As Atlas fix’d each hoary pile appears,
The gather’d winter of a thousand years.”
The mountains of Spitzbergen have been observed, by voyagers, to decline in altitude towards the east; neither are the eastern mountains so black, steep, or naked, as those more to the west. This curious phenomenon is considered by some naturalists as a general law of nature. The mountains here are totally composed of one entire and single mass of granite. The only fissures discovered in their vast extent, are formed by the intensity of the frost rending them assunder. They burst with a noise like thunder, and often huge fragments are torn from the summits, and rolled with great impetuosity to the base.
The glaciers are the most astonishing of all the natural phenomena of this county. It would only convey a faint representation of their size and magnificence, to say, that they far surpassed those of Switzerland. Travellers who have been in both countries, declare there is no comparison between them. Perhaps the most proper method to form a just conception of their magnitude, is by considering the size of the icebergs, which, as previously stated, are fragments of them. One of these masses, according to Phipps, has been found grounded in twenty-four fathoms water, while it towered above the surface to the height of fifty feet. Almost every valley can boast of its glacier, some of which vie with the mountains in height. They are occasionally hollow, and immense cascades of water are precipitated from them.
The magnificence of this scene it is impossible to describe. The gloomy silence of the surrounding country, the hoarse noise of the water dashing from an immense height, and the magnificent effect produced by the reflection of the solar rays, form a tout ensemble which can only be faintly conceived.
Though the mountains of Spitzbergen consist generally of rocks of primary formation, it is not altogether destitute of those of a later origin. Captain Phipps discovered several species of marble, which dissolved readily in muriatic acid. On the east side of the country, potters’ clay and gypsum have been found, and different specimens of talc, mica, and lapis olearis, are to be met with. Phipps did not perceive any metallic ores in this country, nor, as far as I know, have other voyagers discovered any. The interior of the country, however, has been very little, if at all, explored, and it would therefore be wrong to conclude against their existence from this circumstance, more especially as they are said to be found in Greenland.
Solid as the rocks of this barren country are, their disintegration has gone on to a considerable extent. The combined effects of cataracts, formed of melted snow, of frosts, and tempests, are at once perceived in the quantity of grit, or coarse sand, worn down from the mountains. This sterile substance, (the only thing among the rocks resembling soil,) is somewhat fertilized by the putrified lichens, and dung of wild birds.
No fountains, or springs of fresh water, are to be found here; frost arrests the watery fluid in its course, and prevents it from ascending to the surface. The cascades falling from the glaciers, are solely formed of melted snow, and with this only the navigators can be supplied.