27 
then appeared between the two, and for a while each seemed to 
be floating in the clouds. Our excitement and anxiety, as may 
be easily expected, were intense. The marvellous panoramic 
changes caused by the drifting of the cloudy curtains are far 
beyond my descriptive powers, though I remember much of 
them now. After a gaze of wonder and bewilderment, during 
which the guardian clouds were all dissipated and our work stood 
unfettered before us, we began scrambling at noonday down the 
rugged crags into Midt Maradal. Then we had about a mile to 
walk over horrible débris, and at one o'clock we reached the 
glacier, Midt Maradals bre, at the actual base of the mountain, 
and 4,896 feet from the top. Here we lunched and planned the 
ascent. The guiding was all left to me, as the mountain was 
considered my speciality, though I, of course, consulted the 
others. Skagastélstind heads the valley, and rises majestically 
a good 3,000 feet N.E. out of the well-crevassed glacier I have 
just mentioned, from which side it certainly is inaccessible. On 
the right hand is another small but steep glacier—the Skagas- 
télstinds bre—which does not join the valley in the ordinary 
sensible way, but, like the Matterhorn glacier, it ends abruptly 
at the top of a vertical cliff 60 or 70 feet high, over which the 
stream from the glacier makes a wild waterfall into the snow. 
It was this glacier that I had seen the year before, and taken to 
be a small snow couloir, and our way must lead up there; but 
how? I proposed to Knut that we should cross over the lower 
portion of the great glacier which overlapped the junction of the 
stream from the little glacier with the valley itself, and that then 
we should climb up a gully, which seemed to lead on to our 
intended glacier, in fact it was our only choice. In looking 
upwards, we saw a narrow belt of black rocks at the head of the 
glacier, 1,104 feet from the top of the mountain. This belt 
separates the glacier from a steep snow slope above. Here we 
. apprehended some difficulty, and Knut said, ‘ De kan ikke komme 
frem der,’ (You cannot get forward there), and the snow above 
is much too steep. I replied, which was perfectly true, that it 
was the only way where there was the least chance, and that we 
must try it. Mohn also backed me, as he and I, having both 
seen the mountain from the North, thought that there was not 
the least possibility of mounting it on that side, whilst Knut, 
who had never been near it before, was inclined to think ‘“ our 
best as bad.” The snow slope leads up at a very steep angle 
to a col or skar rather more than 500 feet from the top, though 
from the base we could not see how far the snow slope reached 
up the mountain, a projecting crag hiding it, but we rather 
expected an aréte from the col or a couloir to form our high road 
to the summit. We had no difficulty in crossing the lower 
glacier, and we soon got up the gully, and on a great spur which 
