CHAPTER I
KLAAS BILLEN BAY

In the morning of July 9, 1897, Mr. E. J. Garwood and I, along with a small cargo of tourists, were delivered by the steamship Lofoten on the shore of Advent Bay, Spitsbergen, just ten days after leaving London. Our party was completed by two men of Vesteraalen, Edward Nielsen and Svensen by name. We had arranged to be met at Advent Bay by the small steamer Kvik, which was coming up to cruise about the Spitsbergen coast during the summer. It was annoying to learn that, though she left Tromsö a few days before us, she had not come in. Probably she had been obliged to put back for shelter from the heavy weather. We had no option, therefore, but to pitch our tents and wait.

Companions were not lacking. By our camp sprang up the tents of Herr Ekstam, the Swedish botanist, and of a Norwegian sportsman; further on was a large green tent flying a German flag. There were half-a-dozen hunters’ sloops at anchor in the bay, whilst the tourist inn was alive with hurrying men, amongst them Bensen and jovial Peter Hendriksen of the Fram’s crew. There was plenty for us to do with our baggage, which had all to be unpacked and recombined, some to stay here till we should return for it, the rest to go with us on our first expedition in search of the inland ice. It was a lovely day for this open-air work—a real piece of good-fortune, for nothing is so injurious to baggage as to become well soaked in detail within and without at the very start of a journey. White clouds patched the blue sky and scattered their shadows over the brilliantly green water of Ice Fjord. The snowy ranges beyond were distinct and detailed as though quite near at hand. The air was mild and delightful, and the day was gone before it seemed well begun. Towards evening a gale sprang up and made the tents boom and strain; but we cared not at all, rejoicing rather in the evidence of being once more free from the incumbent protection of walls and roofs.

THE “EXPRES” IN ADVENT BAY.

A wretched morning followed, with drizzle and damp, too painfully reminiscent of last year’s weather in the region of bogs. We had nothing to do but to sit inactive and bored, waiting for our steamer which did not come. But, though the Kvik was missing, there appeared through the mist our old friend the Expres, which last year carried us over a thousand miles round Spitsbergen’s coasts and about its bays. She was chartered for this season by a German party of sportsmen, Dr. Lerner, Herr G. Meisenbach, and another. They came to see us, and, on hearing of our wretched plight, most kindly offered to take us to Klaas Billen Bay and tow our boat over. We jumped at the chance, and an hour later were comfortably on board, with our men and baggage in our whaleboat behind.

Little more than two hours’ steaming brought us to anchor in Skans Bay, a small sheltered inlet cut out of the plateau-mass of Cape Thordsen. We landed at once on the low west shore, where a spit of shingle separates a small lagoon from the bay. Here we left the men to pitch their tent, and set forth inland over the foot of the hill-slope. Garwood presently began breaking stones, so I wandered on alone and was soon out of sight. The surroundings would probably strike an unsympathetic eye as dreary. To me they were delightful, though heavy clouds did hang on the tops of the bluffs and all was grey or purple in the solemnity of dim light and utter solitude. Presently came a bold waterfall on the west, where a towering gateway opens upon a secret corrie in the lap of the hills, a place well known to fulmar petrels, who nest hereabouts in great numbers and were swooping to and fro in their bold flight before the cliffs; known, too, to the foxes, to judge by their many tracks. On I tramped over the level valley floor, picking my way amongst boggy places, leaping or wading the channels as they came. All the common arctic flowers were in full bloom, though sparsely scattered about, for this is not one of Spitsbergen’s fertile places.

At the head of the bay is a large, flat area, where what once was water is turned to a kind of land. From this flat a series of valleys open, all scooped out from the plateau to which at their heads they rapidly rise. A large valley to the north-east leads over, I suppose, to the Mimesdal; further in is a shorter parallel one with snow at the head. The main valley, however, curved round west of north, and it was this that naturally drew me forward, for in a new country nothing pulls a traveller on so powerfully as a corner round which he cannot see. There lies the unknown with all its possibilities; it is like the fascinating future towards which youth so joyously hastens. Thus I pushed on and on. Round the corner there came into view a glacier filling the valley’s head and descending from the high snowy region behind. There was a peak standing further back and looking over at me. The flat valley-floor was a labyrinth of river channels, across which, for the view’s sake, I waded, thus reaching a mound of old moraine, on whose top I sat down to survey the melancholy, lonely scene. Birds flying about the cliffs south of the glacier were the only living creatures in sight. There were no reindeer, and not even a footprint or a cast antler. I smoked my pipe in peace and felt once again the charm of utter solitude.

Returning to the bay, I met Garwood, and we went on board the Expres together to enjoy the generous hospitality so warmly offered to us by our kind German hosts. Reindeer was cooked, tins opened, corks drawn, and a fine time we had of it for several hours, till at 2 A.M. we dived into our sleeping-bags, Garwood and I lying in the selfsame places where we so often wooed sleep the year before.

Next morning (July 11) the weather was splendid. About 10 o’clock we packed ourselves and our belongings into our whaleboat, bade farewell to our hosts, and rowed off down the calm bay toward Fleur-de-Lys Point, a cape named by the French corvette in 1892. Its base is formed of gypsum, into which the sea eats, so that great fallen masses of the white rock fringe its foot like stranded ice-blocks. A heavy sea was breaking amongst them and tossing towers of spray aloft. We toiled greatly in this broken water and against the wind encountered at the bay’s mouth; when the corner was rounded the wind was aft, and we had only the big following seas to trouble us. They rose ominously behind, each in its turn threatening to overwhelm our boat; but, as a matter of fact, little water actually came on board. Thus the noble cliffs of Skans Bay were left behind, and the deep Klaas Billen Fjord opened ahead. The scenery of it is dull till near its head, the slopes being most barren. We kept up the west side and close in shore, thus gradually finding quieter water.

About two hours up, a little bay tempted us to land for lunch and a hill-scramble; for what can one see from the water-level? It is only when you look down on lake, bay, or ocean that the picturesque value of water is perceived. I suppose I may have climbed five hundred feet or so, Garwood lingering behind to smash rocks. When I turned round on the top of a knoll the view took my breath away. The parallel curving lines of great waves, so big compared with us and our boat, now seemed, with their crests of foam, a mere delicate decoration on the wide surface of the blue bay, upon which the cloud shadows were purple patches. In the barren opposite coast opened a big valley that ran in to a snow mountain in the east. Further round to the left came the splendid Nordenskiöld Glacier, the goal of our present expedition—a splendid river, almost cataract, of ice, sweeping down, in bulging crevassed domes, between fine rock masses from the utterly unknown interior. Its cliff front, rising from the blue water, was fringed with icebergs, some of which, great castellated blocks, floated out by wind and tide, had been passed at the mouth of Skans Bay.

After lunch we rowed on, still hugging the shore, for the seas were big further out, past the mouths of one or two minor valleys leading rapidly up to the snowfield above, and each therefore fitted with its glacier-tongue. Thus the mouth of the wide Mimesdal was reached—a valley interesting to geologists and often visited by previous explorers, though none of them has drawn the vaguest sketch of its plan. We would gladly have spent a day in it, but the water was so shallow at its mouth that we could find no place where the boat could be drawn up; so, as the wind had gone down, we decided to face the loppy, criss-cross sea at once, and camp on the west side of the bay. Our course took us near many icebergs, one a blue tower at least fifty feet out of water. The sea splashed and boomed finely against them.

About a quarter of the way across we opened a full view of a great glacier at the north-west head of Klaas Billen Bay, flowing down a valley approximately parallel to the Mimesdal, between mountains of remarkable form. The peak between it and the Mimesdal, then covered in cloud, we afterwards found to be one of the most striking mountains in this part of Spitsbergen. The Swedes have named it the Pyramid. The glacier leads so far back, and is of so gentle a slope, that, for a moment, we paused to debate whether we should not choose it, rather than Nordenskiöld’s Glacier, as an avenue of approach to the interior; for at that time we were still under the impression that all the glaciers of this region were so many tongues coming down (as do the glaciers of Greenland) from a great inland ice-sheet. Thus the only problem we felt it necessary to consider was, which glacier was the easiest to climb on to and draw our sledges up. Obviously the slope of this glacier was better than that of the Nordenskiöld, whose crevassed nature now became unpleasantly evident. On the other hand, it did not come down to the sea, but poured itself out in the usual low-spreading dome on a wide, alluvial, mud-flat. We had no desire to drag and carry our things over more land than could be helped, so chose the Nordenskiöld Glacier and pulled on.

In a short two hours’ rowing we were under the east bank of the bay, where we soon found a quiet cove, and on the shore of it the remains of one of Baron de Geer’s camping grounds of last year. There was a place flattened for a tent, there were stones built together for a fire, and there was driftwood collected and cut up for burning—what more could be desired? The land hereabouts was a large plain stretching a mile or so back to the foot of the hills, whose line of front is carried on by the ice-cliff of the Nordenskiöld Glacier, which thus ends in a little bay of its own. The plain is relatively fertile and should be the home of many reindeer, but all have been ruthlessly shot out, so that not a hoof-mark did we see, and the only cast antlers were deep in the growing bog. Around this coast are many pools cut off from the bay by ridges of gravel, pushed up by grounded ice when it is pressed against the shore. Here many eider-ducks were feeding, and plenty of skuas, terns, and other birds filled the air with their cries. I walked towards the glacier to find the best way on to it, and was disgusted to discover that between us and the portion of its front that ends on land, and up which we must go, was a considerable stream, flowing in many channels down a stony fan. It was possible at high tide, when a certain submerged moraine was covered, to row round to near the mouth of this stream, but not further, so that we should have to carry all our stuff through the water and over the stones, a distance of perhaps half a mile.

These things we observed because we came to observe them, otherwise our whole attention would have been absorbed by the magnificence of the ice-front of the glacier ending in the sea. We had beheld its full breadth from far away, with the long curdled slopes of ice curving round and coming down to it from the far-away skyline of snow. Now we saw its splintered face in profile from near at hand. How shall I convey the faintest conception of its splendour to a reader who has seen nothing similar? It was not like what I may call the normal arctic glacier, which spreads out at its foot into a very wide, low dome ending all round in an even curve. This glacier is formed by the union of many ice-streams, whose combined volume is wedged together at last between rock walls, and thus broken up by compression. The sea front, therefore, is not a mere cliff, but is the section of a maze of crevasses, and even seracs. There were overhanging towers and enormous caverns, jutting masses and deep holes, all toned in every variety of white and blue and green, shadowed in purple by passing clouds or shining in silver splendour beneath the direct rays of the clear sunlight. The green water was oftenest calm, doubling the vision, which, in some lights, seemed too delicate to be a material reality. Changes of atmospheric clearness and illumination produced infinite varieties of effect, so that the ice-front was never twice the same in appearance. Sometimes it faded away into mist, sometimes it stood out to its remotest end in astonishing clearness of detail. But, under whatever conditions it might be beheld, it was always beautiful, surprising, and rare.

The glacier ends in very shallow water, so that the ice is aground. Very few glaciers in Spitsbergen end in deep water; the one example that occurs to me is the well-known glacier in Cross Bay, which I have only seen from a distance. For a glacier of given volume and breadth ending in shallow water a definite limit is fixed by the nature of things. A block of ice will float in a depth of water about seven-eighths of its own depth. Thus, the end of a glacier eighty feet thick would be floated away in seventy feet of water, were it not for the cohesion of the mass of the glacier, and the fact that the ice is not reached by the water except on one side, and so does not try to float, but merely forms an embankment to the sea. When the end of the glacier is crevassed the water is enabled to find its way in, to some extent, and thus does something towards lifting partially detached blocks. The snout of a glacier ending in deep water is operated on as a whole by the body of water, and tends to be carried away in very large masses owing to the forward movement of the ice and the leverage of tides. But a glacier ending in shallow water is broken away chiefly by being undermined, to some extent by the mechanical action of the waves, but much more by melting in contact with water often several degrees above the freezing point. When the snout of the glacier is crevassed this undermining effect operates very rapidly. What the depth of water actually is below the foot of the cliff we were unable to determine; I do not think that it is more than ten feet at low tide, the height of the cliff being from eighty to one hundred feet. It must be borne in mind that the glacier brings down a considerable quantity of moraine, most of which is dumped into the water just at the foot of the cliff. Thus the depth is constantly being filled up, and if the process went forward without any countervailing action the ice-cliff would be cut off from the sea by a wall of moraine within a very short time. That it is not so cut off is partly due to the denuding action of the waves, but more to the fact that, when the depth is diminished to a certain definite level, the glacier must advance over the newly-formed soil, and so the process is continued. Thus, every glacier ending in a cliff in shallow water must be advancing. As soon as it ceases to advance it must deposit a moraine embankment round its base, cutting itself off from the water. When this has happened the cliff ceases to exist; a terminal slope takes its place. Streams of water flowing from it cut down and distribute the moraine. The water then continues to be invaded by a débris fan, formed of alluvial matter in the ordinary way. The glacier previously mentioned, which is at the north-west corner of Klaas Billen Bay, is an example of a glacier which, doubtless, once ended in the fjord, but has been lifted up and cut off from the water by moraine materials brought down by itself.

It was as delightful as it was interesting to sit and watch the noble glacier-front, in all the wealth of its colouring and the wonder of its form. At high and low tide the ice was stable, and hardly any falls took place; but at other times falls were frequent, most frequent towards half-tide. Then the ice-cliff fired great guns along all its battlemented front in rapid succession. At moments of good luck one chanced to be looking just where the fall took place. Sometimes a great tower would slowly bend over; at other times its base would crush together, and it would start sliding vertically. In either case, before it had moved far it would be intersplit and riven into smaller masses, which, falling together with a sound like thunder, would ding and splash up the water into a tower of spray, a hundred feet high perhaps. Then, if they fell in a deep place, the ice-blocks would heave and roll about for a while, lifting the water upon their sides and shaking it off in cataracts, till at last they came to rest, or went slowly floating away amongst countless fellows gone before. Meanwhile the circling waves started by the fall would be spreading around, washing up against the multitude of floating blocks in the bay, disturbing the equilibrium of some and toppling them over or splitting them up, thus starting new rings of waves. At last the great waves would come swishing along the shore, louder and louder as they approached, till they broke close by the tent, and washed up to where our whaleboat was lying, hauled just beyond their reach. Between whiles was heard only the ceaseless murmur of the bay and the gentle soughing of the wind.

At high tide we rowed our boat round as near to the foot of the glacier as we dared go, and pitched our final camp by the stream already mentioned. It was nearly a mile from the foot of the easiest line of approach up the moraine on to the surface of the glacier. We hauled our heavy boat up high and dry with great toil, assembled in our larger tent the baggage we were going to leave behind, arranged the loads for our two sledges, and, in repeated journeys, laboriously dragged and carried them over bog and stones to the foot of the steep moraine, greatly disturbing the minds of a number of terns, who had their nests on the stony ground near the channels of the river. They swooped almost on to our heads, and hovered, screaming frightfully, not more than a yard out of reach. No bird that flies has a more frail or graceful appearance than a tern. When the sun shines on them as they hover amongst the floating ice-blocks they seem the very incarnation of whatsoever is purest, gentlest, and most fair. But there is in every tern the pugnacity of a bargee and the fractiousness of seven swearing fishwives. They are everlastingly at war with the skuas and the kittiwakes, and they always seem to come off best in an encounter. We, at any rate, were not sorry to quit their ground and leave them glorying over our retreat.

CHAPTER II
UP THE NORDENSKIÖLD GLACIER

Our preparations being completed, we set forth up the Nordenskiöld Glacier, toward the unknown interior, on the morning of July 13. The first struggle up the steep, moraine-faced front of the glacier involved all our forces. The stones, lying upon ice, were loose and large. They slipped from under, or fell upon us. We took one sledge at a time and lightened it of half its burden, but still it was hard to drag. It wedged itself against rocks when pulled forward, but never seemed to find a stone to stop its backsliding. Our aim was to reach a tongue of hard snow in the upper part of a gully. Coming to it from the side, the sledge swung across and almost upset us all. At last we reached the top, returned for the second sledge, then (two or three times) for the bundles, and so finally gained our end after hours of toil. Once on more level ice, things went better, though not well. To begin with, the sledges were badly loaded and had to be rearranged. Then, though the surface of the ice sloped but gently, it was very lumpy and the lumps turned the sledges this way and that. Garwood and I pulled one, the two men the other. Perspiration ran off us. Our estimate of the possible length of the day’s march diminished.

ROUGH ICE.

Nordenskiöld Glacier, as has been said, descends in a great curve. It comes down from the north and ends flowing west. It receives two large tributaries from the east. If we had kept right round the immense sweep of the glacier’s left bank, we should have avoided a peck of troubles, but must have travelled miles out of the way, for our destination was northward. As it was, we steered a middle course, and thereby came into a most unsafe tangle of crevasses. The step-like descent of the ice prevented seeing far ahead. We were constantly in hope that the next plateau would be smooth, but each as it came was crevassed like its predecessor, whilst the slopes between were almost impassable. Any one who knows the Gorner Glacier, below the Riffelhorn, will be able to picture this part of the Nordenskiöld Glacier. It was almost as badly broken up as that. To drag sledges up such a place is no simple job. Most of the crevasses were half full of rotten winter snow, but it was only by bridges of this unreliable substance that they could be crossed at all. Ultimately we found ourselves in a cul-de-sac, cut off ahead, to right, and to left by huge impassable schrunds. There was nothing for it but to go back a distance that had been won by more than an hour’s toil. We left the sledges lying, and scattered to prospect. A way was eventually discovered whereby, when every one was fairly worn out, the worst part of the ascent was completed. After crossing the last big crevasse, it was agreed that enough had been done. Camp was pitched about 700 feet above the level of the bay.

Now only had we leisure to look about and drink in the fine quality of the scenery; not that a man is blind to scenery when engaged in toilsome physical exertion, but he is incapable of analysing it or noticing its more delicate and evanescent qualities. For this reason I maintain that the observers in explorations should be freed as much as possible from the mere mechanical labour of making the way. Every foot-pound of energy put into sledge-hauling, for instance, precludes more important mental activities. This was not Garwood’s opinion at the beginning of our journey, but he came round to my way of thinking before the end. From the level of our camp we looked down the whole riven slope of the glacier to the broad blue bay below, dotted all over with floating ice and flashing eyes of light from the hidden sun. Farther away came the bleak recesses of the Mimesdal, and a range of snow mountains to the right. There was a level roof of cloud at an altitude of about 1000 feet, casting on the hills that richness of purple tone so characteristic of Spitsbergen’s dull days. Most beautiful was the glacier-cascade, and especially the immediate foreground of crevasses, on to, or rather into, which we looked down and beheld the splendid colour of their walls. They are far bluer than Alpine crevasses, almost purple indeed, in their depths. Here, of course, on the broken ice were no streams, though below the crevasses there had been so many that the air was filled with their tinkling, whilst the deep bass of moulins was continually heard. Ahead came the clouds, into which the glacier disappeared, the last outlines visible being low white domes of the usual arctic sort. It was pleasant to sit in the still, cool air while ice-lumps were melting and other preparations making for supper. “Look! look!” cried Nielsen, “there is a bird as white as snow.” It was an ivory gull come to inspect us. The only other visitors were fulmar petrels, whose nesting-place on the cliffs of the Terrier we were to discover a few days later.

Our camp consisted of two small tents, one an old Mummery tent of Willesden drill, the other six inches larger in all directions, and made of a slightly stronger canvas. Both tents had floors of the same material sewn in—an excellent arrangement, rendering them perfectly safe in any gale that blew. They served us well throughout the summer, and are still in almost as good condition as when they came from Edgington’s hands. Long I sat in silence and alone, watching the opalescent bay with its ever-varying colours and floating icebergs, the purple hills striped and capped with snow, the wide, deeply-penetrating, mysterious valleys, the great ice-field sloping down in front, and the frame of cloud arching in the whole. The crunching of snow and ice by human feet and the sound of voices showed that the others were returning from their ramble, hungry and with good news, as it proved, for the way was open ahead.

Next morning (14th) we pursued our onward journey, still struggling through crevasses for about an hour, then finding a fairly even though none too gentle slope, up which it was possible to advance steadily. So far the hard ice of the glacier had formed the surface. It gradually became less and less firm, and turned into a kind of icy honeycomb, built of a granular fabric that crushed together ankle-deep under the foot. The cells of this honeycomb ice were of all sizes, some as big as a lead-pencil, others large enough to hold the foot, others again to fall into bodily. Each cell was more or less filled with water, whilst the top was often disguised by a lid of ice with a little snow on it, so that the existence of the water-hole was not suspected till one trod through into the freezing puddle. We came to understand what to look out for, at this level of Spitsbergen glaciers, and to walk warily; but at first we plunged and stumbled about in the most annoying fashion, becoming very wet, cold, and out of temper. Further up, the snow covering was more continuous, till, at a level of about 1000 feet above the sea, we were no longer walking upon ice, but upon frozen snow. In fact, here was true névé, the like of which our last year’s experiences had led us to believe did not exist in Spitsbergen.

This is only one of many differences observed between the strangely temperate region south of Ice Fjord, explored by us in 1896, and the region north of Ice Fjord, and so close to it, explored in 1897. The former is to be described as sub-arctic, the latter is truly arctic in every sense. The Sassendal region is a land of bogs and disintegrating hillsides, with cataracts and many waters. The Klaas Billen and King’s Bay area is ice-covered at levels which are ice-free so few miles away. The causes of this great contrast are obscure.

All too soon the cloud-roof descended upon us, or rather we ascended into it. Rain began to fall. The snow being soft and the slope continuing steep, our work waxed laborious again, and so continued. We steered, by compass, a little east of north, the direction of the east foot of the group of mountains against which the glacier, in bending round, leans its right bank. The highest of these was known to us as De Geer Peak, because it was ascended by De Geer in 1882. In the thickening fog our men began to betray unwillingness to proceed. They mistrusted us and our compass. At sea, they said, a man could steer by compass, but this was not sea, and they had never heard of going overland after a magnetic needle. Four hours’ marching preceded a halt for lunch in the midst of the undulating white desert, which stretched away on all sides into clouds. Not far off was a blue lake, like a sapphire set in silver—a lovely object, and the only thing clearly visible except a single crevasse and the ghosts of the bases of the mountains. At times the clouds parted a little, and then we could discover a sea-fog creeping up from below. In the gap between it and the lower level of the clouds was a far-off glimpse of Ice Fjord, with the hills of Advent Bay beyond.

When fog and clouds joined we set forward again, and worked on steadily uphill. The snow grew softer and softer. We fastened one sledge behind the other, and harnessed ourselves all four to the front one, but the change profited little. Hour now succeeded hour, and nothing came in sight. The only variation was in the degree of slope. Every few minutes we stopped to observe the compass, and always found that we had bent away to left or right of the proper track; sometimes we were even going at right angles to it. When all were tired, we pitched camp on a flat place, which we thought might prove to be the plateau at the foot of De Geer Peak. The tents were set up with some difficulty, in a fluster of wind, upon the soft snow, and moored ahead and astern to the two sledges, the site being about 1500 feet above sea-level. The temperature was a few degrees below freezing. The oil-stove burning in the tent was a comforting companion, though we changed our opinion about it when the steam from the pot condensed on the roof and fell in rain all over our things.

All night long the wind howled, the clouds grew denser, and snow fell with increasing heaviness. When we looked forth in the morning nothing was visible, beyond our camp, in any direction. The tents and sledges were almost snowed under. As we had no notion in what direction to bend our steps, nor what any part of the interior might be like, it was necessary to wait for a clearance; so we lay in our sleeping-bags, cooked, played dominoes with numbered scraps of paper, and otherwise killed time. The men, I fear, were pretty miserable, for the expedition had no interest to them and they were full of all sorts of vain terrors. They confessed that for fear of bears they had been unable to sleep! They hourly expected to be buried under some avalanche of snow or to fall into some hidden pit. Nielsen soon got over his terrors, but they increased upon Svensen to our no small discomfort. As Nielsen said: “Svensen has never been away from his old woman before. He is accustomed to go fishing in the morning, and then to come home for his dinner. He isn’t used to the kind of food that you give him, and he isn’t used to this sort of place.” The more we knew of Nielsen the better we liked him. He talked excellent English, with a smack of the sea in every phrase. He was always on the alert to be helpful, and had plenty of conversation and some good stories. Svensen knew no English, except a few seamen’s phrases. He was a good enough fellow, but he hated his novel surroundings, and was only counting the days till he should reach his home again.

névéski