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.
[Illustration: TORRENT IN A GLACIER ICE-FOOT.]
During our explorations of the previous year in the belt of boggy
interior between Advent Bay and the east coast, every glacier we came
across had an iceflat below its snout, formed by the freezing of the
winter snow when impregnated by water drained out of the glacier. This
year we had met with no examples of such iceflats before this one in
Goose Haven. It was of great extent and evidently destined to survive
the rapidly departing summer, for it still averaged about six feet in
thickness. The glacier streams had cut deep channels through it, which
the first heavy snowfall would easily block, again compelling the water
to soak into the new bed of snow and prepare it in its turn to be
frozen solid later on. The intermittent thaws of spring may be more
effective in forming the snow-bog, which is the needful preliminary
condition of an ice-foot, than is the autumn drainage held back by
the autumnal snowfall. As to this we possess no information. Between
the two the phenomenon is produced. As a rule the summer thaw must
suffice to melt the ice-foot away, for, if it did not, there would
be a continual increase in the thickness of the ice, and a kind of
glacier would be formed. Of such glaciers, however, we have seen no
examples. Though we found several cases of ice-foot apparently destined
to survive the summer, they probably owed their survival either to the
fact that they were produced by exceptionally heavy local falls of
snow, or to the summer’s thaw being below the average in total amount.
One year with another, the balance of formation and thaw appears to
be equalised. At all events, we have no evidence yet of any glacial
ice-foot that steadily increases. If, however, such an increasing
ice-foot were to arise, it would tend to bury the terminal moraine and
unite itself to the snout of the glacier, but before the process had
advanced very far the surface of the ice-foot would begin to acquire a
slope, on which a snow-bog could hardly be formed. The glacial water
would be drained quickly away and the conditions for further increase
of the ice-foot would no longer exist.
Considering such questions, I dawdled about on the beach and the ice,
to the great disgust of some glaucous gulls, who kept swooping down
close to my head with horrid cries. Rain falling heavily did not add
perceptibly to the discomforts of the cold and blustery day. Near
camp was another ruined whalers’ settlement or cookery, surrounded
by quantities of bleached and rotting bones, and with the inevitable
grave-mound close by. The ruins in this case were better preserved, so
that their character was recognisable. A whalers’ cookery consisted
essentially of two parts, a “tent” and a cauldron. The tent was a
building of four low stone walls roofed with sailcloth passed over
a ridge-pole and held down by rocks round the edges. The walls of
the tent are still standing on a mound. Close by are the wrecks of
the brickwork belonging to two cauldrons for boiling down blubber.
Quantities of coal-slag showed the nature of the fuel employed. All
about the ruins and amongst the bones, moss was growing with the
peculiar rankness already mentioned as characteristic of the sites of
human habitation in Spitsbergen.
Rain fell steadily all night long. The tide rising higher than before,
banged our boat about, for all we could do was to drag it as high
as the waves would carry it at high tide, and stand by to prevent
accidents till the waters had retreated again. Obviously, we must seek
some better haven. Accordingly Garwood and I set forth along the shore
northward to the point, and then eastward. Expecting no worse trouble
than rivers to cross, I wore only rubber waders, and hands in pockets
instead of carrying an ice-axe. This was all right so long as the beach
lasted, but where cliffs took the place of beach, difficulties arose.
The slope above the cliffs proved to be furrowed by couloirs filled
with ice. Garwood being somewhere aloft, stone-breaking, I had to cross
the gullies without assistance. This was accomplished by a new system.
Having selected a couple of sharp-pointed stones, like palæolithic
celts, I lay down and scrambled across, digging the stones in and using
them as handhold. Fortunately the slope was not steep. In case of a
slip I should have shot down the couloir fast enough, and been tossed
out at the foot of it over the cliff into the sea. The point of the bay
was reached beyond the fourth of these couloirs. The view over the head
of Horn Sound was tolerably good, though the strong cold wind made its
investigation anything but pleasant. The mountain-tops were hidden.
It is their remarkably bold forms that make fair-weather views of the
sound so beautiful. All the glaciers, however, were clear of fog. The
end of the sound is filled by a very big one; two others, descending
from Horn Sunds Tind, jutted out the cliffs of their splintered
sea-fronts between the end glacier and our point, whilst a whole series
of minor glaciers descend to, or almost to, the sea, along the north
shore, the principal one debouching into a fine bay almost opposite to
us.
After taking observations at the point, I went eastward along the
south shore, where, above a low rock wall, is a belt of fairly level
ground intervening between the sound and a grand precipice that reached
up into leaden clouds. A group of graves was passed, near the little
rock-bound cove to which we afterwards moved camp. Half a mile on
came a remarkable assemblage of great fallen rocks, looking from the
distance like some ancient megalithic monument. The individual rocks
were as big as houses; ages ago they all fell together in a mighty
avalanche from the top of the neighbouring precipice. Almost all of
them have been cloven in half by atmospheric denudation and frost, and
the clefts afford delightful scrambles. In the midst of the ruin are
mossy lawns, springs of clear water, a few pools, and accumulations
of winter snow lingering in shady places. Here I came up with Garwood
enjoying shelter from the wind in a quiet nook. The views from the tops
of these rocks, and from various places among them, were most striking,
especially when some glacier-front could be caught within a framing
foreground of the splintered crags. We paid several visits to these
Stonehenge rocks, as we named them. Garwood, I believe, climbed them
all. Half a dozen contented me. Their quaintness grew upon us. We were
always finding new resemblances in their queer forms. Some had almost
dissolved away, leaving mere pillars to represent what had been mighty
cubes. One such pillar looked to me like an ancient Arabian bethel, but
Garwood called it “a ripping tombstone”!
Some distance farther on came the first side glacier (Kittiwake
Glacier), emerging, past the end of the precipice, out of a gap in
the hills. Just at the angle is the resting-place of innumerable
kittiwakes, whose cries mingled with the noise of the wind. The glacier
was gained above its crevassed end, after a toilsome scramble up
moraine. It proved to be snow-covered and full of hidden crevasses.
Never, I suppose, was a glacier party less well provided than were we
two men to face such conditions. My boots had slippery rubber soles;
in each of Garwood’s were just two nails. We had neither rope nor
stick, our single implement being a small geological hammer. It may
be imagined, therefore, that our further progress was made slowly and
with much precaution. Ultimately we gained the middle of the glacier,
and saw up it to the rocks of what afterwards proved to be Horn Sunds
Tind disappearing into cloud. A few days later (19th) we returned
better equipped, but in weather no wise improved. That time we crossed
Kittiwake Glacier to its right bank, where are the red rocks which
Garwood once hoped would prove to be Devonian. They were an utter
disappointment, and he turned from them in disgust. Beyond came a slope
of screes, and then the next and smaller glacier, which likewise has a
splintered sea-front, almost joining that of the great Horn Glacier at
the head of the sound. We climbed on to a commanding hummock and gazed
inland. Horn Glacier is wide and of gentle slope, with hills of small
elevation immediately north of it as far as we could see. From the
south it receives two or three considerable tributaries, divided from
one another by mountain ranges of decided form, whose bases alone were
disclosed. The island is here only about sixteen miles wide. My idea
was to make a dash across and locate the position and direction of the
watershed, which is probably near the east coast, but in such weather
nothing could have been seen. A few miles inland fog rested on the snow.
The inner part of the sound and the north bay were dotted over with
quantities of floating ice-blocks, fallen from various glacier-fronts,
and steadily drifting out to sea with the tide. It was near midnight,
and the sky was tinted with sunset tones just visible through thin
places in the roof of cloud, as we returned to camp. Only hunger
reconciled us to the sight of the tents, for the sea was rising with
the tide, and at high water we must get afloat and move away to one
of the more sheltered places round to the east beyond the point.
Everything was duly packed, the boat loaded, and all was ready, but we
could not get her afloat. Work as we might she would turn broadside to
the waves, and nothing would keep her straight. Two oars were broken
in the attempt. Then we unloaded her again and tried to get her off
empty, but that was no easier. The weather was continually worsening,
and our struggles became desperate; it was all wasted labour. A bigger
wave than usual at last broke into and filled the boat, rendering her
utterly unmanageable. There was nothing for it but to unpack everything
and pitch camp again. The tide presently going down, the boat was once
more left high and dry, so that at six in the morning we were able to
turn in.
During the night Garwood was inspired with a new plan for hauling up
the boat. To me it did not seem promising, but, as a matter of fact, it
worked. Acting under his instructions, the three of us set our backs
under the bows and shoved them transversely a few inches uphill, then
under the stern and did the same. The double process moved her about
one inch. It was repeated again and again. After two hours’ work we
had the satisfaction of seeing the boat well above high-water mark.
But long before the time for high tide the waves, now grown large and
thunderous, were almost up to her, and we had to go at her again as
before and gain another few yards.
The weather was miserable. Clouds lay almost upon the water. When the
tide turned we went for a walk inland to the foot of Goose Glacier and
up its right bank, following the route by which in the previous year
Garwood had approached the foot of Mount Hedgehog in exactly similar
weather. We kept on up the glacier for some way, and the clouds became
a little more broken as the distance from the sea increased. There
even came a momentary hole in them, at the end of which a point of
rock appeared with a stone man upon it. “There is the rock on which we
camped last year,” cried Garwood, “and there’s the cairn we built.” I
only had time to identify it before the fog embraced and hid it once
more. After that there was nothing to be seen. Rain fell, wind blew,
and we turned homeward.
When the bay came in sight we perceived that conditions were not
improved. There was no wind in Goose Haven itself, but a heavy swell
was coming in from the open sea, breaking right over the rocks that
make the little cove where we landed on Hofer Point, and tossing
towers of spray into the air. I measured one of them by comparison
with the cliff beside it, and found it to be fifty feet in height. A
little anxious about our camp and boat, we hurried down and found them
threatened by the inroading waves, already at half-tide reaching above
the previous high-tide mark. The tents were quickly moved twenty yards
farther inland. All the baggage was carried after them, and then came
another turn at the boat, which was finally brought to a position of
safety. Long before that was accomplished the place where the tents had
been pitched was deeply covered by the boiling surf. Drenched with rain
and generally disgusted, we turned in about the middle of the morning
of the 17th.