268 SPITSBERGEN chap, xx 



clown to the water on both sides, and fog fell upon the sea. 

 We plunged into mere grey nothingness, and so passed the 

 narrowest and very shallow part of the strait. A lift of the 

 curtain displayed purple English Bay, with a steepish little 

 glacier tumbling into it from the north. The heavy grey 

 clouds seemed to walk on the sea, on columnar limbs of 

 falling snow, thick, grey, and heavy, like the clouds. The 

 Sound ends between the bold head of Fair Foreland (Vogel- 

 hoek) and the low spit named Quade Hook, where King's 

 and Cross Bays open. They are divided by a fine mountain 

 mass, dark and bold, with many valley-laps in it. Each 

 bay enclosed a separate storm, so that the promontories 

 only could be descried. 



On we went, almost due north, now in the open sea, 

 and once more in fog so thick that the land was seldom 

 visible. Only three of the so-called Seven Icebergs were 

 seen. They are low, wide, gently-sloping glaciers of the 

 normal type, some pushing crescent-fronted ice-cliffs into 

 the sea, others with pudding-ends stopping short of the 

 waters on a debris flat. Thin splintered ridges divide one 

 glacier from another, and all, I believe, drain the inland 

 ice-sheet lying between the coast and Liefde Bay. Of the 

 nature of this ice-sheet nothing is known. Looking up 

 Cross Bay, we afterwards learned that deep valleys, separated 

 by rugged ranges, penetrate far inland to the north. They 

 are the orographical continuation of the high land east of 

 Dutch Bay. It may be that these mountains form a back- 

 bone dividing the ice into two separate sheets. Large 

 glaciers in Spitsbergen do not necessarily imply the exist- 

 ence of large, or indeed of any, neves. An Alpine traveller 

 finds the realisation of this fact difficult. Seven such snouts 

 in the Alps would prove the existence of a feeding snow- 

 field as large as the whole Bernese Oberland. In Spits- 

 bergen nothing of the kind need be postulated. 



