i2o SPITSBERGEN chap, viii 



miniature group of Alps. The brown flat Sassendal stretched 

 abroad at our feet, below a cliff, whose black buttress- 

 knees jutted out against it, each pair with a snow couloir 

 between. The nature of its floor was now as plainly evi- 

 dent, where were bogs and where dry places, as though 

 it were a damp piece of stuff held in the hand. The lower 

 slopes were beautifully decorated with an intricate tracery 

 •of stream-furrows, like skeleton leaves, whilst down the 

 midst, bending in wide curves, ran the purple and steel 

 band of the main river, and its stony and changeful bed, 

 ending a few miles below Rabot Glacier, in an area of 

 snow-bog and ice-foot, apparent from this distance as a 

 smooth white plain. The glacier itself stretched far back 

 in unbroken sweep to a level white sky-line, but there were 

 indications which made me suspect (what afterwards proved 

 to be the case) that we were really looking over a col, 

 and that the remoter snowfield is drained away down the 

 other side of the watershed. It, in fact, feeds the ice-tongue 

 that fills the head of Mohn Bay. 



Over against our peak, along the far side of the Sas- 

 sendal, stretched the curious assemblage of the Colorado 

 Hills. The nature of this area was now most interestingly 

 apparent. It is a portion of the old plateau, which, till 

 recently, was protected from denudation by an ice-sheet. 

 This has been withdrawn, and the surface, no longer 

 protected, is being cut down by the action of running 

 water. A series of canons is being formed, from which 

 the region was named by Nathorst in 1882. The ice-sheet 

 once spread far to the west, but long ago retreated up 

 to the edge of what is now the Sassendal, so that the 

 region through which we had recently come is occupied 

 by mountains which are of a more developed and less 

 rounded character the farther west you go towards Advent 

 Bay. It was only some weeks later that we were enabled, 



