7. The Dolerite of Franz-Josef Land greatly resembles also the Dolerite of Spitzbergen. After the return of the expedition I saw in London some photographic views of the mountains of North-East Land, Spitzbergen, taken by Mr. Leigh-Smith, and I was at once struck with the resemblance between their forms and those of Franz-Josef Land. I learnt also from Professor Nordenskjöld, the celebrated explorer of Spitzbergen, as I passed through Sweden, that the rock of North-East Land was this same Hyperstenite (Hypersthene). Hence the geological coincidence of Spitzbergen and Franz-Josef Land would seem to be established; and this geological affinity, viewed in connection with the existence of lands more or less known, appears to indicate that groups of islands will be found in the Arctic seas on the north of Europe, as we know that such abound in the Arctic seas of North America. Gillis’ Land and King Karl’s Land are, perhaps, the most easterly islands of the Spitzbergen group; for it is not probable that these and the lands we discovered form one continuous uninterrupted whole.
8. Amygdaloids, so common in Greenland, were never found by us in Franz-Josef Land; and while the rocks in the southern portions of the country were often aphanitic and so far true basalt, in the north they were coarse-grained and contained Nepheline. The other rocks consisted of a whitish quartzose sandstone, with a clayey cement, and of another finely-grained sandstone, containing small granules of quartz and greenish-grey particles of chlorite, and also of yellowish finely-laminated clay slate. Erratics, so far as my opportunities permitted me to judge, were of rare occurrence; but we found many smaller pieces of petrified wood, allied to lignite.
9. Some of the islands of the Spitzbergen and Franz-Josef Land group must be of considerable extent, because they bear enormous glaciers, which are possible only in extensive countries. Their terminal precipices, sometimes more than 100 feet high, form generally the coast-lines. The colour of all the glaciers we visited inclined to grey, we seldom found the dull green-blue hue; the granules of their ice were extraordinarily large; there were few crevasses; and the moraines were neither large nor frequent. Their movement was slow; and the snow-line commences at about 1,000 feet above the level, whereas on the glaciers of Greenland and Spitzbergen the like limit is generally 2,000 or even 3,000 feet, and in these countries also, all below that line is free from snow in summer. Franz-Josef Land, on the contrary, appears even in summer to be buried under perpetual snow, interrupted only where precipitous rock occurs. Almost all the glaciers reach down to the sea. Crevasses, even when the angle of inclination of the glacier is very great, are much less frequent than in our Alps, and in every respect the lower glacier regions of Franz-Josef Land approach the character of the névés of our latitudes. There only was it possible to determine the thickness of the annual deposits of snow and ice. In these lower portions, the layers were from a foot to a foot-and-a-half thick; fine veins, about an inch wide, of blue alternating with streaks of white ice ran through them, which occurred with peculiar distinctness at the depth of about a fathom. On the whole, this peculiar structure of alternating bands or veins was not so distinctly marked as it is in the glaciers of the Alps, because the alternations of temperature and of the precipitations are very much less in such high latitudes.
10. The glacier ice of Franz-Josef Land was far less dense than the glacier ice of East Greenland; whence it appears that movement, as a factor in the structure of the glacier, predominates in Franz-Josef-Land more than the factor of regelation. Even at the very end of the glaciers, granules an inch long are distinctly traceable in its layers, and in the névé region especially the glacier ice is exceedingly porous. The great tendency of the climate of Franz-Josef Land to promote glaciation is manifested in the fact, that all the smaller islands are covered with glaciers with low rounded tops, so that a section through them would present a regular defined segment of a circle; hence many ice-streams descending from the summits of the plateaus spread themselves over the mountain-slopes and need not to be concentrated in valleys and hollows in order to become glaciers. Yet many glaciers occur—the Middendorf Glaciers, for example—whose vertical depth amounts to many hundred feet. Their fissures and the height of the icebergs show this. It was unfortunately impossible for us to explore the Dove Glacier, the largest of all we saw, owing to its great distance from the line of our route. Evaporation from the surface of the glacier goes on with great intensity during those summer months when the daylight is continual, and deep water-courses show that streams of thaw-water then flow over it.
11. The comparison of the temperature of the air within the crevasses of the glaciers with the external air, invariably proved, that within the crevasses the temperature was higher. The traces of liquefaction in the glacier during winter, arising from the warmth of the earth, could not be observed, because the sides and under-edge of the glaciers were inaccessible from the enormous masses of snow, and the icicles of the terminal arches and precipices could be ascribed only to the freezing of the thaw-water of the preceding summer.
12. The plasticity of the glaciers was so great, that branches of them, separated by jutting-out rocks, flowed into each other again at their base, without showing any considerable crevasses. We could only in a few cases judge of their movement by direct measurement, and we had never more than one day to test it. One observation made on the Sonklar Glacier in the month of March did not seem to support the notion of the advance of the glaciers; but the repetition of similar experiments, some weeks later, made on two glaciers on the south of Austria Sound, gave the mean of two inches as the daily movement. It is very probable that their movement begins in the Arctic regions somewhat later than in our latitudes, perhaps at the end of July or beginning of August, because the period of the greatest liquefaction then ends, while it is at its minimum in March and the beginning of April. The signs of glacier-movement were apparent in the detachment of icebergs in the month of March, but more frequently in the month of May—as at the Simony Glacier—and in the crashing-in of the ice-sheet at their base in the month of April—as at the Middendorf Glacier; and the appearance of “glacier dirt,” where there is no material to furnish a moraine,—as on the Forbes Glacier—must be regarded as a sign of its onward movement or lateral extension. The infrequency of moraines may be explained by the resistance which Dolerite offers to weathering, and may also be regarded as a sign of the slow movement of the glaciers. Red snow was seen once only, in the month of May, on the precipices westward of Cape Brünn. We never met with glacier insects, although they are common in Greenland; and however diligently I looked for them I never saw unmistakable traces of the grinding and polishing of rocks by glacier action.
13. It is well known that the north-east of Greenland as well as Novaya Zemlya and Siberia are slowly rising from the sea, nay, that all the northern regions of the globe have for ages participated in this movement. It was, therefore, exceedingly interesting to observe the characteristic signs of this upheaval in the terraced beaches, covered with débris containing organic remains along the coast of Austria Sound. The ebb and flow, which elevates and breaks up the bay-ice only at the edge, is to be traced on the shores of Austria Sound by a tidal mark of two feet.
14. The vegetation was everywhere extremely scanty, crushed, not so much by the intensity of the cold as by its long continuance, and is far below the vegetation of Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Novaya Zemlya. It resembled, not indeed in species but in its general character, the vegetation of the Alps at an elevation of 9,000 or 10,000 feet, while the Alpine region corresponding to the vegetation of East Greenland lies a thousand feet lower. We found neither the stunted birches and willows, nor the numerous phænogamous plants of East Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Novaya Zemlya. The rare appearance of soil chiefly contributes to this extremely sparse vegetation, the detritus of the country resembling the meagre “dirt” layer on an old moraine, here and there enlivened by a small patch of green. Although we visited Franz-Josef Land at the season in which vegetation begins to stir, nowhere could there be seen a patch of sward, even a few feet square, to recall the features of our latitudes, although we examined depressions very favourably situated and free from snow. Some level spots showed patches of thin meagre grasses of Catabrosa algida (Fries), a few specimens of Saxifraga oppositifolia and of Silene acaulis, rarely Cerastium alpinum or Papaver nudicale (L.). Thick, cushion-like tufts of mosses were more frequently discovered. There were abundance of lichens: Imbricaria stygia (Acharius), Buellia stigmatea (Körber), Gyrophora anthracina (Wulfen), Cetraria nivalis (Acharius), Usnea melaxantha (Acharius), Bryopogon jubatus (Körber), Rhizocarpon geographicum (Körber), Sporastatia Morio (Körber)—and the Umbilicaria arctica of winter, which we found in Greenland at an elevation of 7,000 feet. These specifications I owe to the kindness of Professor Fenzl, director of the Botanical Garden in Vienna, and of Professor Reichhardt. The museum of this institution accepted the small collection of plants I was able to bring to Europe. Of some of these there remained nothing but withered roots, so that it was impossible to determine their character. Nature in those regions, unable to deck herself with the colours of plants, produces an imposing effect by her rigid forms, and in summer by the glare of the ice and snow; and as there are lands which are stifled by the excess of Nature’s gifts and blessings, so as even to defy efforts of civilization, here in the high North another extreme is displayed—absolute barrenness and nakedness, which render it quite uninhabitable.
15. Drift-wood, chiefly of an old date, we frequently found, but in small quantities. On the shore of Cape Tyrol, we once saw a log of pine or larch one foot thick and several feet long, lying a little above the water-line, and which might have been driven thither by the wind, as the Tegetthoff was. The fragments of wood we found—the branches on which showed that they did not come from a ship—were of the pine genus (Pinus picea, Du Roy), and must have come from the southern regions of Siberia, as the large broad rings of growth showed.