it are steep, and magnificent glaciers fall into its head, one of them ending in the finest ice-cliff in this part of the world. Cross Bay runs in to the north, Kings Bay to the east. Kings Bay is broad at first, with low, flat coasts, beyond which mountains rise to a moderate height. Farther in, the sides approach somewhat, where there is a low cape to the south with Coal Haven and some islands just round the corner, whilst on the north is the protruding hilly mass of Blomstrand’s Mound, five or six hundred feet high, with a cove at each end of it (Blomstrand’s Harbour to the west, Deer Bay to the east), and in each cove a glacier ending in the sea. It is not till this narrower place has been traversed that the splendour of Kings Bay is fully beheld. Within, the bay is a circle about six miles in diameter, ringed around with an almost continuous series of glaciers, whereof only those on the south are cut off from the sea by a belt of low-lying ground. Scattered about the inner bay are Lovén’s Islands, some of which we shall presently visit. On the south the mountains are of bold and pointed form. They are the watershed between Kings and English bays. On the north, however, is a far more noble group, culminating in two peaks that resemble the Dom and Täschhorn of Zermatt. These peaks are small, of course, but they look no whit less fine than their Alpine fellows, and no one acquainted with the Alps would guess them to be smaller than peaks of the great range. From and about these mountains flow magnificent glaciers, whose upper ramifications were too complicated to be sketched on the map from so distant an inspection. The remainder of the view, the whole eastward end of the bay, is occupied by the face of a single mighty glacier, splendid beyond exaggeration. It is no smooth expanse of ice, but a splintered and broken torrent, which submerges islands of rock and flows over or about them with tortuous and tormented sweep. A few miles in, this glacier divides, just as Cross and Kings bays divide, the wider constituent being the Crowns Glacier, coming from the north, the other the King’s Highway, up which you go to the south-east. Between them is the mountain mass, whereof the famous Three Crowns are the most remarkable, though not the highest peaks. Of course there are plenty of minor tributary glaciers, as the reader will learn soon enough; one only need be mentioned. It runs into the midst of the Crowns group and divides it in half, separating the Three Crowns on the north from the Pretender and the Two Queens on the south. Up this glacier lies the shortest route across the land from Kings to Ekman bay. If the reader has comprehended so dull a geographical description, he can understand our general line of route in exploring this most beautiful and interesting region, which seems to be intended by Nature for the arctic “Playground of Europe.”
Advancing up the bay in the Kvik, we could see little of the wonderful panorama. Clouds hid the Crowns and all but the bases of the nearer hills. As our intention was to make our way inland, we required to be put ashore at the best point for climbing on to the glacier. We headed, therefore, for the middle of the face, where an island of rock rises partly out of the sea, partly through the ice. It soon became apparent that this would not do, for the glacier all round it was broken into such a chaos of seracs as to be absolutely untraversable in any direction. One could only land at the north or south angle of the bay. The north angle might have suited, but the slopes behind it seemed steep to drag sledges up; we therefore chose the south. I am not sure that we chose right. The inner part of the bay was dotted over with floating masses of ice fallen from the glacier. They became more numerous the farther we advanced. At last the skipper said he could not venture on, so our boat was lowered and the baggage stowed into it. After bidding adieu to our friends and arranging with the captain to call for us at midnight, August 11-12, we rowed away.
It was high tide, so there were no falls taking place from the long glacier-front, which was fortunate, seeing that we had to pass pretty close under it. The cliff was even finer than that of the Nordenskiöld Glacier, because it was more splintered. At 5 P.M. we came ashore on the end of a fan of stone and mud débris, laid down by a stream just in front of the left foot of Kings Glacier. The glacier ends on this fan with a curving moraine-covered slope, by which access could be attained to a relatively smooth surface leading inwards in the direction we desired to take. The boat was hauled up, the baggage dragged and carried about a hundred yards inland to the nearest suitable camping-ground. Necessary arrangements occupied the remainder of the day. The sun bursting through the cloud-roof illuminated the glacier-front with fine splashes of light, manifesting its blue caverns and silver spires. Thundering falls of ice presently set in and followed one another in rapid succession, now near at hand, now far away. A big iceberg was stranded on the shore just off our point, and a number of fulmars settled down upon it and went to sleep. Amidst such surroundings there was always plenty of entertainment, besides that delightful expectation of the unknown and unforeseen which is said to have bedevilled Ulysses.
CHAPTER V
THE KING’S HIGHWAY
The next morning (July 26), being beautifully fine, was devoted to an astronomical determination of our position and other preparations for carrying on a survey. A preliminary expedition up the glacier occupied the afternoon. An easy way was found on to the ice, but there luck turned, for, as a matter of fact, we were not really on the Kings Glacier itself, but on the foot of a small tributary flowing round from an enclosed basin on the south and divided from the main glacier by an immense moraine. This moraine would have to be crossed; we knew enough of dragging sledges over moraines to foresee something of the troubles thus provided. We wandered over the small glacier to the foot of a peak standing in the angle between it and the Highway. Then Garwood and Nielsen set off to climb the peak (Mount Nielsen 3120 ft.) by its rotten arête, whilst I with Svensen went on to investigate the moraine and find the best way over it. Returning the first to camp, I sat in the door, watching the wonder of the glacier’s terminal cliff, its bold towers, tottering pinnacles, and sections of crevasses with fallen blocks wedged into their jaws. Lumps of ice were continually falling. Fortunate enough to be gazing in the right direction, I saw a monster pinnacle come down. First a few fragments were crushed out from right and left near its base; then the whole tower seemed to sink vertically, smashing up within as it gave way, and finally toppling over and shooting forward into the water, which it dashed aloft. The resulting wave spread and broke around, hurling the floating blocks against one another, and upsetting the balance of many. Its widening undulation could be traced far away by the stately courtesy of the rocking icebergs. The front of the cliff was barred across with sunlight and shadow, throwing into relief this and the other icy pinnacle, above some blue wall or gloomy cavern. Behind the wall the glacier was not smooth, but broken into a tumult of seracs, like the most ruinous icefall in the Alps, as far as the eye could reach. Varying illumination on this splintered area evoked all manner of resemblances for the play of a vagrant imagination. Sometimes the glacier looked like an innumerable multitude of white-robed penitents, sometimes like the tented field of a great army, sometimes like a frozen cataract. Its suggestiveness was boundless, its beauty always perfect; moreover, it was worthily framed. The mountains that enclose it are fine in form, with splintered ridges, steep couloirs, and countless high-placed glaciers, caught on ledges or sweeping down to join the great ice-river.
Garwood returned full of a satisfaction which Nielsen heartily shared. The scramble had been exhilarating, the view superb. There was no ice-sheet visible, only mountains everywhere, with glaciers between. The moraine once passed, our way was open ahead up ice apparently smooth. After supper I set out alone in the opposite direction along the shore, for the purpose of starting the plane-table survey from a well-marked eminence near the foot of the second side-glacier, whose black, terminal slope curves round and up with singular regularity of form. The walk was beautiful, the ice-dappled sea being always close at hand with noble hills beyond. There were plenty of torrents to wade, besides one which had to be jumped. It flows down a gully cut sharply into the dolomite rock. Below the glacier are ice-worn rocks, both rounded and grooved; but the direction of the grooves is at right-angles to that of the axis of the glacier, so that they appear to have been scratched when the main Kings Glacier extended thus much farther and higher. Returning, I kept close along the margin of the bay. Innumerable fragments of crystal-clear ice, each filled with sunshine, danced in the breaking ripples. The water splashed amongst them, singing a cheerful song which was altogether new to me. The cliff-front of the glacier ahead was darkened with shadow, and represented a battlemented wall with deep portals leading through to a white marble city within.
On the following day, sun brightly shining and breezes blowing fresh, we loaded up two sledges with food for ten days, and set forth up the King’s Highway. A laborious struggle took the sledges past the terminal moraine, but the ice beyond was dotted with frequent stones, so that the runners were generally foul of one or more. The slope was very steep. Reaching a more level place, we encountered ice so humpy that the sledges were always on their noses or their tails. Then came a cañon, 50 feet or so deep, and about 20 feet wide. We had to track alongside of it in an undesired direction till a doubtful-looking bridge was found, over which a passage could be risked. More lumpy ice followed till we were level with the foot of Mount Nielsen, where a smoother area was entered on. Here I left the caravan and climbed to the top of a hump on the arête of the peak to continue the survey. My solitary industry was enlivened by the neighbourhood of countless nesting birds, snow buntings, little auks, and guillemots, whose home is in the cliffs. Thus far the big moraine was close by on our left hand, mountains on our right; the level stretch of ice led between the two to the meeting of moraine and mountain at the entrance of the next side valley beyond Mount Nielsen. Here the stone-strip had to be crossed. I came up with the others just as the crossing began. We thought the moraine belt at this point would be but a few yards in width. It was more than half a mile. We only found that out after unloading the sledges and taking every man his burden. They were carried over, a return made for more, the process repeated, and so on for two whole hours—a heartbreaking experience. It was a hilly moraine or set of moraines, with two main ascents and descents besides several minor undulations. Footing was, of course, on loose stones only. In such places laden men slip about, bark their shins, twist their ankles, and lose their tempers. Beyond the stones came humpy ice again, ridged into short, steep undulations. A sledge required vigorous hoisting over each of them, the distance from trough to trough being about five yards, and the ridges transverse to our line of route. “On every hump,” said Nielsen, “a sledge capsizes.” Certainly one sledge or the other was generally rolling over on its back. After six hours of hard work we agreed to camp (460 feet)—“the hardest day’s work I’ve done in a long time,” was Nielsen’s comment, and we believed him, for he put his back into it with hearty goodwill. Only when the tents were pitched had we leisure to enjoy the warm sunshine and the exhilarating, absolutely calm air. Out on the ice we could sit in our shirt-sleeves without being chilled. All around spread the great glacier in its beauty; the sky overhead was blue; the bay reflected the sunshine; fleeces of mist adorned the hilltops. In that perfect hour we craved for nothing save the company of absent friends.
AN EASY PLACE.
The next day (July 28) we made good progress, ascending 720 feet and covering a long distance. None of it was easy-going; in fact, when you have sledges to drag there is no easy going except on the flat. Every stage of a glacier has its own troubles. First comes the steep snout and its moraine, then humpy ice and open crevasses, next honeycomb ice and water-holes, which gradually pass (in fine melting weather) into glacier covered by waterlogged snow. We began the day with honeycomb ice and water-holes. The honeycomb ice on the Nordenskiöld Glacier made rather good travelling; it was otherwise on the King’s Highway. Several fine days had flooded the surface with water, so that, where crevasses ceased and the water had no downward outlet, it was obliged to trickle about, forming pools, rills, and rivers, all in different ways perplexing to the traveller. The cells of the honeycomb ice were thus full of water, and, as they gave way under the pressure of a tread, the foot crunched through into water at every step. By slow degrees the honeycomb was replaced by sodden snow, which grew steadily deeper as we advanced to higher levels. Here the whole surface shone in the sunlight, for the water oozed about in pools and sluggish streams, forming square miles of slush. There were brief intervals of dryness where the surface rose in some perceptible slope, but they were short, the almost flat waterlogged areas covered the larger part of the region to be traversed. If the march was uncomfortable and toilsome, each could laugh at the antics of the others. We steered a devious route, seeking to follow the white patches and to avoid the glassy blue areas where water actually came to the surface. But all that looked white was not solid. You would see the leader shuffling gingerly forward on his ski, trying to pretend that he was a mere bubble of lightness. Suddenly, through he would go up to the knee, the points of his ski would catch in the depths and a mighty floundering ensue. The sledges got into similar fixes, and often added to the confusion by rolling over most inopportunely. The leading sledge usually served to indicate a way to be avoided, so, before very long, the two parties wandered asunder and enjoyed one another’s struggles and perplexities from a distance.
It is obvious that Nature must provide some sort of a drainage system for such a quantity of water. The bogs and pools leak into one another and by degrees cut channels with ill-defined banks of snow, along which the current slowly crawls. By union of such streams strong-flowing torrents are formed; these make deep cuttings into the glacier and unite into a trunk river, deep, swift, and many yards wide. Every uncrevassed side glacier above the snowline pours out a similar river on to the surface of the main glacier, and these rivers in their turns presently join the trunk stream. Thus, whatever route you take, whether you keep near the trunk stream or far from it, the side streams have to be crossed. The crossing of them is often a tough business. Their icebanks are about twelve feet high and usually vertical; their volume of water is too considerable to be waded, seeing that their beds are of smooth, slippery, blue ice, on which footing cannot be maintained for a moment. They are seldom less than four yards wide. The blue strip with the clear water between the white walls is always a lovely sight, but to a traveller quite as tantalising. A crossing can only be accomplished where the water has chanced to undercut one of the banks and at the same time to leave a level place beside it at the foot of the other bank. You can then jump over with some hope of gaining a footing where you land. The sledges have to follow with a perilous bump. Rarely you may find a snow-bridge. In search of possible crossings we had to travel alongside of these streams, time and again, far out of our line of route, whilst, to make matters worse, it happened that we were on the wrong side of the trunk river; thus that also had to be crossed, a problem apparently insoluble, till a great and well-blessed bridge was found just at the end of the day’s march.
Nielsen worked like a horse all day long, his full weight thrown forward and his body inclined at a surprising angle. Svensen, by the gestures of his arms and the sorry expression of his countenance, looked as if he were labouring exceedingly, but of his towering frame the vertical was the customary attitude, and if the one of us who was sharing his sledge left off pulling for a moment the sledge mysteriously stuck fast. There were, indeed, signs of a return of Svensen’s malady; but it was explained to him that, regard being had to the comfortable warmth of the weather and absence of wind, his health was not to be deranged, and that, if it should happen that he could not go on with us, doing his full share of work, he would have to find his way back to the coast alone. Thenceforward he throve exceedingly, and only penalised us by “sugaring” when not closely watched.
The character of the scenery changed considerably during the progress of the march. Our first camp looked up both the Crowns and Highway glaciers and was opposite the big nunatak which divides them. It is a true nunatak, or hilltop rising from the bed of the glacier, not an entire mountain surrounded by different glaciers. At one time it must have been buried under ice, for all its top seems to be moutonnised. The Crowns and Queens groups were both well seen from the same camp, or would have been but for a few clouds. As we advanced, the Crowns disappeared behind the Pretender and Queens, and we came under the rounded and bare south slopes of these—a dull prospect. But new objects of interest were appearing in the other direction, where the Highway Glacier widened out and branched off into white bays and tributaries, separated from one another by peaks of striking and precipitous form, finely grouped. When the Three Crowns were finally hidden, there opened out on the left side of the Highway a broad valley, south-westward, that bent round to the west and soon reached a wide snow pass, beyond which, still curving round, it led down to the glacier emptying into the head of English Bay.
All day long we were rounding away from the purple fjord and visibly leaving it behind, though the distance to the watershed in front did not perceptibly diminish. The weather continued fine, though not clear; the sun peeped through the mottled sky from time to time, but fogs rolled about like big snowballs on the higher névés. Camp was pitched (1180 feet) in the midst of the widest part of the glacier about a mile below the point where it bifurcates, each branch leading up to a wide snow pass of its own. The north branch continues the direction of the lower part of the glacier, so we decided to go to it. A widening wedge of peaks divides the cols, and coming down to a sharp arête buries itself beneath the ice at Junction Point (named because it must be referred to again in the course of this narrative).
The 29th was a glorious day. Resolutions were made that we would march on to the watershed, whatever its distance. It is as easy to change these resolves in the afternoon as to make them in the morning. The pools of water were now left behind, but the snow on the surface of the ice was still sodden and slushy. In the first three-quarters of an hour we rose 120 feet, and reached the end of the ridge at Junction Point. Rocks were here disclosed, so Garwood went off geologising. The rest of us plunged into an island of fog, and hauled on up a steep slope, where the snow became good, and thenceforward remained in perfect condition for ski at that and all higher levels. Without ski it would have been impossible to do much, for we should have sunk up to, or above, the knee in snow, over which, with them, we slid in luxury. Above this slope the fog ended, and a wide, very gently sloping plain of snow followed, stretching afar on all sides. This is the highest basin and gathering ground of the glacier. It is almost level with the passes that divide the mountains on the north. If we had but known that the same is true of the névé on the other side of those passes, we might have saved ourselves the long round of a few days later. Now that there was no water to trouble us, we suffered acutely from thirst, for the day was quite hot and the sun burned fiercely. We peeled off our garments one by one and rejoiced in an unwonted freedom.
The mountains bordering the King’s Highway average somewhat over 3000 feet in height. As the level of the glacier rises, the lower slopes are more deeply covered and the visible remainder of the peaks comes to be not much above 1000 feet. They appear, moreover, to stand wider apart from one another, and the glacier, filling the valley more deeply, becomes itself considerably wider. Nevertheless, such is the fine form of the mountains that they still appear large, especially to an eye trained in greater ranges. Being themselves magnified, they proportionally magnify the aspect of the glacial expanse, which pretends to be of quite enormous extent—a spotless desert of purest white. The views on all sides were of entrancing beauty, especially the view back down the blue vista of Kings Bay. The broad white col ahead seemed for hours little elevated above us. There were far, coy, tantalising peaks over and beyond. From the col itself rose a small mound, perhaps 500 feet high, by the foot of which it was our intention to camp, but hour passed after hour, and it never seemed nearer.
Busied with the survey, perforce I lagged behind and was alone in the midst of a world of whiteness. A lengthening shadow was my sole moving companion, save when some stray fulmar petrel came whizzing by, en route from Kings Bay to Ice Fjord. The tracks of foxes were crossed not infrequently, but no fox did I actually see. At 9 P.M. the col was apparently as far off as ever, and Nielsen had done as much work as a man could be expected to do in a day. Svensen didn’t count, as he always put on the aspect of a moribund person. He expressed a full agreement with Nielsen’s ejaculation, “We’ll have to have plenty of soup for this.” Ultimately we gave up till the morrow the resolved pursuit of the pass and camped at a height of 2170 feet, having risen about 1000 feet during the day. The first thing done was to melt snow for a debauch. Deep were our potions; the insipid draught tasted for once like divine nectar. The sun continued his bright shining and the tents were warm within. We lay on our bags, enjoying the simple beauty of the view seen through the open door. Each deep-trodden footprint in front was a cup filled with a shadow of purest blue, pale like the sky. A white expanse followed, slightly mottled with blue in the foreground and sparkling as with diamonds; it stretched away for about five miles to the great blue shadow, which the wall of rocks and ridge of snow in the north cast wide from the low-hanging sun. There was not a sound, not a breath of moving air; no bird came by; not an insect hummed. It was an hour of absolute stillness and perfect repose.
We tried to sleep, but in the bright sunshine no ghost of slumber would consent to visit the camp, till clouds at last came up which barred snow and sky across in grey and silver, robbing the shadows of their blue, and lowering the temperature to a comfortable degree. Then sleep descended, and coming late lingered with us all too long, so that it was noon of the 30th before we were again on the way. The snow was now soft and the apparent level proved, by the evidence of the sledges, to be a steady uphill slope. For an hour the pass kept its distance; then, on a sudden, it was near. Excitement rose. What should we see? What was beyond? We knew that the slope on the other side must be toward Ice Fjord, but that was all. The east coast of what I have named King James Land[7] is well seen from Advent Bay and other parts of Ice Fjord. It consists of the fronts of a series of big glaciers and of the ends of the mountain ranges dividing them. The glaciers and ranges are approximately parallel to one another, running from north-west to south-east. We therefore thought it probable that we should look down some glacier from the col, but doubted which. Arrived on the pass (2500 feet), there, in fact, was a glacier directly continuing the King’s Highway down to the eastern waters, for it apparently ended in the fjord. Far off, and still in the same line, was the purple recess of Advent Bay. A beautiful row of peaks, pleasantly varied in form (for there were needles and snowy domes and pyramids among them), lined the glacier on either side, the last on both hands being bolder and more massive towers of rock than the rest. We afterward easily identified these peaks from Advent Bay, whence also on a clear morning I confirmed our observations by looking straight up this same glacier and recognising Highway Pass.
Camp was pitched on the pass and preparations made for a day’s exploring in the neighbourhood. It was warm, the temperature in the tents being 59° Fahr., whilst the direct rays of sunshine really scorched. The condition of the snow may be imagined. Without ski, progress in any direction would have involved intolerable discomfort and labour. Close at hand on the north was a hill about 500 feet high, to which we gave the name Highway Dome. It was the obvious point to be ascended for a panoramic view. There was a bergschrund at the foot of it, and then a long snow slope up which we had to zigzag. Unfortunately by the time the summit had been gained the sun was obscured by clouds, which were boiling in the north as though for a thunderstorm. The hills of known position near Advent Bay were likewise obscured by cloud, so that my three-legged theodolite had made this ascent to little purpose, but the panorama was clear in the main and the colouring all the richer for the cloud-roof.
We were standing at an altitude of about 3000 feet,[8] surrounded by peaks of similar, or rather greater, elevation. Let no one fancy that because these heights are insignificant there was any corresponding insignificance in the view. The effect produced by mountains depends not upon their altitude, but upon their form, colour, and grouping. There are no features in a mountain, standing wholly above the snowline, whereby its absolute magnitude can be estimated by mere inspection. You may judge of its relative magnitude compared with its neighbours, but of its absolute magnitude you can only judge when you have acquired experience of the district. A native of the Himalayas coming to the Alps would see them double their true size. A Swiss would halve the Himalayas. A slope of stone débris is the best guide to eye measurement, because stones break up into small fragments everywhere; but in these high arctic regions, far within the glaciers, there are no such slopes. It is only the multitude of mountains seen in any extended panorama of Spitsbergen that suggests the smallness of the individual peaks; but this very multitude is itself impressive. To the south, for instance, we looked across at least five parallel ridges; and there were indications of others beyond, a very tumult and throng of hills, none of which could we identify. The opposite direction interested us more at the moment, for our idea was that we might find there a route round to the Three Crowns. There was, in fact, a large névé basin, but so intricately crevassed as to be practically impassable in fog. One way was discoverable through the labyrinth, and apparently one only. The weather looked so threatening that we incontinently decided against making the attempt. This névé was one of several that fed the next big glacier to the north, which empties into the sea at Ekman Bay. Beyond it came a chaos of peaks; we learned to know them by sight well enough a few days later. The waters of Ekman Bay were in view, and the depression containing Dickson Bay could be traced, then the wall-fronted mass of the Thordsen Peninsula, and, far off, the high snow plateau, where we had wandered in the fog a few days before. Looking back the way we had come, we saw Kings Bay apparently very far off, much farther than Ice Fjord, which seemed, comparatively speaking, to lie at our feet. Differences of atmospheric transparency had some share in producing this effect.
A cold wind diminished our pleasure on the summit and shortened our stay. The descent presented problems to inexperienced skisters. The snow-slope dropped vertically from the summit crest for a yard or so, and was then very steep. Svensen, an expert on ski, tried to shoot down, but came a cropper before reaching the gentler incline. We, of course, fell headlong in hopeless fashion, and all attempts at glissading failed. Where the slope began to ease off a little a start was finally made, and a long curving shoot of about a mile carried us with exhilarating swiftness down to camp. Later on in the day the ascent was repeated, but with no useful result, for clouds still masked the important points of reference in the panorama. Excursions were also made in other directions, and a plan decided on for the morrow. Clouds kept forming, but only to fade again; by evening the weather was satisfactorily re-established. The play of shadow on the wide glacial expanse was inexpressibly lovely. Under full sunshine any very large névé appears a mere uniform sheet of white, admirable for brilliancy but lacking in detail. When shadows come, the undulation of the surface is disclosed by long curves—infinitely delicate and fine in form. Of course, however bright the sun, there must really be a difference in the intensity of the light reflected at different points owing to variations of slope, but this difference is slight, and the eye, astonished by the brilliancy of sunshine upon snow, is not conscious of it. But when a cloud comes over the sun and casts a broad shadow on the névé, the varying illumination of the bending field becomes readily perceptible, though still faint and of marvellous delicacy, and a new order of beauty is revealed. He would be but a starved lover of mountain beauty whose eyes should desire to behold the regions of snow always beneath a cloudless heaven.
CHAPTER VI
OSBORNE GLACIER AND
PRETENDER PASS
Explorers in most parts of the world are able to sketch general maps of large areas, which they may have traversed only along a single line of route. Undulating country intersected by prominent waterways and rising at considerable intervals to prominent altitudes can be mapped in a sketchy fashion by the rapidest traveller, if skilled. A few compass bearings fix the position of prominent points; positions, astronomically determined from time to time as opportunity arises, clamp the whole together and enable it to be adjusted on the proper part of the globe; whilst, as for details, who cares about them in a new country? The mountain explorer, however, that person most unpopular with geographers, is faced by topographical problems of a far more complicated character. His routes always lie along valleys, whose sides cut off the distant view and whose bends often prevent him from looking either ahead or back. When he climbs a peak, assuming him to have a clear view, which is rare, he beholds a wide panorama, it is true, but, save in the foreground, it consists of a throng of peaks, whose summits alone are visible over intervening ridges. If, following tradition, he laboriously fixes the position of some of them, it is lost labour, for the mere dotting upon a map of the points of a lot of peaks tells a geographer nothing. What he wants to know is the number and direction of ranges, the position of watersheds, the relation of rivers to the original earth-crinkles which determined their direction and in turn are so remarkably modified by them. To make merely a sketch-map of a considerable mountain area thus involves an amount of travel within it beyond all comparison greater than that entailed by the exploration of open country. The smaller the scale of the mountains, and the closer they are packed together, the more frequently must the area be traversed in different directions before a sketch-map of it can be made.
King James Land is an example of a region excessively difficult to map. It is covered by a wonderful multitude of mountains, which may be described in a general way as planted in ranges running from north-west to south-east. Of these there are about six principal ones between the King’s Highway and the Dead Man, and quantities more to the north. The old-fashioned geographer would have been content to draw parallel caterpillars on his map and so fill it up. But, as a matter of fact, there are throngs of subsidiary ranges and crossing hollows, so that the glacier, flowing down one valley, robs from its neighbour the snow accumulated in its upper reservoir; and it is exactly in these phenomena that the geographical interest of the region consists, for they show how ice-denudation works, and the kind of modelling effect which ice can produce on a land surface, an effect totally different in kind from that fabled by home-staying geologists, with their imagined excavating ice-streams.
Thus far we had only made acquaintance with one glacier-valley cutting across the island from Kings Bay to Ice Fjord. We determined to look into another, to the south, before turning northward to the Crowns group. On July 31 we accordingly broke up camp, loaded the sledges, and bade the men set off, down the way we had come, as far as Junction Point, where they were to await our arrival. Garwood and I, in the meantime, were to cross the range of hills at the south of our camp, descend into the next valley, and return over the pass at its head, which must of course give access to the snowfield of the southern branch of Highway Glacier. Descending that we should come to Junction Point.
It was another brilliant day, and so warm that the snow was softened to an unusual depth. During or immediately after frost the surface of névé sparkles in sunlight as though sprinkled with countless diamonds; but on warm days there are no diamonds, but only drops of water, the surface crystals being melted. The forms and surfaces of snow are thereby softened, and this softening effect is recognisable even from great distances. At starting, the view over Ice Fjord was clearer than ever, and we could distinguish Bunting Bluff, Fox Peak, and other scenes of last year’s toils and delights. The work immediately in hand was to ascend a long snow-slope, rising from Highway Pass to a col about 200 feet higher in the range to the south—a broad snow-saddle at the foot of a very fine peak, the ascent of which from this side would be dangerous, for its whole face is swept by ice-avalanches. Somewhere in the rocks of this peak are the nesting-places of many birds, the chorus of whose voices was heard as a faint hum. The new pass looked down upon the head of a large glacier, and across it to an innumerable multitude of peaks, all shining in the blaze of midday. At our feet was a secluded bay of this glacier. A splendid ski-glissade landed us on its snowy floor, and we were soon out on the main glacier, which swept down from the pass we were to cross next. Halting at a convenient spot, we took stock of the view. It was beautiful, of course—every view is beautiful in King James Land; but its interest made me forget its beauty for a time. We expected to find in this trough a glacier parallel to the Highway, and we did find one, and a large one too, larger than the Highway, because fed by several tributaries from the south; but to our surprise this glacier did not flow in the expected direction, but due south for many miles, and instead of ending in Ice Fjord, or on its shore, ran up against a big mass of mountains and, bending round to the right or south-west, disappeared from view. At the angle it received a wide tributary from the north-east. This great glacier, in fact, empties itself into the head of St. John’s Bay. As that bay was originally named Osborne’s Inlet, after an early whaling skipper, we gave his name to this glacier. Garwood, I believe, explains the twist of the mountains which cause this deflection of the glacier as the result of a fault dying out; but, lest I should unwillingly misrepresent his conclusions, I leave him to describe them himself. The mountains near at hand to the south were of beautiful forms, reminding us of well-known Swiss peaks, Weisshorns, Gabelhorns, and so forth. There was much aqueous vapour in the air, reducing its transparency and adding to the effects of distance. The mottled sky cast a decorative patchwork of shadows on the snow. Skeins of cloud were forming, and in the north the weather was again threatening dark and evil things.
On us, however, toiling up the long, long slopes to the pass, coy as are all the wide white passes in this land, the sun shone with painful fierceness. It burned as it sometimes does on the high Alps, so that we soon began to suffer from sun-headaches and parching thirst. Nowhere was there a drop of water to be squeezed from the apparently sodden snow. Having survey instruments and cameras to carry, we were sparely provided with food. Hunger came to weaken us and double the apparent length of the way. At last we were on the col, but the downward slope was very gentle and the snow now became sticky, so that the ski would not slide. We bore away to the right in search of a steeper incline and struck blue ice covered with mere slush that even the ski sank into. There were dry patches of it, too slippery to stand on; it was a mere alternation of evils. Sometimes we stuck fast and sometimes fell heavily. What was looked forward to as an easy and delightful excursion became a most laborious day’s work. “This is your picnic,” cried Garwood to me as he fell more than usually hard, “I hope you like it.” But all things come to an end, and so did this march. Junction Point appeared in sight, with a lake-basin between the branch glaciers where they join, a basin similar to that at the foot of the Terrier, and, like it, recently drained. The heavy ice, formed on its surface in the winter, had been carried all over the neighbourhood by the momentum of the escaping water, and now lay spread about, high and dry. With a struggle and a scramble we passed round the head of the lake and came in view of the men resting on the sledges. The unbelieving Svensen had climbed a neighbouring eminence to look out. Nielsen informed us that Svensen had been full of forebodings all day. They would never see us again, he said. We were gone into the wilderness and would be engulfed; as for them, when the provisions were finished they in their turn would die of starvation. Fool that he was not to take his old woman’s advice and stay at home where he was well off, instead of coming to this snow-buried circle of the infernal regions! Camp was pitched on the very tracks of our upward journey. Then the sky clouded over and the wind rose. After one last look towards Kings Bay, reflecting the golden west and framed by purple hills, we closed the tent-doors and rejoiced to be “at home.”
The lovely weather re-established itself in the daylit night, so that, when we awoke, sunshine lay abroad upon the glacier. Looking downward we had on our right hand the dull slope of the Queens group, where a smooth side glacier comes slanting down the midst of it from a col whose existence had not been revealed till now. It was decided to climb to this col for the purpose of making a closer investigation of the structure of the group. The march accordingly began with a long traversing descent of the main glacier to a point on its right bank at the foot of the side glacier. It mischanced that the area to be traversed was exactly the wettest belt of the whole basin. We skirted it on the ascent; now we had to go right across it, and that too after a series of fine melting days. The watery surface shone like a lake, and did in fact consist of a succession of pools, communicating with one another by slushy belts through which streams sluggishly meandered. The reader must not conceive of the pools, streams, and snow as corresponding to water and land, for the snow, even where it emerged, was permeated with water like a saturated sponge. When the autumnal frost masters a snow-bog and binds its errant molecules into a mass, there is formed a solid, built up of ice-prisms, each about one inch in diameter and as long as the bog was deep. Prismatic ice of this kind, the product of the preceding winter, is frequently met with on Spitsbergen glaciers. Its cause puzzled us greatly when first we came upon it. With the motion of the glacier, the formation of crevasses, and so forth, it often happens that the side pressure which held the prisms together is removed. Their tendency is to thaw and separate along their planes of junction. By this means are produced opening sheaves of long ice-crystals, most beautiful to look upon. I have found them in quantities a foot or more long, opening out “like quills upon a fretful porcupine.” Where there is no relaxation of lateral pressure, the crystals are held together; but they form a fabric of weak cohesion, and when you tread upon it your foot crunches in, almost as far as into snow.
Across this uncomfortable region we travelled for hours. Sometimes there were deep channels to cross; rarely a dry, hard patch intervened; most of the time there was slush of different consistencies which we had to push through. The sledges seemed to grow heavier and more resistant every hour. One of them, of which the runners were not shod with metal, came to grief at a stream-gully, where it pitched on its nose and smashed a runner. At last the water was left behind and dry ice gained. At the foot of a long, downward slope we found a big, frozen lake that had not yet burst the bonds imposed on it by the previous winter; crossing its rough surface, we climbed on to the moraine beyond, at the foot of the side glacier now to be ascended. The stone débris of dolomite rock, covering the lower part of the slope, were dotted about with various common plants, Dryas octapetala, Saxifraga oppositifolia, arctic poppy, and so forth, the same that grow in the interior wherever there is any soil to accommodate them. Of the ascent little need be said. We shall not soon forget it. The slope was the steepest encountered by the sledges. Our forces just sufficed to raise them, but there was nothing to spare. We arrived at the level top exhausted. Camp was pitched on the col, a wide snow-saddle between the Queen (4060 ft.) and an unimportant but commanding buttress peak. To the latter I hurried, desirous of making observations while the view was clear, for sea-mists had been observed crawling up both from Kings and English bays, and uniting on the pass near Mount Nielsen. There is nothing more beautiful than a sea-fog beheld from above when the sun shines upon it. By contrast its brilliant metallic whiteness makes purest snow grey. Then it moves so beautifully, gliding inland and putting out arms before it or casting off islands that wander away at their own sweet will. Enchanting to look upon are these sea-fairies, save to the victim to their embraces. Once inveigled, all their beauty vanishes, for within they are cold, cheerless, and grey, like the depths whence they spring. But to-day they were not destined to advance far. They came up boldly a while, then faltered and turned back, remaining thenceforward among the seracs and crevasses, except a few rambling outliers that floated away over the glacier or hovered as bright islands in hollows of the surface. Faint beds of variously transparent vapour, horizontally stratified, barred across the fine range of craggy mountains and their glacier cascades that filled the space between Cross Bay and the Crowns Glacier, a mountain group with an exceptionally fine skyline. We were encamped at that level of the glacier which may be described as the singing level, where water trickles all about, tinkling in tiny ice-cracks, rippling in rivulets, roaring in moulins, and humming in the faint base of the remoter torrents. It is only on slopes of a reasonable inclination that these sounds arise. The flat snowbogs of our morning traverse were soundless.
Late in the evening, the weather being perfectly re-established, I returned alone to camp. It was an enchanted hour. On one hand, as I sat in the tent-door, facing the sunshine and the view, was the fine peak we named Pretender, rising above the battlement-ridge of the western Queen. On the other hand was a lower hill, shutting off the distance and turning toward me a splendid precipice of rock. Between them was the opening through which the glacier, falling away from my standpoint, joined the apparently boundless expanse of the Crowns Glacier. Beyond were beautiful hills with the silver mist kissing their feet, and, above them in the clear sky, a few wisps of cloud. No breath of air moved, but falling waters sang from near and far, and a fulmar’s whirr occasionally broke the stillness. At such times Nature gathers a man into herself, transforming his self-consciousness into a consciousness of her. All the forms and colours of the landscape sink into his heart like the expression of a great personality, whereof he himself is a portion. Ceasing to think, while Nature addresses him through every sense, he receives direct impressions from her. In this kind of nirvana the passage of time is forgotten, and as near an approach to bliss is experienced as this world is capable of supplying.
The passing hours, whereof some were devoted to sleep, witnessed the establishment of the weather’s perfection. Heights and depths were cloudlessly clear, save low down over the bay, where the bright mist stretched like a carpet far out to sea. Buckling on my snowshoes, I slid forth down the slope, which curved over so steeply at the top that its foot was hidden by the bulge. The exhilaration of that rush through the crisp air is yet quick in remembrance. The cliffs on either hand, glorious battlemented walls of dolomite, seemed to be growing as we descended the side-glacier, whose exit, when we came to it, proved to be closed across by a rampart of moraine. Over this moraine, at a later hour, the sledges had to be carried to the ice of the extreme left margin of the Crowns Glacier, up which we were now to advance. There was no threat of serious impediment for a mile or so, but unexpected obstacles always lie in wait—the seasoning salt of the delight of exploration. A hundred yards on we were brought up sharply by a deep, impassable ice-gully or water-channel, stretching away into the glacier on the left and coming out of the moraine. We turned along its bank and came into the angle where an equally impassable tributary channel branched into it. There was nothing to be done but follow this backward to an overhanging place, cross it there, and then carry the sledges in turn, about a quarter of a mile over moraine, to a point where the other channel fortunately proved traversable. Hummocky ice succeeded for the rest of the march, beneath the grand cliffs of the Pretender (3480 ft.). Two great corries cut into these cliffs, the second of them starting exactly beneath the summit of the peak. We camped at a safe distance below its narrow mouth, beyond the range of frequent volleys of falling stones.
From this point to the base camp would be one long day’s march for men with sledges. We had three and a half days’ provisions left. We could therefore only spare two and a half days for exploration of the neighbourhood. That was not enough, so we sent the two men away with empty sacks to fetch more stores. There was plenty of work to be done in the neighbourhood, for the Pretender’s cliff disclosed all the mysteries of the great fault, which, cutting right across the country, approximately along the line of the King’s Highway, divides the uncontorted, almost horizontally stratified plateau-region of the north from the series of ranges of splintered peaks extending southward to the Dead Man. Accurate observation and careful mapping were, therefore, essential.
After lunch, when the men were gone away, we sat on a sledge in the sunshine, with our coats off, rejoicing in life. The glacier was working and cracking about us unceasingly; stones kept toppling from the moraine close by. High aloft rose the Pretender’s cliff, 2000 feet, almost sheer. It is the most beautifully coloured cliff I ever saw. For foundations it has a contorted mass of ruddy archæan rocks, brilliantly adorned with splashes of golden lichen, picked out with grass-grown ledges. Here, as all along the mountain’s face, are the nesting-places of countless birds. The fulmar petrels choose the lower edges; some, as we found, only just beyond reach of a man’s hand. The wall below them is generally overhanging, for the birds know exactly the limits of a fox’s climbing powers, and they avoid places accessible to him. Higher up are the homes of the little auks, who sit close together in rows, sunning their white bosoms. On the top of every jutting pinnacle of rock a glaucous gull keeps watch, with his own nest near at hand, ready to dive into any unprotected nest, or to pounce on any unfortunate bird that falls a victim to disease. The little auks always fly together in companies, I suppose for mutual protection. There is continual warfare between them and the gulls, but it seems to be carried on in accordance with some accepted law, for though any stray auklet or fallen fledgling is fair game for a gull, he does not seem to attack individual auks sitting near their nests. Indeed, we often saw auks and glaucous gulls sitting close together on the same ledge, when it would have been easy for the gull to have snapped up one of his small neighbours. This, however, must be illegal. We never saw such a crime committed, and the auks evidently felt confident of the gull’s correct behaviour. The nests are not placed in the gullies where stones habitually fall. No matter how big stone-avalanches may come down the usual ruts, the birds watch them unconcerned. But when a stray stone fell down the cliff in an exceptional direction, the birds flew out in their hundreds and thousands, filling the air with protests, the fulmars swooping around, the little auks darting forth horizontally at a higher level straight out and back again, whilst the glaucous gulls more leisurely floated away on confident wing, their white plumage seeming scarcely more solid than the glowing air which sustained their poise.
Above the ancient foundation rocks of the mountain comes a bed of green sandstone, above this a dark red bed, the same which forms the substance of all the Crowns group, except their caps. On the top of the sandstone, whose face has a sloping profile, is planted the summit cap of pink dolomite, cut off on this side in a plumb-vertical cliff horizontally stratified. High aloft in the wonderful air this rose-pink cliff, with its level lines of orange and other tones, like courses of masonry, was an object of rarest beauty, as all who know the Dolomites of Tirol can realise; but the sharp clear atmosphere of the Alps must yield the palm to the soft mellow arctic air, in which Spitsbergen’s mountains almost seem to float. Rose-pink aloft, then purple-red, then green, and finally red again splashed with orange and green: such was the chord of colour presented by this lovely mountain-face between the blue sky and the white glacier foreground.
A funnel-shaped gully, with its upper edge at the foot of the dolomite cliff and the foot of its couloir ending on the glacier, was exactly behind our camp. Snow-slopes at its head were melting fast in the sun, so that a cascade laughed aloud all down the height of it. Stones were continually loosened by the melting; each started others in its fall, so that the rattle of tumbling rocks, now and again swollen by the roar of some big stone avalanche, kept the air in ceaseless vibration.
I made two expeditions out upon the glacier in different directions for the purpose of investigating its character at its most energetic part, just below the summer snowline. It was a maze of crevasses throughout its entire breadth and all the way down from the edge of the névé to the sea. A few traversable lines of route could be found, either parallel to and between the crevasses, or across them, where, owing to a change of slope in the bed, the lips of the crevasses were brought together within striding range. At best the surface was very bumpy, and I foresaw a bad time coming for the sledges. The ice phenomena would have struck any Alpine climber as curious. Every year there are added, even to the central and crevassed portion of an arctic glacier, accumulations of ice formed by the thawing and re-freezing of the winter snow, and these patchwork additions take the most unexpected forms. For instance, a crevasse that happens to be full of water will be roofed over with ice a few feet thick. If the rest of the water is then drained off a tunnel is formed, across which again crevasses may open. We found two or three such tunnels, whose roofs had been squeezed up into barrel-vaults. One of them was still full of water, but the roof had been raised high above it by pressure, and a doorway had been formed by the fall of a portion of the arch. I climbed into this grotto and stood on a ledge. Sunlight glimmered through the crystal roof; the walls were white; for floor there were the indigo-blue depths of the water. This was but one of the strange and beautiful objects that the glacier offered to the wanderer’s admiration. Near the foot of the Pretender a blood-red river, dyed with the dust of the falling sandstones, flowed in a deep white channel cut into the glacier. It soon came to the crevasse that was its fate and plunged down the fatal moulin. That was close to camp. Of course, we called it the Moulin Rouge!
After wandering far I returned home for the night, meeting Garwood on the way. Our backs were to the boundless snowfields; before us the Pretender’s mighty cliff shone warm under the mellow midnight sun, pink high aloft, crimson and green at lower levels, and striped blood-red where the water was pouring down. The white-mounded glacier was mottled over with blue shadows. Perfect weather, perfect scenery, perfect health—what more could we desire?
CHAPTER VII
THE SPITSBERGEN DOLOMITES
When the sun passed round behind the Pretender, casting his shadow out upon the glacier far beyond camp, a hard frost set in, sealing up the runlets of water and binding the loosened rocks on the face of the cliff, so that stonefalls became rare; but no sooner did the fiery monarch come out from his retreat behind the mountains in the east than all the batteries of the hills opened to salute him. The afternoon of August 3, being our morning, Garwood and I shouldered packs for a scramble on the Pretender, minded to pass northward round his foot and then make way up the ridge that forms, higher up, the lip of the funnel of the falling stones. The weather was glorious, but the white sea-fog had crept up to the tents, so that we set forth from the very edge of the mist. After going some little way up the main glacier we bore to the right on to the hillside, and went diagonally up a slope of snow. Below on the left was a bergschrund, and above on the right were the steep rocks. Presently the slope increased and became of hard ice, into which Garwood cut steps. The position was not altogether a safe one, for we had not bothered to bring a rope, and now discovered that quantities of stones were in the habit of falling down the slope into the bergschrund, which was ready to engulf either of us impartially in the event of a slip. However, we did not slip, and the sun had not yet reached the stones, which were still in the bondage of frost. The rocks above the slope were safely reached and a brief scramble carried us over the edge of the ridge on to the screes of the north-east face. Beyond them was a wide snow-slope reaching up to the steep dolomite cap that forms the top 500 feet of the peak. The snow was hard frozen, so the ascent had to be made up the screes. They were particularly loose, and that is all to say about them. Scree-slopes are never anything but nasty to climb. The top of them was the edge of the nearly level ridge, whence we looked down into the funnel on the other side and across to the beautiful dolomite cliff visible from camp. At the foot of the couloir of the funnel we could just discover our tiny tents.
The point thus gained was all that could be desired for surveying and geologising. Now was displayed in all its wide extent the névé region of the Crowns Glacier, utterly different in character from that of the King’s Highway. Here was no ice-filled trough between two serrated walls, but a huge expanse, so gently sloping as to appear flat—a marble pavement, of three hundred square miles, beneath the blue dome of heaven. Far away it swelled into low white domes, on whose sides a few rocks appeared, whilst in the north-east was its undulating upper edge, beyond which were remoter snow-covered plateaus with mountain summits peering over from yet farther off. The white névé was lined by the many-branching water-channels of its drainage system, like the veins in a leaf, indicating the structure and trend of the ice. Where areas were crevassed, blue shadows toned the white. Everywhere the delicate modelling of the surface, by slightly varying the amount of light reflected to the eye, produced a tender play of tones, within the narrowest conceivable limits from brightest to darkest. The whole was visibly a flowing stream, not a stagnant accumulation, for the curves of flow were everywhere discernible. Thus a sense of weight and volume was added to the effect of boundless expanse which first overwhelmed the observers. The noble flood of ice, narrowing considerably between the hill on which we stood, and the beautifully composed group of sharp-crested rock-peaks opposite, disappeared beneath the floor of sea-mist whereon the sunshine lay dazzling.
Turning round toward the east from this enthralling prospect, the eye rested on the group of the famous Crowns. They are called the Three Crowns on all the maps, but there are many more than three. The prominent trio are pyramidal hills of purple sandstone, shaped with almost artful regularity, each surmounted by a cap of the same dolomite limestone as that which crowns the Pretender. They resemble golden crowns above purple robes. The caps are the fragmentary remains of an ancient plateau, denuded away in the lapse of time. Just behind the Three Crowns we saw a low broad pass, giving access to the head of a glacier flowing eastward. There was sea-fog lying on it also, so we knew that Ekman Bay could not be very far off in that direction. This is the lowest and shortest pass between Kings Bay and Ice Fjord. Lightly laden men could cross this way in a long day’s march from sea to sea, climbing one of the Crowns en route. The expedition would take them through what is, to my thinking, the finest scenery in Spitsbergen. The whole panorama was clear to the remotest edge of the horizon, flooded with undimmed sunshine, and overarched by a sky faintly blue below, deeply azure in the fathomless zenith.