3 o6 SPITSBERGEN chap, xxii 



was becoming tired of the sulking cloud-roof, the blustery 

 chilly south-east wind, and the splashing sea. Restless water 

 in front, a band of black and white beyond, and then the 

 long grey firmament — the combination was becoming weari- 

 some. I longed to be on solid earth again. 



When Gregory had landed, running was made for the 

 north end of Axel Island. This long, low, carboniferous rock, 

 rising at its highest but a few metres above sea level, and 

 separated at both extremities from the land by narrow 

 channels, almost blocks the entrance to Low Sound. At 

 one time it must have been continuous with the hills 

 north and south. The ancient glacier that filled Low Sound 

 perhaps helped to tear it down, taking advantage of the ver- 

 tical dip of its slab-like strata, so similar in arrangement to 

 the rocks of the Karakorams, which ice also breaks away 

 when it flows across their strike. When the Low Sound glacier 

 departed, water denuded the soft horizontally stratified rocks 

 and cut gorges at both ends of what became an island when 

 the whole was depressed, and the sea ran in and filled the 

 valley. 



It is for geologists to say whether Axel Island corresponds 

 in nature, as it certainly corresponds in form, with the 

 transverse submarine rock-bars across the mouths of several 

 Norwegian and Scotch fjords. Once this island must have 

 been below sea level, and formed just such a submerged bar. 

 It has risen above the surface with the general elevation of 

 the land now observable in Spitsbergen. There is a similar 

 though less level-topped bar across the mouth of Van Keulen 

 Bay. If the early charts are to be trusted, the channels north 

 and south of Axel Island were considerably wider in the 

 seventeenth century than they are to-day. 



All the bays in the west coast of Spitsbergen are sub- 

 merged river valleys, and the rivers that formed them had, as 

 they still have, easy work in cutting down the soft horizontally 



