Of the other islands in the Spitsbergen group, North-East Land is the largest. It is known, from Baron Nordenskiöld’s exploration, to be covered with a true icesheet, the edge of which descends to the sea all along the south-east coast. The north coast and the small islands off it altogether resemble the northern belt of the west island. The west belt is a low undulating region, from which the icesheet has retreated in relatively recent times.
In the sea east of Spitsbergen are two islands whose existence has long been known. They were named Wiche Land, after an old navigator. Walrus hunters have landed on them, but they were first really explored in 1897 by Mr. Arnold Pike.[18] The west island, now called Swedish Foreland, has a high flat-topped backbone. The east island, King Karl’s Land, consists of two hills, about 1,000 feet high, united by a low flat isthmus. There is no ice-sheet on either island and only small unimportant glaciers.
I have never landed on Barents or Edge Islands, though I have seen them from east and from west. Neither possesses an icesheet. Both are practically devoid of glaciers down their west coast, and have large glaciers in the east. The whole of the south-east of Edge Island is occupied by a great glacier ending in the sea. Barents Land has several sharply pointed peaks, but the Edge Island hills are mainly flat-topped, like those along the east coast of the main island.
Prince Charles Foreland now alone remains to be considered. It is very badly represented on the existing chart. At its southern extremity is an isolated hill. Then comes a very flat plain of about fifty square miles, raised but a few feet above sea-level. North of it is a mountain range consisting of fine, sharp snow-peaks. It is cut off on the north by a deep depression, running in a south-west direction from Peter Winter’s Bay, which, though marked south of St. John’s Bay on the chart, lies some miles north of it. North of Peter Winter’s Bay and Valley the mountain range is continued; but the peaks, though fine in form, are not so high as those of the south group, but they send down eastward an almost uninterrupted series of glaciers into Foreland Sound. Further north are yet lower snowy hills, which end in the bold headland called Bird’s Cape or Fair Foreland.
FAREWELL.
APPENDIX
Account of Herr G. Nordenskiöld’s Traverse over the Glaciers from Horn Sound to Bell Sound in 1890.[19]