i 7 o SPITSBERGEN chap, xi 



There were no buttresses, hardly any gullies, no precipices 

 or emerging rocks, and no peaks above. The whole thing 

 bent round in a slow curve. " Here indeed," I thought, 

 " Nature ends." The worst feature in the view remains to 

 be mentioned ; it was a wall of ice that blocked the valley's 

 head, the snout presumably of some great glacier we should 

 have to surmount. 



All the happy auguries of the previous day were dis- 

 proved ; the worst seemed to lie before us. I gazed upon 

 the scene with fathomless disgust, but just then a gleam of 

 sunshine broke through the wild black clouds, a golden gleam 

 of the midnight sun, that glinted off the river and the ice-foot 

 behind and gilded the brown moraine, making an island of 

 glory in the midst of the bleak and dreary wilderness. A 

 little snow-bunting settled beside me and cheerfully chirped 

 his lark-like notes. It was the happiness of a moment. 

 Darkness and gloom swiftly returned as I crossed the river 

 by a snow bridge and rejoined my companions (16th July), 

 just when they were quitting the moraine chaos and expecting 

 an easier spell. 



They were doomed to swift disappointment. Nowhere 

 in the world can there be a worse patch of ground to 

 travel over than what lay before us. It looked so smooth 

 and easy — the gentle slopes, the neatly macadamised floor — 

 but it was a deceit, a delusion, and a snare. The whole 

 thing was a soft bog, a mere foundationless mixture of mud 

 and stones, into which the beasts plunged deep, frequently 

 sticking so fast that one had to be employed to haul the 

 other out. We tried high up and we tried low down — it 

 was the same thing. There was nothing solid anywhere for 

 a hoof to rest on. It was a question of wading through the 

 stiff mixture with hurried pace, for the longer you rested 

 on any spot, the deeper you sank in. If matters could have 

 been made worse, the rain that chose this moment for 



