22o SPITSBERGEN chap, xvi 



De Geer Valley. They spread back into many bays, and were 

 lost in the recesses of the dark hills. Altogether, this view 

 was a revelation. Farther round, over the burnished water and 

 beneath the sun, came the ever clear hills behind Cape 

 Boheman, the hills that enclose the great, gently sloping glacier 

 that spreads back so far and forms so conspicuous an object 

 from Advent Point. The peaked and varied forms of these 

 hills are in marked contrast with that of the levelly bedded 

 type which predominates at the east end of Ice Fjord, whilst 

 their situation makes them visible from afar, and always across 

 a wide stretch of water. They are bathed in perpetual blue, 

 and we often saw them projected against a yellow sky, with 

 grey mottled clouds above a low horizontal line just clear of 

 their tops. For some reason, this year they enjoyed more 

 fine weather than other places not far away. When clouds 

 broke from about us we used often to see this range of hills 

 shining in clear sunlight, like islands of the blest. 



Making a wide circle round the head of the corrie, we 

 again reached the hyperite precipice, just above camp. 

 Seen from above, its jutting columns and detached towers 

 stand out in bold denticulation, a splendid foreground to 

 the blue fjord below. This time the cliff was passed by an 

 easy gully, and the talus below descended with a facility 

 the exact counterpart of the labour of ascent. The trend 

 of slopes directed our steps to the bed of the corrie, about 

 half-way up it, where we encountered what is probably one 

 of the smallest glaciers in the world — a little white thing, 

 not more than a quarter of a mile long, nor over thirty yards 

 wide. It was much crevassed at its snout, and was making 

 an infantile effort to advance by throwing forward its little 

 seracs. In reality it was in its second childhood, for once 

 it was quite a fine glacier, with a neve on the downs, a 

 great ice-fall over the hyperite precipice, and a snout down 

 by the fjord, where we saw the still existing moraine. Now 



