46 SPITSBERGEN chap, hi 



started from the ship without any intention of climbing, I 

 was without an ice-axe, and, moreover, hampered by a gun, 

 a camera, and a geological hammer, but I abandoned the 

 former soon after commencing the ascent. After mounting 

 a short distance I was on the point of crossing the couloir 

 to my right in hopes of finding firmer rock on the 

 buttress beyond, when a portion of the cornice above broke 

 off, and, gathering material from the upper part of the 

 gully into which it fell, rushed past me down the narrow 

 sinuous couloir, hissing and writhing like a serpent. 



After this little exhibition of temper, I decided to stick 

 to my rotten buttress, and, after removing a large portion 

 of the mountain in my struggles, reached a small cornice 

 which projected from the west side of the ridge. Cutting 

 through this with the geological hammer, I gained the arete. 

 The structure of the mountain now became clear, and I 

 was no longer at a loss to account for its disintegrated 

 condition. I was standing on the upturned edge of one of 

 the harder grit bands, here interbedded with slates consti- 

 tuting a part of the Hecla Hook formation — a rock series 

 apparently older than any of the fossiliferous strata on the 

 island. In no place in the world can the disintegrating 

 effects of frost be so admirably studied as in these latitudes : 

 the copious discharge of water from the rapidly melting 

 snow, during the continuous Arctic day, permeates all the 

 cracks and saturates the rocks with water, which on the 

 first frosty night is expanded into solid ice. In the case of 

 the ridge of Starashchin, the strata having been tilted into 

 a vertical position, access for the water is easily obtained 

 along the truncated edges of the numerous bedding planes, 

 causing slice after slice of the face to be wedged off, and 

 shattered into incoherent piles of rock. 



But my attention was soon diverted from the rocks at 

 my feet to the magnificent panorama which the ridge 



