218 SPITSBERGEN chap, xvi 



The tents were planted between the fjord and a corrie 

 running back into the wide hill-front, the end of the ridge 

 separating Flower and De Geer Valleys. It was clear from 

 the survey that this ridge must be wide, and should have 

 an undulating top, whence fine views might be obtained. Ac- 

 cordingly we made for the corrie's mouth, and were surprised 

 to encounter not merely a moraine, but one still covering 

 accumulations of old ice. The glacier that left the ice has 

 long ago receded and, as we supposed, utterly vanished. We 

 found it again, however, as will presently appear. The crest 

 of the corrie, all round, as seen from below against the sky, 

 consisted of a small precipice of columnar hyperite, broken 

 by many steep gullies. We climbed a long debris slope to 

 one of these at the west side near the fjord end, and scrambled 

 up it, not without difficulty, for it was very steep, and all the 

 rocks were rotten, so that neither hand nor foot hold was 

 secure. The final step was just touch and go. 



This difficulty passed, there came the great rolling upland 

 we had expected, almost flat over areas big enough for ten 

 cricket-fields. It undulated away in all directions, and easily 

 led us on to widening views and new prospects. Now we 

 looked far over the fjord and saw Post Glacier better than 

 ever, and, for the first time, a flat snow col at its head, beyond 

 which was mere sky — not a peak jutting over, nor the sign 

 of a snow dome. Corrie Down, as we called the place, was 

 dotted with a sparse vegetation of the usual kind — poppies, 

 dryas, and saxifrages, all past the prime of their blossom- 

 ing ; but stony areas predominated, and, near the snow-beds, 

 stone-bogs rapidly drying up. Upward we wandered on, 

 following a little brook till we came on to the back of the broad 

 ridge and could see into De Geer Valley and across it to the 

 group of mountains between us and Advent Vale. They were 

 surprisingly fine, and, for me, unkindly complex, a maze of 

 peaks, standing up in apparent confusion one beyond another 



