We spent some hours at this point, lunching, admiring, and taking observations. The view was, to me, so novel in character, so beautiful, so full of revelations that, for a long time, I was too excited to work. The other side, though less unusual, was hardly less wonderful. There the eye plunged down into the depth of the funnel, and beheld the stone-avalanches beginning their fall. Far below were the flocks of birds flying about the rocks. Their cries came faintly up to us. Finally, close at hand there was the great dolomite cliff, an absolute wall, more than ever resembling some artificial structure, the work of giants, falling to decay. The varied colouring of its beds and the vertical streaks caused by trickling water were as beautiful close at hand as when seen from the depths of the gulf of air below. We walked along the narrow ridge to the actual foot of this cliff, where the arête rises vertically, so that the further ascent must be made by the north-east face. There was a height of about 500 feet to be climbed by way of snow slopes, here and there narrowing into gullies between protruding beds of rock—so, at least, we thought, but the attempt showed that the slopes were of hard ice. The step-cutting involved had no attractions, for there was nothing to be gained by ascending to the peak. It would only show, on the other side, country already known to us, whilst we were to have many better opportunities of looking northward from points both higher and better situated. What settled the matter finally was the sight of our men just arriving at camp heavily laden with good things. We accordingly turned round and took the easy way downhill, glissading a good part of it on treacherous snow-covered ice.

After supper another expedition was made down the glacier all along under the Pretender’s face, in further investigation of the fault. It is only thus, by constant moving about beneath a great cliff, that one is finally enabled to realise its magnitude. One true measure of scale that a healthy man possesses is fatigue. When you have learned by actual experience that it takes several days’ marching to pass the base of a big Himalayan mountain, you begin to feel the size of the thing. A precipice of 200 feet differs only in size from one of 2000 feet. To appreciate the majesty of the larger, you must become physically conscious of its scale. Such knowledge has to be laboriously acquired. No one, I imagine, who has not climbed the Matterhorn, can have any real conception of the magnitude of the pyramid beheld in the view from the Riffel; yet a consciousness of the magnitude is an essential element in the impressiveness of the view. I believe that only mountain climbers are in a position to thrill with perfect resonance to the glory of a mountain prospect. The passion for mountain-climbing derives much of its power over men from thus fostering and developing in them the capacity for admiration, wonder, and worship in the presence of Nature’s magnificence.

Next day (August 4) camp was again struck for an onward march, some supplies being left behind for use on the way down. The crevassed nature of the glacier involved the choice of a very devious route far out upon the ice, then back toward the Crowns. When the foot of the middle Crown was reached, I called for my camera, but it could not be found. It had dropped off Nielsen’s sledge, and he must go back to retrieve it. Garwood and I accordingly set off to climb the Crown, leaving Svensen below, plunged again in miseries and forebodings, now that the sea was becoming remote and snowfields were spreading their hateful expanse around him. The pyramids of the south and middle Crowns are planted together on a snowy plinth. Up the slope of this we ascended on ski, taking a devious course to avoid the steepest incline, at the same time steering clear of a few groups of open crevasses. In three-quarters of an hour we were standing at the foot of the rocks, where the ski were left behind. A long and steep slope of débris had next to be surmounted. The material lies in an unstable condition and slips away beneath the foot at every step. Keeping as close as possible to the left arête, we gained height steadily. The débris accumulation becomes thinner as the summit is approached. Halfway up, little walls of rock emerge, and afford some agreeable scrambling. By the last of these the arête itself is gained and the ascent completed along it, except where an overhanging snow cornice forces the climber down on the south face. A little chimney gives access to the crowning rock (4000 ft.). The ascent from the top of the snow-slope took three-quarters of an hour. It is easy enough. The southern Crown (3840 ft.) can be similarly climbed by its south face, but the northern Crown (4020 ft.) would be more difficult, for it is cut off, apparently all the way round, by a short precipice, perhaps a hundred feet high. There are some gullies grooved into this wall, but they too are vertical. One or other of them would certainly prove climbable if any one cared to give the time needed for the attempt. All three Crowns were reputed inaccessible by the general opinion of persons who had only seen them from Kings Bay.

Our ascent was made for the purpose of obtaining a view, and generously were we rewarded. The northern Crown is higher than the middle one, and that in turn than the southern; but the differences are a few feet only, whilst in point of situation the middle Crown is best placed for a panorama. Garwood and I agreed that it was the most beautiful we had seen in Spitsbergen, though it was afterwards equalled by the view from the Diadem, and surpassed, in some respects, by that from Mount Hedgehog. What struck us most was the colour. The desert of snow was bluish or purplish-grey; only the sea-mist, hiding Kings Bay and the foot of the glacier, was pure white. In the foreground were the golden Crowns above purple slopes casting rich blue shadows. On the snowfields lay many sapphire-blue lakes. All the rock in sight was of some rich colour—yellow, orange, purple, red. Large glaciers radiated away in several directions: one down to Ekman Bay, whose head we could see, another to Ice Fjord, beyond whose distant waters we recognised Advent Bay and the hills behind it, with clouds lying still upon them. Last year, whenever we saw King James Land in the distance the sun was always shining on it. This year the Advent Vale region was hardly ever seen clear of clouds. It is the bad weather, as King James Land is the fine weather region of Spitsbergen.

To the south were a maze and multitude of peaks. We thought that we identified Hornsunds Tind in a solitary white tower very far away. I afterward took a true bearing of it with the theodolite, and, on reducing the observation at home, find that the peak observed stands exactly in the line of Hornsunds Tind; so that if the two are not identical the coincidence is extraordinary. The distance of the mountain from the Three Crowns is just a hundred miles. I find it difficult to believe that such a distance can often be pierced by the sight in the relatively dense atmosphere of Spitsbergen. Foreland Sound was, as usual, full of fog, but the peaks of the Foreland itself rose out of its shining embrace. The highest group is south of the middle of the island; its members are beautifully white and of graceful form. Farther north the peaks are smaller and only their tips appeared. The Cross Bay Mountains with their serrated edge looked finer than ever; then came the great snowfield, beheld in all its extent, stretching up to a high undulating crest and back to remote bays and hollows—fascinating to look upon, but who shall say how wearisome to wander over? Far away to the north-east was a row of mountains of varied forms, some white and dome-like, others sharply pointed, others again chisel-edged. We saw them now for the first time, and believed them to be the range that borders Wijde Bay on the west; but they have since proved to be the mountains at the head of that bay, between it and Dicksons, a range of unsuspected importance in the structure of the country. The sky overhead was blue and clear, fading downward into white, as in an old Flemish picture. There was no movement in the cool air. Garwood left me alone on the top and went down to crack rocks. Long did I sit in perfection of enjoyment, letting my eye roam round and round the amazing panorama. There was a peculiar sensation of being in the midst of a strange world, whose parts seemed to radiate from this point. Never did I feel more keenly the wonder of the domain of ice. Utter silence reigned, till there came a writhing in the air, heard but not felt. It passed, returned, and passed again, as though flocks of invisible beings were hurrying by on powerful wings.

Chilled to the bone, at length I began the descent, picking up Garwood and some of his fossil spoils on the way. A magnificent ski-slide carried us in a great curving zigzag, first to the foot of the southern Crown, then round the snowy base to the tents. We dropped a thousand feet in a few minutes. So keen was the joy of this rush through the air, that we talked of scrambling up again to repeat it, but the attractions of supper proved more powerful than those of glissading.

Our view from the middle Crown showed that nothing was to be gained by pushing camp farther north, unless we went very much farther than the means at our disposal permitted. The whole region for many miles round could be mapped from the summits of hills within reach of our present camp. We judged it better, therefore, to climb from that base, rather than to spend time dragging sledges about over almost featureless snowfields. So, next morning (August 5), away we went on ski—Garwood, Nielsen, and I—carrying instruments and food on our backs, and delighted to have no hindering load a-drag behind. The weather continued faultless. Our plan was to follow the left margin of the glacier to the bay beyond the northern Crown, to turn up that to its head, and to climb the Diadem Peak, whose situation seemed specially favourable for a view. The snow was very soft and became softer every hour, but we shuffled comfortably over it and pitied our poor colleagues in the Alps, wading knee-deep in névé. The surface was not really in good condition for skiing; it was too soft and adhesive to be slippery. However, we made good progress, and in less than two hours the northern Crown was passed and the side glacier opened. It flows down from a ring of dolomite-capped peaks and comes out into the main glacier between the northern Crown and the peak beyond it, named by us the Exile because its crown has been wholly denuded away. It is a regular pyramid of red sandstone with top and corners rounded off. There is not a fragment of rock visible in situ, the whole solid substance of the mountain being buried beneath accumulations of débris.

Turning, then, with the northern Crown on our right hand, the Exile on our left, and the great snowfield at our backs, we made diagonally up the side glacier toward a snow-saddle between the Exile and the Diadem. All the snow was saturated with water, which gravitated to the middle of the valley and formed a great Slough of Despond there. Advancing very gingerly to find a way across, I suddenly sank up to my waist in the freezing mixture. The ski turned round under my feet and fastened them down, so that I was helplessly anchored, and it was all that Nielsen and Garwood could do to withdraw me from the uncomfortable position. We ultimately passed round the head of the Slough and swiftly made for the rocks of the Exile, where I undressed and wrung out my dripping things. Whether it was more comfortable to sit half-clothed while the things dried, or to put them on in a sodden condition, was a question I am now enabled to decide by experience. Fortunately the sunshine had a little warmth in it, but the preliminary bath certainly did not add to the enjoyment of lunch.

Just below the rocks was an open bergschrund into which Nielsen tumbled, ski and all, but he caught the upper edge and extricated himself with a mighty kick and pull. The hidden crevasses over which we slid were countless, but the ski deprived them of all power to injure or annoy. A slide from the rocks to the broad snow-saddle, then the ascent of the Diadem began. We knew that it would present no difficulties below the summit rocks. They were vertical on our side, but there were indications that the snow-slope reached far up them on the other. For some distance we could climb straight ahead; then the slope steepened and we had to zigzag, each man choosing his own route. About six hundred feet below the top, ski could no further go, for the surface was hard frozen, so that they obtained no grip upon it. They were accordingly left behind, planted erect, for if they are left lying down they will assuredly find means to break loose and go careering away to some remote level place. As soon as it became a question of kicking steps in the increasingly hard and steep slope, the scattered elements of the party concentrated and so came to the foot of the final peak together. A snow-slope, as we had foreseen, reached almost to the top, but it was cut across by two large bergschrunds, well enough bridged. The rope was now put on and the final approaches made in orthodox fashion. Scrambling up a few steep rocks, we came out on the curious little flat summit plain (4154 ft.), from whose edges the drop is vertical all round, except where the slope we ascended abuts.

The view resembled that from the middle Crown, but was more extensive to the north and east. The whole island was displayed. We overlooked the region of almost horizontally-bedded, chocolate-coloured sandstone, capped with dolomite near at hand, but dipping away from the old rocks underlying it, which appeared in the north-east as mountain ranges. Advent Bay was again clearly visible across Ice Fjord, so that the Diadem and the Crowns can be seen from the hotel there, a fact previously unsuspected. I set up the instruments and worked for more than an hour, growing colder and colder in the raw air. Garwood and Nielsen warmed themselves by building a big cairn as a monument of our climb.

The first stage of the descent required some care, for the slope was steep and of ice, whilst the bridges over the bergschrunds did not appear particularly strong. Once on the main snow-slope the rope could be laid aside and each could make for his ski by the shortest route. Nielsen went on ahead and disappeared over the bulging declivity at a great rate, but when I tried to follow his example I found it difficult to maintain a footing on the hard, icy slope. The boards under my feet shot away so quickly that without a powerful break I could not maintain my balance. No application of the spike of the ice-axe to the slope produced friction enough to prevent the bewilderment of a lightning-like descent, which always ended in a shattering overthrow. How Nielsen had managed remained a mystery to me, till I came up with him and learnt that he had put his ice-axe between his legs and sat upon it, thus turning himself into a tripod on runners. Riding, like a witch on a broomstick, he gained the gentler slope below without delay or misfortune. Garwood was less lucky, for one of his ski gave him the slip and raced away on its own account. We heard him howling aloft, but knew not what about till his truant shoe had dashed past, heading for a number of open crevasses. It leapt these in fine style, but bending away to the right, made for the hollow, north of the Exile, to which we had to descend to fetch it. Rather than reascend and return over the mile of snow-slope down which the ski had shot, we changed the route of our return. To see Garwood walking about unroped among the maze of crevasses and crossing bergschrunds by rotten snow-bridges was decidedly unpleasant. If he had fallen through anywhere we could have done nothing for him, and he would never have been seen again; but the fates were propitious. Instead of sliding down as we did, he had to wade through knee-deep snow, but that was the limit of his misfortune.

The great snowfield was joined at the north foot of the Exile, and straight running made for camp. It was a long and thirsty shuffle back, for, since my immersion, we had come across no drop of drinkable water, all that flows from the Exile and the northern Crown being chocolate-coloured and thick with sand. Areas of snow formation, new to us in appearance, were passed below the Exile; the most remarkable was where the surface of the névé was covered with a kind of scaly armour-plating, consisting of discs or flakes of ice, hard-frozen together, piled up and projecting over one another. Wind was the determining agent, I fancy, in producing this phenomenon. Steadily plodding on over the now uneven and adhesive snow, at last we reached camp, about midnight, well satisfied with the expedition. We had travelled eighteen and a half miles over the softest névé snow imaginable, besides climbing our peak and devoting some hours, en route and on the top, to the work of surveying. Without ski this would have been hard work for three days. During our absence Svensen had cleaned out the tents, dried and aired our things, and otherwise made himself useful. He had never expected us to appear again, so that his work was perhaps the more meritorious. Late at night we heard him lying in his tent and “prophesying” (as we used to call it) in deep and solemn tones to Nielsen. The further we went from the coast the more frequent and solemn were these deliverances, not a word of which could we understand. I asked Nielsen what they were about. “Oh,” he said, “he talks about his farm and his old woman, and what she gives him to eat; and then he says if he ever gets back home he will not go away any more as long as he lives.”

A few hours later Svensen set forth on his ski to fetch an instrument I required from the baggage below the Pretender. He was instructed on no account to quit the tracks made by the sledges on the way up, and to take care not to fall into any of the crevasses. Once fairly alone on the glacier, he proceeded to set these directions at naught. The tracks were devious; he would make a short cut and save himself time and distance. What mattered the maze of concealed crevasses? He frankly walked along them, whether on their arched roofs or the ice beside them being a mere matter of chance. We saw his tracks next day and wondered at his many escapes. As it was, he fell into two crevasses and only extricated himself with much difficulty. The Svensen that returned to camp was a yet sadder and more pessimistic individual than the one that set forth. He had looked Death in the face, and seemed to feel swindled in that he had escaped destruction.

This day the sky was actually covered with an unmistakable heat haze. Thunderstorms, I believe, never occur in Spitsbergen; if we had not known this, we should have thought one was brewing. It was actually hot and stuffy within the tent, but outside the temperature was perfect. Our intention was to climb the middle Crown again, when Svensen returned, and to spend some hours on the mountain, Garwood photographing and hunting for fossils in the limestone, I observing angles. At last we could set forth with theodolite and whole-plate camera for the top of the Crown. There was no novelty in the ascent, except that the sky was steadily clouding over, so that we had to race the weather. Unfortunately the clouds won. The sun was blotted out when we reached the top, many hills were obscured by clouds, and the panorama was rendered relatively uninteresting. There was nothing for Garwood to photograph, and far fewer points for me to observe than I could have wished. The cold became bitter. Fiddling with the little screws of the theodolite was horribly painful. I endured it for more than an hour before complete numbness rendered further work of that kind impossible. Nielsen kept warmth in his veins by prizing crags away; they thundered and crashed over the precipice on the north, finding a swift descent down one of the many vertical chimneys, and then rushing out on the snow-slope beneath. The results of his labours were widely spread abroad below. Before packing up to descend we all joined in building a big cairn, which, I think, will last for many years. A hurried descent down rocks and screes and a fine ski-slide to camp set the blood circulating merrily in our veins. The tents were just within the margin of a fog, which hung like a veil over the western landscape, where a mottled roof of cloud above the jagged crest of the Cross Bay hills shone golden bright, fading away below into the misty grey foreground of vaguely-outlined, broken ice.

CHAPTER VIII
RETURN TO KINGS BAY

All appearances were convincing that the weather had finally broken up, but a charm seemed to lie upon King James Land this year, for next morning (August 7) was fine as ever, with skies brilliantly clear. The white fog still covered the bay and the glacier’s foot, but retreated before us as we advanced on the downward journey, for which the time had now come. Instead of going far out on to the glacier, as in our ascent, we kept a more direct course, for crevasses that are too wide to drag sledges over when going uphill are passable on the way down. The sledges had to make many a downward jump, and were greatly strained, but we reckoned they would hold out to the coast, and so let them take their luck. It was none of the best. A certain broad crevasse opposed to our advance its yawning chasm, whose higher side was much above the lower. The first sledge took the jump safely, but the second landed heavily on its nose, and one runner snapped in half. We tied it up with string, but the jagged edge greatly increased the friction during the remainder of the journey. Near the Pretender we re-entered the circuit of the nesting birds, and found their feathers at every step of the way. A solitary fulmar sitting on the ice only stirred when we approached him within two yards. Then he flapped his wings and ran, gradually rising into the air and helping himself up by beating the ground with his feet, the action used by fulmars when they rise from water. He did not fly far, for he was obviously ill. Doubtless a glaucous gull presently put an end to his existence.

Having kept along the left side of the glacier, we came, at the foot of the Pretender, as we knew we must, to a steep ice staircase, a slope of about 200 feet, broken by a series of large crevasses. A longitudinal fold in the ice, caused by the narrowing of the glacier at this point, added a more complex irregularity to the step-like descent. This was the worst place we had to convey sledges over on the glaciers of Spitsbergen; nor shall I attempt to describe our labours. The sledges were slung across some crevasses, let down over others, gingerly conducted along ridges of ice narrower than themselves, with profound chasms on each side, hauled round the flanks of seracs, and otherwise forced forward as circumstances decreed. Once only did a misfortune occur, and then the fault was mine. The slope was very steep, and there was a crevasse in the way. Nielsen got on to its lower lip and began lifting the bow of the sledge forward by means of the drag-rope. I was hanging on behind with the pick-end of the ice-axe hitched into the stern. Just at the critical moment something gave way. The ice-axe slipped out; I fell backwards; the sledge lumbered down. That it would go right into the crevasse and be utterly lost seemed certain. But no! it merely turned a somersault and wedged itself in between two projecting noses of ice, which held it firmly, till, with the assistance of the others, we brought it safe to land. Shortly afterward the site of Pretender Camp was reached, and our little heap of stores found undisturbed by foxes or birds.

We knew that the most tiresome part of the day’s journey was yet to come; the lunch-halt was consequently prolonged. To the foot of Pretender Pass the way was easy enough, but beyond that point difficulties were bound to accumulate, for the glacier became so crevassed as to be impassable even for men without sledges, whilst, instead of snow-slopes along the left bank, there was a widening lateral moraine. Fortunately we found an irregular belt of snow between the ridge of this moraine and the débris-slope behind it; along that belt we were able to make intermittent advance, though the snow was freely strewn with blocks of stone, over and around which, up and down and in and out, the sledges had to be lifted and dragged. We were thankful even for this small mercy, seeing that, if the snow had not been there, we must have raised the sledges bodily and carried them more than a mile over the nastiest kind of moraine. As it was, we had to carry them for several short spells. How easy it looks on paper! Four men, one at each corner of the sledge; they lift her, and along she goes. But in practice, when the ground to be traversed consists of loose rocks, each about the size of a man’s head, with ice below them, sloping this way and that, uphill two yards, downhill three yards, now tilted to the right, now to the left, some one is always stumbling. They jog one another from side to side. The weight gets bandied about and heaved in all directions, so that each wastes most of his work in counter-balancing the unintentional irregularities of his fellows’ efforts. A halt had to be made halfway along, but we vowed to finish this horrible part of the route before camping. The stove was lit and cocoa brewed to put heart into the men; then on again, plunging, tripping, twisting ankles, barking shins, till at last there came a practicable though lumpy stretch of ice alongside the moraine, and we could launch the sledges on it and haul them forward with less toil. We were close to the angle where Kings and Highway glaciers join, and the lateral moraines of both, uniting at the promontory of the dividing mountain, flow out as a medial moraine, and are carried on by the glacier and ultimately dumped over the ice-cliff into Kings Bay. We crossed this medial moraine at the earliest convenient place, then followed along beside it till near midnight, when somebody, turning round to survey the view, found it beautiful, and proposed that camp should be pitched straightway.

The air was crisp and cold. The sun shone golden in the north, just tinged with the first promise of its winter setting. The mellow light flooded with unusual glory of colour the many-tinted rocks of the Crowns and Pretender, grouped together in fine assemblage between the two great glaciers, now both at once beheld back to their highest snowfields. Such purples as the autumnal midnight sun pours out on the so-called Liefde-Bay sandstones of Spitzbergen had no rival even in the richest product of Tyrian skill. All night long the glacier worked and cracked beneath us in its onward flow, squeezing its slow way down through the narrowing channel. Loud reports disturbed our slumbers, and at an early hour brought us back to consciousness of the beauty of the world and the continuing loveliness of the weather.

The sky remained clear, and the white fog brooded over the waters of the bay, when the men started down with the sledges, leaving us to sit awhile on convenient rocks, smoking and enjoying the splendid scenery. Presently we also set forth, not down, but across Highway Glacier to examine the rocks of its left bank. A very large lake-basin had to be crossed at the margin of the ice. It proved to have been drained by the biggest ice-tunnel I ever saw, a cavern at least fifty feet in diameter and more than a hundred yards long. I bolted into it, under the stones perched loosely on its brow, and took some photographs of the weird grotto, whilst Garwood climbed the riskily loose cliff behind and hunted for fossils. Keeping across the mouth of a minor side glacier, we came to the moraine crossed by us with so much trouble on the upward way. The great hollow beyond it was now perceived to be another and yet larger lake-basin, drained in its turn by the ice-cañon which had formed one of our first considerable impediments. This lake-basin is more than half a mile in length, and some hundreds of yards wide. It lies at the foot of Mount Nielsen. Here, losing sight of Garwood, I turned to seek the sledges. Not finding them, and being too cold to loiter about, I walked briskly on down the foot of the glacier, and did not halt till the base camp was reached. It remained just as we left it, thank goodness! But it must have had a narrow escape, for, at some time during our absence, a flood of water came down the fan on which it stood, cutting a new channel, whose still wet margin ran less than a hand’s breadth from the angle of the tent. Had the channel been deflected a couple of yards, all our goods would have gone to sea!

The roof of fog was overhead, yet the view was most beautiful, for the sun shone through holes in it upon the glacier’s terminal cliff, barring it with vertical bands of light and colour. There were stripes of purple, violet, green, blue, and white, made by the staining of the ice with stone débris, or by new fractures manifesting the varying transparency of the mass, or by the play of light and shadow upon it. The jagged hills looked down through holes or behind veils of mist. The water was absolutely calm, but more thickly covered with broken ice than when we last beheld it; in fact, over great areas, the floating blocks seemed to form a continuous ice-covering. In calm weather this mattered little, but if a northerly wind set in, all the ice would be driven and packed down upon us, and we should be imprisoned, who could say for how long? Obviously, therefore, it would be our business to shift camp as soon as possible to some more favourable situation.

Long I sat in the tent-door gazing at the view and dreaming. What changes had taken place here since Professor Sven Lovén’s visit in 1837, the first visit of any man of science to this part of Spitsbergen! The island of which he wrote so fully, with its “diminutive Alps” and moraines, was separated from the glacier at that time by a channel of open water 1000 feet wide; now the glacier almost surrounds it and has buried out of sight the ground on which he stood. It had already done so before Nordenskiöld’s visit in 1861, since when no considerable changes have taken place. This is only one of many instances of glacial advance during the present century. A comparison between the seventeenth and eighteenth century Dutch charts and the maps of the present day proves the general truth of this observation. The development seems to be still in progress. Witness the great glacier-front which has descended into Agardh Bay since 1871, and over which we went in crossing the Ivory Gate last year. Glaciers which end in shallow waters must, indeed, be advancing slowly as they fill up the bay heads, but this does not suffice to explain so great an advance as that of the Kings Glacier between 1837 and 1861.

The arriving sledges, dragged by men soaking with perspiration, stopped these meditations. Both sledges were on the point of breaking up, such had been the strain upon them during the last fortnight. They were extra strongly built, and the runners were protected with metal sheaths, yet there was not a sound joint left in them. The metal had all been scraped and torn away, the runners smashed up. If ordinary arctic travel were as rough as this work over crevassed inland glaciers, such a sledging expedition as Nansen made from the Fram would be impossible, for no sledge could hold out a tenth part of his course. Our sledges, moreover, were lightly laden with about a third of the normal arctic load. Had they been heavier, they could not have been dragged along at all, or if forced forward they would have broken up the first day.

It is only on returning to the coast that one obtains a correct realisation of the silence of the higher regions. The glacier-front kept “calving”; the floating ice kept cracking up and turning over; there was a noisy torrent flooding down close to camp. Stones fell; waves broke on the shore. Such noises for a long time drove sleep away. When I did slumber it was to dream of glacier-lakes bursting, of avalanches falling, and other catastrophes.

Next day we had the boat to drag down to the sea—two hours’ work—all our baggage to overhaul, pack, and portage, so that it was late in the afternoon before we were ready to sail. The long hours of work were enlivened by the charm of the scenery beneath the grey roof of sea-fog, which still remained just where it had hung for so many days. The variety of effects was extraordinary, for there was no wind to move the fog, nor sunshine coming through it. The floating ice sometimes stood out white against the purple background and dark sky, sometimes dark against a white curtain of mist, and sometimes it glittered behind a vaporous veil. The water was now dark, like lead, now bright as burnished steel. There was continual change, yet no visible cause for change. Out into this fairy region of calm water and pure ice at last we rowed in search of new scenes, new beauty, and new delights.

Our first goal was one of Lovén’s Islands, away out in the midst of the bay, right over against the ice-cliff of the Kings Glacier. To reach this we had to row through a bed of water so closely covered with broken ice that a way was made for the boat by pushing the fragments asunder. They were of all sizes and colours. Surfaces that had been exposed to the air for some time were white, as all ice becomes under such conditions. Others newly cloven, or that had formed till recently the submerged face of floating blocks, were blue or green. There were pink pieces, dusted over with sandstone débris; but the majority of the small blocks, and most were small, were crystal clear, like lumps of purest glass. The water was absolutely still. Sunshine lay upon it, and the great glacier-cliff, along which we rowed, was reflected from the watery mirror. Every few minutes the glacier “calved,” and the resulting waves rattled the ice about us, whilst the booming thunder came echoing back from remote hollows of the hills. Nielsen was reminded of days spent by him as a sailor in fogs on the Newfoundland banks, when, as he said, they used to smell the icebergs long before they loomed into view. Kings Bay, of course, presents no bergs comparable in size to those that drift southward down the coast of Greenland, though the floating masses we were soon to approach were much larger than those ordinarily met with in Spitsbergen waters. As our distance from the south shore of the bay increased, the mountains behind it were better seen, and proved to be a fine ridge with many peaks, the watershed between Kings and English bays. A series of glaciers descend in their hollows, but none reach the sea, for there is a broad belt of flat land all along the southern shore. The view up Kings Glacier now became of entrancing beauty as the fog cleared away, and all our peaks from Mount Nielsen round to the Diadem were disclosed. How different was this view to our eyes, which recognised every feature and knew what was behind every impediment, from our first outlook there last year, in a brief interval between two storms! The culmination of the charm came when the small, partly ice-covered island rose into our foreground, and the surging waves of splintered glacier thrown up behind it contrasted with the smooth wide-spreading snowfields far beyond. The ice-cliff north of the island was more shattered than any we had yet beheld. Here the greatest floating bergs enter the sea. They do not fall into it, but simply float away, being already quite detached from one another by the deep clefts of the ice.

From an examination of a great many sea-fronting glacier-sections we learnt that crevasses, however long and wide, seldom penetrate very far down into the mass of ice. I do not remember ever to have seen any crevasse (except at this point) which cut a glacier-cliff down to sea-level. Higher up in the névé region crevasses may be more profound, but towards a glacier’s snout I am sure that their depth is often greatly overestimated. The ice in the foundation of a glacier exists under great pressure and behaves very differently from the surface ice, which is free to break up under lateral strain. A careful study of arctic ice-cliffs would, I think, give rise to several unexpected revelations. The opening up of Spitsbergen to ordinary summer travellers would enable such simple but illuminating researches to be undertaken by holiday-making men of science.

The archipelago, which I have named Lovén’s Islands, after the explorer who first recorded a visit to them, was now close at hand. We made for a convenient cove and landed. Countless screaming terns saluted us with a chorus of unmistakable imprecations. No bird that ever I saw can swear like a tern. Till it opens its mouth you would think it the very incarnation of gentleness and grace, such the purity of its white plumage, the slenderness of its form, and the elegance of all its motions. But it is my matured conviction that in every tern there resides the spirit of a departed bargee. On these islands Lovén found countless nesting birds of many sorts, besides the spoor of reindeer and foxes. We found only eider-ducks, terns, and a very few geese; of reindeer not a trace. There are no reindeer left on the west coast of Spitsbergen. We never saw a footprint on the shores of Klaas Billen Bay, Kings Bay, or Horn Sound this year, though in all three bays are square miles of country admirably suited to feed and maintain them and once supporting large herds. The ruthless Norwegian hunter has exterminated them utterly.

I need not expatiate on the gorgeousness of the view from these islands. It was especially fine to the north where white icebergs of all fantastic forms floated in the dark purple reflections of the hills. The only sound heard, besides the screaming of the terns and the boom of the glacier-cliff, was the innumerable ploppings of water against the myriad floating blocks of ice. We landed on another island to cook a meal and survey. The little plants were putting on their autumnal colourings, most of the birds-nests were abandoned, the young broods—alas! sadly few in numbers—disporting themselves in the neighbouring waters. All the islands are smoothed by ice, for the Kings Glacier was once at least 500 feet thicker and very much longer than now. Probably, there are other mounds of rock, continuing under the glacier the line of these islands, and rumpling up the ice into a crevassed condition otherwise difficult to account for.

Turning away from the islands, we rowed toward the east end of the rounded hill standing out into the fjord, to which we gave the name Blomstrand’s Mound. From the published account of the Swedish Expedition of 1861, we were led to expect that Scoresby’s Grotto would be found in this direction. It was only afterwards, when we procured a copy in the original Swedish, to which are appended maps, not reproduced in the German translation, that we discovered the whereabouts of this grotto in Blomstrand’s Harbour.[9] We now had to wind about amongst large floating towers and castles of ice, entrancingly beautiful. The number of the great floating bergs seemed countless. We passed by devious ways along channels, between them, often being so entirely surrounded as to seem on a lake built all about with ice-castles. Some were hollowed out into caverns with walls thin enough to let the light of the low hanging midnight sun shine through. We manœuvred to get one of these directly between us and the sun, so as to enjoy the resplendence of its opalescent shimmer, contrasted with the blueness of the shadowed side of the ice. Deep in the substance of the crystalline wall shone out a host of sparkling points like many-faceted diamonds enclosed in cloudy crystal. The evening was perfect: calm, bright, mellow, clear to the remotest distance, save just at one point where a sea-mist came pouring over a pass from English Bay, with a rainbow mantling on its shoulder.

The drowsily creaking oars at length brought us to the mainland, where camp was quickly pitched on soft ground near a brook. There was no grotto anywhere in the neighbourhood. The slope of Blomstrand’s Mound rose temptingly behind. With plane-table and camera we hastened forth to gain a more commanding panorama. About 500 feet up was a convenient knoll, whence the upper part of the mound was displayed as an undulating plateau bending away to the culminating dome of the hill over a couple of miles of bog land and broken rocks, extraordinarily disagreeable to walk upon. The whole mound is encircled on three sides by the bay, whilst on the fourth a large glacier descending from the north abuts against it, and sends an arm down into the sea on either side. The view was, of course, most extensive and beheld under rarely favourable conditions, for the low-striking, golden sunlight mellowed all the glaciers and the hills. The bay spread abroad below, as in a map, and the icebergs on its surface were tiny dots of white, whilst the areas closely covered with smaller, broken ice resembled surfaces crisped by some gentle breeze.

At 4 A.M. (August 10) we turned in. A few hours later the weather was still fine, but at noon the Crowns began to put on caps of cloud. Mists gathered in all directions, wind rose, and soon all was overcast and rain was falling on the tent. The spell of fine weather was, in fact, at an end. By 3 o’clock we were rowing away in water no longer calm. Yet it was charming to watch the graceful rocking of the smaller pieces of floating ice, and to see them turn over as their equilibrium was disturbed. The old white surface went under, the new blue side came up. There was now but one day left before the Kvik ought to call for us. The weather was too thick for surveying, so we settled to make at once for Coal Haven, where tertiary fossil plants had been found, though not the characteristic Taxodium.[10] Accordingly we rowed straight across the bay, though no sign could be seen of any inlet such as the chart marks. There is, in fact, no inlet at all, but only a low headland that protects the anchorage from westerly winds. It is completely open to north and east. On reaching the south coast and finding no trace of the expected inlet, we rowed along the shore toward Quade Hook for a couple of miles. It was an open, pebbly beach, on which we might have hauled up the boat, but whence it could not have been launched in face of any sea, like that now threatening to rise. Leaving the men to keep the boat off shore, Garwood and I landed to prospect. Just behind the narrow beach was a low cliff, the front of a wide area of boggy and stony ground from which the hills rise, half a mile or so inland. Westward was no bay whatever, so we concluded that Coal Haven lay to the east, where, in fact, we presently discovered it, behind a low spit of shingle a few yards wide, enclosing a lagoon.

While the men pitched camp, Garwood and I walked inland to look for the coal-bed. Its position is carefully described by Lamont, but we had only the book on the Swedish expedition of 1861 with us, and, though the members of that party visited and, I believe, discovered the coal, they give no accurate account of its position. We dimly remembered that it was found where a glacier-stream cuts a section into the ground. There were two glaciers ending about a mile inland from the bay, so we walked towards them and tracked up every stream flowing from them, but found no coal. I then went to the west, Garwood to the east, till every inch of land within Coal Haven had been traversed. It was no good. A big stone man planted on a mound, and with a slanting stick built into it, seemed likely to be a guide to the hidden treasure; but there was no coal in the mound, nor anywhere in the direction to which the stick pointed. We have since learnt that the cairn marks one of the points whose position was astronomically fixed by the Swedes,[11] and that it has nothing to do with the coal, which in fact is not found within Coal Haven at all, but within the next bay to the east, where of course we did not look for it.

A low cloud-roof, intermittently dropping rain, hung continuously over Coal Haven during our visit. Only the bases of hills and the grey snouts of glaciers emerged beneath it. Sometimes a dense mist came up; rarely the drizzle held off for half an hour. In this cheerless case black melancholy invaded Svensen. At a moment of gloomy forgetfulness he filled the pot with sea-water for brewing soup. The mistake was fortunately discovered in time, for there was no food to spare. When Garwood returned with half a dozen guillemots, the last shot-cartridge had been fired off. Svensen skinned the birds for the pot with the sadness of a man condemned to death. “We will only eat half of them to-night,” he said. “Why?” I asked. “Because this is the last proper food we shall have, and we may as well make it hold out as long as possible. When did you say the Kvik is coming for us?” “At midnight to-night,” I answered. “Not a bit of it. Ikke! I heard the sailors on the boat say the captain would not come for us at all. We shall starve here.” “Skittles! They’ll come for us to-day or to-morrow.” “Ikke! they’ll not come at all, I believe.” “I tell you they will; the captain undertook to come.” “Ikke, ikke!” We finished all the birds, but the food almost stuck in Svensen’s throat.

When supper was done (it was the morning of the 11th) a surprising vigour seized our gloomy companion. He jumped into the boat, pitched its mast, sail, and some spars on shore, and carried them away to the point. We watched him build a big stone-heap and plant the mast in it with the sail suspended as a flag. Then he turned in and was heard loudly and solemnly prophesying to himself in his fine declamatory style. We breakfasted late in the afternoon on one of our last soups and some mouldy biscuits fried in the scrapings of the butter-pot; then we began to look out for the Kvik. The mouth of Kings Bay was not visible from camp, so we went for walks to various higher points, besides spending some hours over another hunt for coal; but neither coal nor Kvik appeared. The drizzling night dragged its slow hours along. A meagre supper in the morning of the 12th was the occasion of more loud lamentations from our Norwegian Jeremiah. The others then turned in, whilst I went off to the ruins of an old Russian hut on the neighbouring cape to watch for the expected steamer.

Less than a century ago there was a big winter settlement of Russian trappers in and about Kings Bay. As in the case of other Russian settlements, there were a central house and a number of outlying huts widely scattered from one another. The central house of this group was in Cross Bay, in Ebeltoft’s Haven, I believe. The Coal Haven hut was only an outlyer, inhabited by a solitary individual, who at stated intervals visited the central depôt to leave his catch of furs and renew his meagre stock of provisions. Numbers of these trappers annually died of scurvy. The rock on which I sat had assuredly been witness to such unrecorded tragedies. There now remains nothing but the ground plan of the hut, with a few bits of mouldering wood and broken brick lying about. There were fragments of both Dutch and Russian bricks, as is not uncommon on these sites, for the Russians used the remains of older Dutch whaling “cookeries” in building their stoves. Against a big rock was a piece of stone wall and a rotting beam, apparently part of an old store-cupboard. Moss had crept up over it, and little arctic flowers were growing upon it with unwonted luxuriance. The bones of foxes and bears were in the ground, which was pervaded with corrupting wood-fibre and carpeted with a peculiarly rank moss that only grows thus luxuriantly on the abandoned sites of human habitation. What a desolate place for a winter dwelling, planted between a bog and the icy bay! Who lived here? I asked myself. What did he think about? Were the hills anything to him—the Three Crowns and those other peaks rising all around? Did the beauty of the long sunset heralding the arctic night find recognition in his eyes? Or was life too hard for the growth in him of any sense of beauty? Was he some poor creature forced as a last resource to come here for the bare means of subsistence, or some criminal forcibly expatriated to these inhospitable shores? Such indeed was the custom in Northern Russia before Siberia came into fashion as a place of exile. Long I sat, musing on these things in the grey night, and listening to the far-off rumble of the calving glacier. Every few minutes I scanned the sea horizon off Mitra Hook, and always thought I could trace the faint appearance of a remote steamer’s smoke. Imagination is a dreadful trickster, but time always shows up its character. No steamer came in sight, though the appointed hour had passed. My watch completed, I returned to camp and sent up Nielsen to look out. “They haven’t come,” said Svensen, “and they won’t come. Ikke, ikke! We shall never get away from here.” This croaking raven of a man began to grate upon our nerves.

In the afternoon all turned out again. No signs of the Kvik. We assured one another that it was of no consequence. A fire was lit, the pot set on to boil and all our remaining provisions turned into it. If this was to be our last meal it should be as big a one as we could provide. Slowly the water came to the boil, all of us anxiously and greedily watching. Nielsen wandered forlornly off to the point. “The Kvik, the Kvik!” he shouted. “Ikke, ikke!” said Svensen, but no one heeded him; this time there was no mistake. Before our last food was swallowed she had rounded into the bay and cast anchor close by us.

CHAPTER IX
KINGS BAY TO HORN SOUND

On boarding the Kvik we were again in contact with the outside world. There was much to hear and something to tell, so that time passed quickly. Baron Bornemisza, returning from a week’s cruise in Wijde Bay and along the north coast, was full of information about the condition of the ice in that direction. It was not so open as at the same time in the preceding year. Hinloopen Strait was blocked about halfway down; the Kvik had been unable to reach the Seven Islands. At Advent Bay we found the more boldly navigated Expres, with our friend Herr Meissenbach on board, in a happy and triumphant state of mind. He had had the best kind of time, and enjoyed himself vastly, spending three weeks in the neighbourhood of the Seven Islands, and pushing as far east as Cape Platen. Two bears had fallen to the rifles of the party, and I know not how many seals; now he was on his way home.

That was a busy day at Advent Point, and a blustery withal, for the autumnal bad weather was setting in. All our baggage had to be packed for transfer to the Lofoten, in which we were to sail for Horn Sound that evening. At the inn were two Swiss artists and Professor Wiesner of Vienna, come to take observations on the intensity of the light. Presently a tourist steamer arrived and carried the artists away. People were coming and going all the time; it was the culmination of the tourist season.

I have read in the London press that Spitsbergen, nowadays, is “overrun” with tourists. This is far from being the case. A considerable number come up with the Lofoten and other tourist ships, and pay a brief visit to the west coast, but few of them ever land except for an hour or two at Advent Point. Apart from Herr Andrée’s party, the only visitors who spent any time in Spitsbergen this year were Baron Bornamisza and a few people who made trips on the Kvik, the German party who hired the Expres, and ourselves. Besides Garwood and me, only Baron Bornamisza and the artists made any attempt to go into the interior. The Baron spent two or three days with one of our tents in the Sassendal, shooting reindeer; whilst the artists dragged a little sledge a day’s journey into the hills west of Advent Bay, and camped there for a couple of nights. So much for the overrunning of Spitsbergen. The simple fact is that to spend any time in the interior of the island is no easier now than it was fifty years ago, nor is there much probability that it will become easier in the immediate future. All of Spitsbergen that the ordinary tourist needs to see is visible from the deck of a ship, whence it can be beheld without either labour or discomfort. To penetrate the heart of Spitsbergen glaciers now involves just the same kind of work that the crossing of North-East Land demanded of Nordenskiöld in 1873.

When the hour came for the Lofoten to sail, such was the boisterousness of the embarkation that some intending passengers preferred to stay behind for a week rather than be soused. The disturbing wind was only a local draught, such as often blows down the boggy valleys of Spitsbergen, and especially down the Advent Vale. When we were out in the midst of Ice Fjord the gale diminished to an ordinary breeze, by which we were well rolled all night long off the west coast. It was past noon (August 14) when the Lofoten turned into Horn Sound; she steamed straight up the bay and finally came to off the mouth of a small bay in the south coast, the Goose Haven of the old whalers. Our whaleboat was hoisted overboard, and such goods as we needed for a week lowered into it. Svensen, who was to be left on board, eagerly helping, and joyous to see the last of the hated sledges. He said good-bye to us with monstrous enthusiasm, mixed in apologies for not having enjoyed our company more keenly. If we would come to his home and go a-fishing with him he assured us that we should find no more active or willing companion.

The exchange from the warmth and solidity of the steamer to the rawness of the foggy day and the unrest of the tumbling sea was, to say the least, undesirable. Our friends on board watched our departure without envy, and it must be confessed that we rowed away with little eagerness. Clouds hung low and heavy upon the hills, and no scene could have been more desolate. In half an hour we landed on the stony beach of the east shore of Goose Haven; the Lofoten was then small in the distance and just rounding out of sight. There was no novelty of the unknown now ahead of us. We had come to make the ascent of Mount Hedgehog or Horn Sunds Tind, which Garwood had almost succeeded in accomplishing just twelve months before in company with Trevor-Battye and a seaman. The object of this repetition was to see the view from the top, a hope little likely to be fulfilled in such weather as was prevailing. Garwood also desired to investigate certain rocks, which he thought might prove interestingly fossiliferous. Save for these rocks I do not think we should have come to Horn Sound again. They proved to be a fraud, but that was not Garwood’s fault. My own wish had been to spend our last week in Ekman and Dickson bays for the purpose of completing and joining my two maps; but I could hardly expect Garwood to be eager for such an arrangement, seeing that the area contained no geological novelties for him. My alternative proposition was that we should hire the Kvik and make a run for Wiches Land—the islands approached by us the preceding year, but never as yet landed on by any geologist. Unfortunately, we could learn nothing of the condition of the ice east of Spitsbergen, so hesitated to incur a considerable expense for a very problematical advantage. If only we had known! It was the one year of all recorded years in which the sea to the eastward was most free of ice, and, during these very days, Mr. Arnold Pike was steaming round and round and landing on the islands in question, where he shot fifty-seven bears.

For better or worse, we had decided on Horn Sound, and here we were by the resounding shore of Goose Haven. There was no good landing-place or protected creek for the boat. We had to land on the open beach. The baggage was pitched ashore and the boat completely emptied. Nevertheless, our reduced strength did not avail to haul it out of the water. We began to regret the loss of Svensen sooner than we expected. Camp having been pitched just above high-water line, there was nothing for us to do on the dreary shore, so we rowed across to the far point of the bay—Hofer Point—a convenient position for my survey. Garwood, knowing the way about, steered the boat into a tiny cove, whither we thought of transferring camp. The change was not made, fortunately, as will hereafter appear. At the head of the cove are ruins of a Russian settlement, on an exposed mound as usual, whilst on neighbouring knolls are two groups of graves. There remains also a bench in a protected corner. When the miserable life lived in these remote and solitary huts by most of the exiles is considered, these poor benches, of which I have now seen several examples, are peculiarly pathetic. Many a sad hour must successive, lonely, fur-clad watchmen have passed while seated upon them, marking the slow passage of miserable days. The sentiment of the melancholy landscape is strangely enhanced by a human interest of this kind, however remote. The savage regions of the earth are always impressive to a spectator’s imagination, but they become infinitely more impressive when they can be regarded as a theatre of human suffering or endurance.

The others returned to camp by boat, whilst I pursued my task and wandered home round the bay’s head, at first over sea-eaten rocks, afterwards, when the hills receded, over boggy land between the shelving beach and the iceflat at the foot of the great moraine of the glacier filling the bay’s valley—the Goose Glacier, as we afterwards called it. On a mound of the bog are ruins of a considerable whalers’ settlement, with quantities of great bones lying about, and the inevitable group of graves not far away. In the seventeenth century the Horn Sound whalers were English; in fact, this was one of the largest English settlements. The beach seems to have risen considerably since that time, for the whales used to be flensed between high and low water marks, whereas the bones now lie far beyond reach of the highest tides. It rained heavily as I walked on round the shore and waded the streams that flow out from the glacier. The clouds descended lower than ever, and the gloom, if possible, increased, so that the dreariness, by its very intensity becoming almost novel, became also indued with the pleasantness of novelty.