Transcriber’s Note: Some spelling is inconsistent. Obvious typos have
been corrected.
WITH SKI & SLEDGE
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration: _Photo by E.J. Garwood._
_King’s Bay Glacier._]
WITH SKI & SLEDGE
OVER ARCTIC GLACIERS
BY
SIR MARTIN CONWAY
ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
TAKEN BY E. J. GARWOOD
[Illustration]
LONDON
J. M. DENT & CO.
29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1898
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press
PREFACE
_The story of the exploration of the interior of Spitsbergen, begun
in 1896, as described in my former book entitled “The First Crossing
of Spitsbergen,” is continued in the present volume, which is to be
regarded as an appendix to that. In 1897 Mr. E. J. Garwood was once
more my companion. The illustrations to this book are from photographs
taken by him. I here desire to return him my thanks, not only for
them, but for many another kindness, for the unbroken good-fellowship
of his company, and the stimulus of his society in travel. One of our
two Norwegian companions, Nielsen by name, was most serviceable to us.
The other was a hindrance. I have called him Svensen in this book, but
that was not his name. To render the narrative more complete, I have
inserted translations of such published accounts of the expeditions
made by Baron Nordenskiöld, his son Gustav Nordenskiöld, and Baron
De Geer, as relate to what is vaguely called the “inland ice” of
Spitsbergen. I take this opportunity of once more calling attention to
the fact that the common spelling “Spitzbergen” is an ignorant blunder;
the correct spelling of the name is that employed throughout this book
and now adopted in the official publications of the Royal Geographical
Society._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. KLAAS BILLEN BAY 1
II. UP THE NORDENSKIÖLD GLACIER 15
III. BACK TO KLAAS BILLEN BAY 37
IV. BY WATER TO KINGS BAY 62
V. THE KING’S HIGHWAY 76
VI. OSBORNE GLACIER AND PRETENDER PASS 95
VII. THE SPITSBERGEN DOLOMITES 113
VIII. RETURN TO KINGS BAY 132
IX. KINGS BAY TO HORN SOUND 154
X. ASCENT OF MOUNT HEDGEHOG 170
XI. ON THE USE OF THE SKI 194
XII. GEOGRAPHICAL RESULTS 206
APPENDIX 225
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_Kings Bay Glacier_ _Frontispiece_
_The “Expres” in Advent Bay_ _facing page_ 2
_Rough Ice_ ” 16
_The Colorado Plateau_ ” 57
_The Head of Kings Bay_ ” 71
_An Easy Place_ ” 80
_The Three Crowns from Kings Bay_ ” 116
_Torrent in a Glacier Ice-foot_ ” 161
_Horn Sunds Tinder_ ” 172
_A Ski-fastening_ ” 198
_A Lapp Shoe_ ” 199
_New Friesland from Hinlooper Strait_ ” 207
_Bluffs of the Sassendal_ ” 213
_Farewell_ ” 224
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.
[Illustration: 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.