176 SPITSBERGEN chap, xii 



sleep and a monumental breakfast we were ready to make 

 our final rush for Agardh Bay. The main issue of the 

 expedition was to be decided, and all looked forward to 

 the coming hours with high hopes and fixed determina- 

 tions. Sacks were loaded with provisions, cameras stored 

 with films. Everything was in order save one detail. In 

 the freezing wind on the lowest end of Prospect Ridge 

 I had dropped unknowingly the screw that fixed my plane- 

 table to its legs. The march had therefore to be begun 

 with an ascent to find it, only a slight detour and not 

 disadvantageous, seeing that the holding of a conclave on 

 the question of route in a position overlooking the best 

 part of the way thus became feasible. The missing screw 

 was found, firmly trodden into the soft debris, a good 

 omen, I thought, for the clay's success. We were, in fact, 

 in for a run of luck. The view was not so fine as on 

 my previous visit, but it was clear enough for practical 

 purposes, and over Agardh Bay it was most beautiful. 

 While we gazed, a stream of sunlight poured upon the great 

 white spread of glacier below, and the end of a rainbow 

 again stood up over the ice. Edge Land was clearer, and 

 skv and sea above and below it were striped in cloud and 

 shadow of gold and blue. At 12.30 A.M. (July 17), exactly 

 one month from the day we first sighted Spitsbergen, we 

 made our final start, running down a steep debris slope, and 

 enjoying a short but swift foot-glissade into the snow gully 

 between the glacier and the hillside. The glacier was 

 entered, without difficulty, by a trough between seracs, 

 and the long passage over it commenced. As some one 

 said, we were " on a pukka glacier at last, with rivulets on 

 its surface, crevasses, moulins, and the whole Alpine bag of 

 tricks." Yet there is really no glacier in the Alps at all 

 like this Ivory Glacier, none so white, none so wide, none 

 ending in so strange a manner ; for when it quits its own 



