6 SPITSBERGEN chap, i 



These expeditions, with hardly an exception, confined their 

 attentions to the coasts and outlying islands. A ship was the 

 most convenient base, and few were the occasions when 

 explorers ventured more than half a day's march inland. I 

 find it recorded by Lamont 1 that "some years before 1869" 

 a party of wrecked walrus-hunters travelled on foot overland 

 from the Norways to Cross Bay and wintered in Moller's Bay, 

 but nothing is known of their route or what they saw. In 

 1873, Nordenskjold, after wintering in Mossel Bay, worked 

 round the north coast of North-East Land ; landing on 

 the east coast, he crossed the great sheet of ice covering 

 the whole interior, and reached Hinloopen Strait by way of 

 Wahlenberg's Bay. 



In 1890, Gustaf Nordenskjold and two companions 

 landed in Horn Sound and made a rapid traverse over the 

 inland ice on snow-shoes to Recherche Bay, whilst later in 

 the season they went overland from Advent Bay to Coles Bay. 

 Lastly, in 1892, Monsieur Charles Rabot, having only forty- 

 eight hours at his disposal, landed in Sassen Bay and made 

 a plucky attempt to find a way across to the east coast 

 by following the Sassendal. He reached the mouth of the 

 fourth south side-valley (our Turn-back Valley), and climbed 

 the hill beyond, to which he gave the name Pic Milne- 

 Edwards. 



It is thus evident that, up to the year 1896, the interior 

 of Spitsbergen was practically unknown. The island had 

 never been crossed, whilst such descriptions of its nature 

 as had been given, by persons who looked inland from 

 high points of view near the coast, were, as might have 

 been feared and as we afterward proved, altogether mis- 

 leading. When I began to study the literature of Spits- 

 bergen topography, nothing surprised me more than the 

 manifest indifference of travellers to everything concerning 



1 " Yachting in the Arctic Seas," p. 238. 



