chap xxiv MOUNT HEDGEHOG 325 



Lacking more definite information, we decided to ascend 

 this valley, steering generally towards the south-east, and 

 hoping to stumble upon our peak somewhere up in the fog. 



After examining the relics of an old blubber-boiling estab- 

 lishment on the coast, we started up the right side of the valley, 

 going sometimes over debris slopes and sometimes on an 

 old lateral moraine ; thus we reached the edge of the glacier. 

 On the way we crossed a small medial moraine, composed 

 entirely of handsome grey marble veined with pink, contri- 

 buted by a small glacier issuing from a steep-sided gorge to 

 the SE. Here we climbed on to the glacier, and entering 

 at the same time into the zone of fog, steered by compass 

 in a south-easterly direction. It was not long before we 

 became involved in a labyrinth of crevasses. They ran, 

 roughly speaking, at right angles to our line of route, so that, 

 prevented as we were by the fog from seeing beyond a 

 short distance ahead, our progress became slower and more 

 laborious. 



My companions had scarcely any previous knowledge of 

 glacier work, and it was with increasing anxiety that I 

 watched our friend the cook with the woollen spats cross 

 each succeeding crevasse. After some time spent in en- 

 deavouring to reach the left side of the glacier, we retraced 

 our steps to the moraine we had abandoned, and continued 

 for some distance along it till forced again on to the ice. 

 Here, however, the gradient was less steep, and the crevasses 

 fewer and narrower. But the surface was snow-covered, and 

 the bridges treacherous in the extreme. In Spitsbergen, as 

 long as the sun is above the horizon in the summer months, 

 the temperature rarely sinks below the freezing-point in the 

 valleys, so that the snow, left unmelted from the previous 

 winter, is usually rotten and unsafe. Thick bridges, which 

 in the Alps would bear a considerable weight even at mid- 

 day, here yield readily to a prod of the axe. Extraordinary 



