chap xvn ADVENT POINT 231 



kind host three joints of reindeer and some bottles of beer, 

 enough I should think to keep him going a long time, for 

 he ate less than a bird. The boat was clumsy, deep in the 

 water with its heavy load, but we settled down to work, 

 following a school of white whales, whose long, ugly backs 

 came bulging out of the water one after another in serpentine 

 succession. All the air and surface of the fjord was gay 

 with birds of the usual kinds, but they were so many and 

 so lively — the little auks diving on all sides, the guillemots 

 hurrying about in companies, the fulmar petrels each going 

 about his own business alone. Several fulmars came to look 

 at us and passed close over our heads, perhaps giving a 

 little squeak as they went, the sole note of emotion that this 

 expressionless bird possesses. 



Our first work was to round the delta at the mouth of 

 De Geer Valley. Where streams empty into the fjord, great 

 muddy tongues protrude into the blue waters and wag with 

 the ebb and flow of the tide. The muddy water is a thin 

 film on the top of the blue, and the sculls cut eddies through 

 it and revealed the clearness below. Slow was our progress, 

 yet the bank kept moving by and the view changing. We 

 saw the last of Post Glacier and closed it out. Hyperite 

 Hat came nearer. After two hours' rowing we pulled in 

 at the foot of the promontory, and I landed and climbed it 

 for the view. And what a view it was, from the old 

 tumble-down cairn on the top, built one wonders by whom 

 and what for ! There was no new feature in sight, save 

 some hills near the head of Klaas Billen Bay, hills of rather 

 interesting form, with snow domes above one or two of 

 them, and glaciers and snow cols between. But there is 

 always novelty in every view, for light and air give rise to 

 constant change, and to-day the light was particularly 

 sparkling, and the calm bay flashed back not lines but tiny 

 points of sunshine from its ripples. The Boheman glaciers. 



