It was as delightful as it was interesting to sit and watch the noble glacier-front, in all the wealth of its colouring and the wonder of its form. At high and low tide the ice was stable, and hardly any falls took place; but at other times falls were frequent, most frequent towards half-tide. Then the ice-cliff fired great guns along all its battlemented front in rapid succession. At moments of good luck one chanced to be looking just where the fall took place. Sometimes a great tower would slowly bend over; at other times its base would crush together, and it would start sliding vertically. In either case, before it had moved far it would be intersplit and riven into smaller masses, which, falling together with a sound like thunder, would ding and splash up the water into a tower of spray, a hundred feet high perhaps. Then, if they fell in a deep place, the ice-blocks would heave and roll about for a while, lifting the water upon their sides and shaking it off in cataracts, till at last they came to rest, or went slowly floating away amongst countless fellows gone before. Meanwhile the circling waves started by the fall would be spreading around, washing up against the multitude of floating blocks in the bay, disturbing the equilibrium of some and toppling them over or splitting them up, thus starting new rings of waves. At last the great waves would come swishing along the shore, louder and louder as they approached, till they broke close by the tent, and washed up to where our whaleboat was lying, hauled just beyond their reach. Between whiles was heard only the ceaseless murmur of the bay and the gentle soughing of the wind.
At high tide we rowed our boat round as near to the foot of the glacier as we dared go, and pitched our final camp by the stream already mentioned. It was nearly a mile from the foot of the easiest line of approach up the moraine on to the surface of the glacier. We hauled our heavy boat up high and dry with great toil, assembled in our larger tent the baggage we were going to leave behind, arranged the loads for our two sledges, and, in repeated journeys, laboriously dragged and carried them over bog and stones to the foot of the steep moraine, greatly disturbing the minds of a number of terns, who had their nests on the stony ground near the channels of the river. They swooped almost on to our heads, and hovered, screaming frightfully, not more than a yard out of reach. No bird that flies has a more frail or graceful appearance than a tern. When the sun shines on them as they hover amongst the floating ice-blocks they seem the very incarnation of whatsoever is purest, gentlest, and most fair. But there is in every tern the pugnacity of a bargee and the fractiousness of seven swearing fishwives. They are everlastingly at war with the skuas and the kittiwakes, and they always seem to come off best in an encounter. We, at any rate, were not sorry to quit their ground and leave them glorying over our retreat.
CHAPTER II
UP THE NORDENSKIÖLD GLACIER
Our preparations being completed, we set forth up the Nordenskiöld Glacier, toward the unknown interior, on the morning of July 13. The first struggle up the steep, moraine-faced front of the glacier involved all our forces. The stones, lying upon ice, were loose and large. They slipped from under, or fell upon us. We took one sledge at a time and lightened it of half its burden, but still it was hard to drag. It wedged itself against rocks when pulled forward, but never seemed to find a stone to stop its backsliding. Our aim was to reach a tongue of hard snow in the upper part of a gully. Coming to it from the side, the sledge swung across and almost upset us all. At last we reached the top, returned for the second sledge, then (two or three times) for the bundles, and so finally gained our end after hours of toil. Once on more level ice, things went better, though not well. To begin with, the sledges were badly loaded and had to be rearranged. Then, though the surface of the ice sloped but gently, it was very lumpy and the lumps turned the sledges this way and that. Garwood and I pulled one, the two men the other. Perspiration ran off us. Our estimate of the possible length of the day’s march diminished.
ROUGH ICE.
Nordenskiöld Glacier, as has been said, descends in a great curve. It comes down from the north and ends flowing west. It receives two large tributaries from the east. If we had kept right round the immense sweep of the glacier’s left bank, we should have avoided a peck of troubles, but must have travelled miles out of the way, for our destination was northward. As it was, we steered a middle course, and thereby came into a most unsafe tangle of crevasses. The step-like descent of the ice prevented seeing far ahead. We were constantly in hope that the next plateau would be smooth, but each as it came was crevassed like its predecessor, whilst the slopes between were almost impassable. Any one who knows the Gorner Glacier, below the Riffelhorn, will be able to picture this part of the Nordenskiöld Glacier. It was almost as badly broken up as that. To drag sledges up such a place is no simple job. Most of the crevasses were half full of rotten winter snow, but it was only by bridges of this unreliable substance that they could be crossed at all. Ultimately we found ourselves in a cul-de-sac, cut off ahead, to right, and to left by huge impassable schrunds. There was nothing for it but to go back a distance that had been won by more than an hour’s toil. We left the sledges lying, and scattered to prospect. A way was eventually discovered whereby, when every one was fairly worn out, the worst part of the ascent was completed. After crossing the last big crevasse, it was agreed that enough had been done. Camp was pitched about 700 feet above the level of the bay.
Now only had we leisure to look about and drink in the fine quality of the scenery; not that a man is blind to scenery when engaged in toilsome physical exertion, but he is incapable of analysing it or noticing its more delicate and evanescent qualities. For this reason I maintain that the observers in explorations should be freed as much as possible from the mere mechanical labour of making the way. Every foot-pound of energy put into sledge-hauling, for instance, precludes more important mental activities. This was not Garwood’s opinion at the beginning of our journey, but he came round to my way of thinking before the end. From the level of our camp we looked down the whole riven slope of the glacier to the broad blue bay below, dotted all over with floating ice and flashing eyes of light from the hidden sun. Farther away came the bleak recesses of the Mimesdal, and a range of snow mountains to the right. There was a level roof of cloud at an altitude of about 1000 feet, casting on the hills that richness of purple tone so characteristic of Spitsbergen’s dull days. Most beautiful was the glacier-cascade, and especially the immediate foreground of crevasses, on to, or rather into, which we looked down and beheld the splendid colour of their walls. They are far bluer than Alpine crevasses, almost purple indeed, in their depths. Here, of course, on the broken ice were no streams, though below the crevasses there had been so many that the air was filled with their tinkling, whilst the deep bass of moulins was continually heard. Ahead came the clouds, into which the glacier disappeared, the last outlines visible being low white domes of the usual arctic sort. It was pleasant to sit in the still, cool air while ice-lumps were melting and other preparations making for supper. “Look! look!” cried Nielsen, “there is a bird as white as snow.” It was an ivory gull come to inspect us. The only other visitors were fulmar petrels, whose nesting-place on the cliffs of the Terrier we were to discover a few days later.