434 THE GERMAN ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



mountainous country, separated by a large Fjord, and 

 extending for sixty miles witli glaciers and mountain 

 tops, which we estimated at 6500 feet high. From the 

 direction of some of these fjords, we conjectured that the 

 one at the back of Ardencaple Bay communicated with 

 the sounds of Bessel and Dove Bays. 



On all sides the chain was of wonderful beauty. Glacier 

 cascades, more than a mile broad, fell from a snow plateau 

 4800 feet high, in the north-west. Icebergs of monstrous 

 height, which on that very account we mistook for islands, 

 were iced up in the interior of the bays. 



The rocks of East Island were polished to the summit, 

 and cast in the most picturesque forms, and often, sup- 

 ported only by a small stone, huge erratic blocks rested on 

 the ridges. These blocks had evidently fallen in the place 

 and spot, and had not rolled there. Once, perhaps, they 

 had been borne by ice-floes, dropped to the bottom of the 

 sea, and this, in the course of time, had risen, or else the 

 level of the sea might have sunk. At least, this seemed 

 the only feasible explanation of their erratic appearance 

 on the summit itself. 



Several hours' drawing and work with the theodolite 

 had completely numbed me by the time we left the moun- 

 tain, the snowy slopes of which bore traces of bears and 

 ptarmigan. 



On the 10th of April we kept in an easterly direction, 

 towards the north end of the most northerly of the 

 Koldewey Islands. Violently drifting snow, with heavy 

 atmosphere, increased snow-bhndness, and drowsiness 

 paralyzed all of us. Nearly the whole day long did we 

 take a .picture produced by the Fata Morgana for real 

 land. Cape Heligoland, the north-west corner of the 



