394 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 



at the edge of a funnel-shaped crater, corresponding to the three outer 

 sides of the hill. The walls of this crater are entirely formed of sand 

 and clay, in which no horizontal stratification can be traced, for all has 

 been washed by snow and water from above downwards into streaks 

 and runnels that lead to the foot. Here is collected a confusion of 

 large stones evidently washed out of the bed in which they lay. The 

 broken fourth side of Sowandeyi is open to the north, and by that exit 

 passes the water which streams from the meltings. 



This double fact of peat-levels and of sandy or clay mounds and 

 ridges finds its exact counterpart on the eastern coast, and in the 

 results of the action of the tides to-day. 



In the first place, you find the wide peat-levels reaching inland 

 fringed on the coast-line with a solid higher rim of sand and clay. And 

 secondly, the process by which these were formed is again repeated tide 

 by tide and month by month outside. 



There is the harbour mud, partly brought down by the streams and 

 partly the result of disintegration of the clay banks by frost, lying — a 

 wide lagoon of mud — within the outer banks of sand. To the south 

 this mud passes insensibly into the peat-levels by a traceable process. 

 First, the mud or ooze, then this growing firmer, filled with roots and 

 covered with grass, and this again giving place to moss and lichen, till 

 the 'peat-hag' itself is formed. Doubtless this rising is partly due to 

 superimposition of material, but to a far greater extent it is to be 

 attributed to the actual rising of the whole area, in agreement with 

 a condition known to be true of the tundra and of Scandinavia to-day. 



The outer sand-banks of which I have spoken (which exactly corre- 

 spond in character with the sand we examined from the soundings 

 outside) are being periodically piled higher by the action of the waves. 

 So rapid is this action round Kolguev Island that the Russians told me 

 that, in the thirty-five years during which they had visited the island, 

 the general relationships of one channel to the other had completely 

 changed. 



The time will come when all this region, now under the influence of 

 the tides, will be added (a new peat level and a new inland beach) to 

 the area of the island. 



Surely therefore, this — taken in connection with the actual geological 



