40 



NATURE 



{Nov. 8, 1883 



that of the ridges on the border of the glaciers, as well as 

 in equal quantity on the top of the icc-knoUs as on their 

 sides or in the hollows between them. 



2. That neither had it been distributed over the surface 

 of the ice by running water, nor been pressed up from 

 the hypothetical bottom " ground " moraine. 



3. That the clay must therefore be a sediment from the 

 air, the chief constituent of which is probably terrestrial 

 dust spread by the wind over the surface of the ice. 



4. That cosmic elements exist in this substance, as it 

 contained molecules of metallic iron which could be 

 drawn out by the magnet, and which under the blowpipe 

 gave a reaction of cobalt and nickel. 



Under these circumstances the remarkable dust which I 

 have named " kryokonite," i.e. ice dust, obtained a great 

 scientific interest, particularly as the cosmic element, viz. 

 the matter deposited from space, was very considerable. 

 Even later students who have visited the inland ice have 

 observed this dust, but in places surrounded by mountains 

 from which it might with more probability have been 

 washed down. They have, therefore, and without having 

 examined Prof. Berggren's and my own researches of 1 870, 

 paid little attention to the same, while the samples brought 

 home by Dr. N. O. Hoist from South Greenland in 18S0 

 were not very extensive. 



But now Dr. Berlin brings home from a great variety of 

 places ice algae, which, I feel convinced, will contribute 

 fresh materials to our knowledge of the flora of the ice 

 and snow. For my own part I have re examined my first 

 researches of the kryokonite, and they are fully corrobor- 

 ated. Everywhere wbere the snow from last winter 

 has melted away, a fine dust, gray in colour, and, when 

 wet, black or dark brown, is distributed over the inland 

 ice in a layer which I should estimate at from o'l to 

 I mm. in thickness if it was evenly distributed over the 

 entire surface of the ice. It appears in the same quantity 

 in the vicinity of the ice border surrounded by mountains 

 as a hundred kilometres inland, but in the former locality 

 it is mixed with a very fine sand, gray in colour, which 

 may be separated from the kryokonite. Further inland 

 this disappears, however, completely. Gravel or real 

 sand I have never, in spite of searching for them, dis- 

 covered in the kryokonite. The kryokonite always contains 

 very fine granular atoms, which are attracted by the mag- 

 net, and which, as may be demonstrated by grating in an 

 agate mortar and by analysis under the blowpipe, consist 

 ot a gray, metallic element, viz. nickel iron In general 

 the dust is spread equally over the entire surface of the 

 ice ; thus it was found everywhere where the snow from 

 the previous year had melted away, while, to judge by 

 appearances, there seemed to be little difference between 

 the quantity found near the coast and in the interior. The 

 dust does not, howe^'cr, form a continuous layer of clay, 

 but has, by the melting of the ice, collected in cavities 

 filled with water, which are found all over the surface. 

 These are round, sometimes semicircular, one to three 

 feet in depth, with a diameter of from a couple of milli- 

 metres to one metre or more. At the bottom a layer of 

 kryokonite one to four millimetres in thickness is deposited, 

 which has often, by organisms and by the wind, been 

 formed into little balls, and everywhere where the original 

 surface of the ice has not been changed by water-currents 

 the cavities are found so close to each other that it would 

 be very difficult to find a spot on the ice as large as the 

 crown of a hat free from them. In the night, at a few 

 degrees below freezing point, new ice forms on these 

 hollows, but they do not freeze to the bottom even under 

 the severest frost, and the sheet which covers them is 

 never strong enough to support a man, more particularly 

 if the hole is, as was the case during half our journey, 

 covered with a few inches of newly-fallen snow. 



The kryokonite cavities were perhaps more dangerous 

 to our expedition than anything else we were exposed to. 

 We passed, of course, a number of crevasses without 



bottom as far as the eye could penetrate, and wide 

 enough to swallow up a man, but they were "open," i.e. 

 free from a cover of snow, and could with proper caution 

 be avoided, and the danger of these could further be 

 minimised by the sending of the two-men sledges in front, 

 and if one of the men fell into the crevasse he was sup- 

 ported by the runners and the alpenstock, which always 

 enabled him to get up on the ice again. But this was far 

 from being the case with the kryokonite hollows. These lie, 

 with a diameter just large enough to hold the foot, as close 

 to one another as the stumps of the trees in a felled forest, 

 and it was therefore impossible not to stumble into them 

 at every moment, which was the more annoying as it 

 happened just when the foot was stretched for a step for- 

 ward, and the traveller was precipitated to the ground, 

 with his foot fastened in a hole three feet in depth. The 

 worst part of our journey was four days outward and 

 three days of the return, and it is not too much to say 

 that each one of us during these seven days fell a 

 hundred times into these cavities, viz. for all of us 7000 

 times. I am only surprised that no bones were broken, 

 an accident which would not only have brought my ex- 

 ploration to an abrupt close, but might have had the most 

 disastrous consequences, as it would have been utterly 

 impossible to have carried a man in that state back to 

 the coast. One advantage the kryokonite cavities had, 

 however, viz. of offering us the purest drinking-water 

 imaginable, of which we fully availed ourselves without 

 the least bad consequences, in spite of our perspiring 

 state. 



On July 16 we covered thirteen, on the 17th eighteen 

 and a half, and on the i8th seventeen and a half kilometres. 

 The country, or more correctly the ice, now gradually 

 rose from 965 to 12 13 metres. The distances enumerated 

 show that the ice became more smooth ; but the road 

 was still impeded by the kryokonite cavities, whereas the 

 rivers, which even here were rich in water, became shal- 

 lower, but stronger, thus easier of crossing. Our road 

 was, besides, often cut off by immense snow-covered 

 crevasses, which, however, did not cause much trouble. 



On the night of the 18th, when arrived at camp No. 

 14, the Lapp Anders came to me and asked if he might be 

 permitted to "have a run," viz. to make a reconnaissance 

 on "skidor,"' to see if there was no "land" to the east. 

 This granted, he started off without awaiting supper. He 

 came back after six hours' absence, and reported that he 

 had reached 27 kilometres further east, that the ice 

 became smoother, but was still rising, but there was no 

 sign of "land." If his statement was true, he had, after 

 a laborious day's journey, in six hours covered about 

 sixty kilometres ! At first I considered his estimate 

 exaggerated, but it proved to be perfectly correct. It 

 took us thus two -luholc days to reach as far as he had 

 got, as shown by the track in the snow. I particularly 

 mention this occurrence in order to show that the Lapps 

 really did cover the estimated distance of their journey 

 eastward, of which more below. 



During these days we passed several lakes, some 

 of which had the appearance of not flowing away in the 

 winter, as we found here large ice blocks several feet in 

 diameter, screwed up on the shore, which circumstance I 

 could only e.xplain by assuming that a large quantity of 

 water still remained here when the pools about became 

 covered with new ice. The lakes are mostly circular, 

 and their shores formed a snow " bog" which was almost 

 impassable with the heavy sledges. 



On July 19 we covered seventeen and a half, on the 

 20th sixteen and a half, on the 21st, seven, and on 

 the 22nd seven and a half kilometres (15th to iSth 

 camp). The ice rose between them from 1213 to 1493 



■ [The Swedish "skidur" and Norwegian '' .Ski," are long strips of pine- 

 wood slightly bent at the top. polished and as elastic as if they were of the 

 finest steel, with a strap for the feet in the centre, on which the Lapps and 

 Scandinavians run on the snow with remarkahle agility at a tremendous 

 pace. — Ed.] 



