196 SPITSBERGEN chap, xiv 



for important photographs were lacking, and a geologist 

 apparently always can find sections to measure up, and 

 other like occupations. As usual I went ahead alone, this 

 time as far as Trevor-Battye's cache, having the wide valley, 

 the sunshine, and the exhilarating wind all to myself. Of 

 course I met a reindeer, a buck about three years old with 

 horns in velvet. We advanced to inspect one another, and 

 I sat down to give him an opportunity. He came up, 

 grunting exactly like a pig, and seemed to prefer grazing 

 close by me to wandering on, though whenever I moved he 

 skipped awkwardly away. His nostrils moved up and down 

 with great rapidity as he grazed. 



At Delta River there was water to cross and a high 

 raised beach to ascend, but all the rivers in this part had 

 by now shrunk to moderate dimensions, and long boots 

 kept the water out. This river emerges from the hills 

 through a fine little gorge similar to that of its neighbour, 

 the Esker. Its waters seemed to disappear entirely into bog 

 on the plain, and only so to filter into the Sassen stream. 

 This bog was rippled over with brilliant green waves of 

 moss, with multifold convex fronts ; between them were 

 shining pools of water, gay in the sunshine, a beautiful 

 decoration. 



Henceforward Temple Mountain was ever before me, 

 increasingly fine in the waxing afternoon, as the sun crept 

 round it and peeped into its ravines, cutting out in bright 

 lights and shadows its buttressed front, which sometimes 

 resembles a columnar facade, sometimes a row of apsed 

 chapels between the flying buttresses of a great Gothic 

 nave. It is impossible to exaggerate or, for me, to define 

 the quality of the beauty of the blue shadows that glorified 

 the mountain this day. Deep, soft, transparent, ethereal, 

 and yet, as it were, forming part of the mountain, manifest- 

 ing the massive and monumental character of its structure, 



