The country around Cape Flora proved to be very interesting from the geological point of view, and as often as time permitted I investigated its structure, either alone, or more frequently in company with the doctor and geologist of the English expedition, Dr. Koetlitz. Many an interesting excursion did we make together up and down those steep moraines in search of fossils, which in certain places we found in great numbers. It appeared that from the sea-level up to a height of about 500 or 600 feet the land consisted of a soft clay mixed with lumps of a red-brown clay sandstone, in which lumps the fossils chiefly abounded. But the earth was so overstrewn with loose stones, which had rolled down from the basalt walls above, that it was difficult to reach it. For a long time I maintained that all this clay was only a comparatively late strand formation; but the doctor was indefatigable in his efforts to convince me that it really was an old and very extensive formation, stretching right under the superimposed basalt. At last I had to yield, when we arrived at the topmost stratum of the clay and I saw it actually going under the basalt, and found some shallower strata of basalt lower down in the clay. An examination of the fossils, which consisted for the most part of ammonites and belemnites, convinced me that the whole of this clay formation must date from the Jurassic period. At several places Dr. Koetlitz had found thin strata of coal in the clay. Petrified wood was also of common occurrence. But over the clay formation lay a mighty bed of basalt 600 or 700 feet in height, which was certainly not the least interesting feature of the country. It was distinguished by its coarse-grained structure from the majority of typical basalts, and seemed to be closely related to those which are found in Spitsbergen and Northeast Land.[14] The basalt, however, seems to vary a good deal in appearance here in Franz Josef Land. That which we found farther north—for example, at Cape M’Clintock and on Goose Island—was considerably more coarse-grained than that which we found here. The situation of the basalt here on Northbrook Island and the surrounding islands was also very different from that which we had observed farther north. It is here met with, as a rule, only at a height of 500 or 600 feet above the sea, while on the more northerly islands—from 81° northward—it reached right to the shore. Thus it dropped in an almost perpendicular wall straight into the sea at Jackson’s Cape Fisher, in 81°. It was the same at Cape M’Clintock, at our winter cabin, at the headland of columnar basalt where we passed the night of August 25, 1895, at Cape Clements Markham, and at the sharp point of rock where we landed on the night between August 16th and 17th. The structure seemed to be similar, too, so far as we had seen, on the south side of Crown Prince Rudolf’s Land. Wherever we had been to the northward I had kept a sharp lookout for strata whose fossils could give us any information as to the geological age of this country. According to what I here found at Cape Flora, it appeared as if a great part at least of this basalt dated from the Jurassic period, as it lay immediately above, and was partly intermixed with, strata of this age. Moreover, on the top of the basalt, as will presently appear, vegetable fossils were found dating from the later part of the Jurassic period. It thus seems as though Franz Josef Land were of a comparatively old formation. All these horizontal strata of basalt, stretching over all the islands at about the same height, seem to indicate that there was once a continuous mass of land here, which in the course of time, being exposed to various disintegrating forces, such as frost, damp, snow, glaciers, and the sea, has been split up and worn away, and has in part disappeared under the sea, so that now only scattered islands and rocks remain, separated from each other by fjords and sounds. As these formations bear a certain resemblance to what has been found in several places in Spitzbergen and Northeast Land, we may plausibly assume that these two groups of islands originally belonged to the same mass of land. It would therefore be interesting to investigate the as yet unknown region which separates them, the region which we should have had to traverse had we not fallen in with Jackson and his expedition. There is doubtless much that is new, and especially many new islands, to be found in this strait—possibly a continuous series of islands, so that there may be some difficulty in determining where the one archipelago ends and the other begins. The investigation of this region is a problem of no small scientific importance, which we may hope that the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition will succeed in solving.
Basaltic Rock
How far the Franz Josef Land archipelago stretches towards the north cannot as yet be determined with certainty. According to our experience, indeed, it would seem improbable that there is land of any great extent in that direction. It is true that Payer, when he was upon Crown Prince Rudolf’s Land, saw Petermann’s Land and Oscar’s Land, the first to the north and the second to the west; but that Petermann’s Land, at any rate, cannot be of any size seems to be proved by our observations, since we saw no land at all as we came southward a good way east of it, and the ice seemed to drift to the westward practically unimpeded when we were in its latitude. That King Oscar’s Land also cannot be of any great extent seems to me evident from what we saw in the course of the winter and spring, as the wind swept the ice unhindered away from the land, so that there can scarcely be any extensive and continuous mass of land to the north or northwest to keep it back.
It is, perhaps, even more difficult to determine how far the Franz Josef Land archipelago stretches to the eastward. From all we saw, I should judge that Wilczek Land cannot be of any great extent; but there may nevertheless be new islands farther to the east. This seems probable, indeed, from the fact that in June and July, 1895, we remained almost motionless at about 82° 5′ north latitude, in spite of a long continuance of northerly winds; whence it seemed that there must be a stretch of land south of us obstructing, like a long wall, the farther drift of the ice to the southward. But it is useless to discuss this question minutely here, as it, too, will doubtless be answered authoritatively by the English expedition.
Another feature of Northbrook Island which greatly interested me was the evidence it presented of changes in the level of the sea. I have already mentioned that Jackson’s hut lay on an old strand-line or terrace about from 40 to 50 feet high, but there were also several other strand-lines, both lower and higher. Thus I found that Leigh Smith, who also had wintered on this headland, had built his hut upon an old strand-line 17 feet above the sea-level, while at other places I found strand-lines at a height of 80 feet. I had already noticed such strand-lines at different elevations when I first arrived in the previous autumn at the more northern part of this region (for example, on Torup’s Island). Indeed, we had lived all winter on such a terrace.
Jackson had found whales’ skeletons at several places about Cape Flora. Close to his hut, for instance, at a height of 50 feet, there lay the skull of a whale, a balæna, possibly a Greenland whale (Balæna mysticetus?). At a point farther north there lay fragments of a whole skeleton, probably of the same species. The underjaw was 18 feet 3 inches long; but these bones lay at an elevation of not more than 9 feet above the present sea-level. I also found other indications that the sea must at a comparatively recent period have risen above these low strand-terraces. For instance, they were at many points strewn with mussel-shells. This land, then, seems to have been subjected to changes of level analogous to those which have occurred in other northern countries, of which, as above mentioned, I had also seen indications on the north coast of Asia.
A Strange Rock of Basalt
One day when Mr. Jackson and Dr. Koetlitz were out on an excursion together they found on a “nunatak,” or spur of rock, projecting above a glacier on the north side of Cape Flora, two places which were strewn with vegetable fossils. This discovery, of course, aroused my keenest interest, and on July 17th Dr. Koetlitz and I set out for the spot together. The spur of rock consisted entirely of basalt, at some points showing a marked columnar structure, and projected in the middle of the glacier, at a height which I estimated at 600 or 700 feet above the sea. Unfortunately, there was no time to measure its elevation exactly. At two points on the surface of the basalt there was a layer consisting of innumerable fragments of sandstone. In almost every one of these impressions were to be found, for the most part, of the needles and leaves of pine-trees, but also of small fern-leaves. We picked up as many of these treasures as we could carry, and returned that evening heavily laden and in high contentment. On a snow-shoe excursion some days later Johansen also chanced unwittingly upon the same place, and gathered fossils, which he brought to me. Since my return home this collection of vegetable fossils has been examined by Professor Nathorst, and it appears that Mr. Jackson and Dr. Koetlitz have here made an extremely interesting find.