612 JOHN J. STEVENSON 



Bohemian, about 25 miles, and stretches back, 12 to 20 miles, to a 

 high ridge, where it may be continuous with the neve basin beyond. 

 This glacier appears to be without a name; it should be dedicated 

 to Nathorst. 



The climatic conditions of Spitzbergen have undergone such 

 change since the glacial period that for a long time the waste has 

 exceeded the snowfall ; evidence of loss is distinct everywhere. Bear 

 Island, 150 miles south from South Cape, while in some respects 

 harsher in climate than is West Spitzbergen, now shows no trace of 

 glacial ice, though a fine trough coming down to sea-level at the north- 

 west corner proves its former existence. Both glaciers in Recherche 

 Bay project into the water with an abrupt face, estimated to be about 

 150 feet high, and fully one mile long in one, two miles in the other; 

 but each of them is retreating on one side, where the boundary curves 

 back on the shore and the surface is gently rounded. This retreat 

 is especially marked in the western glacier, whose lateral moraine on 

 the northerly side extends far out into the bay, while the moraine on 

 the southerly side, medial between it and the greatly diminished 

 middle glacier, is the hook behind which whalers have their anchor- 

 age. Even in the ice- wall the loss is notable; for on the face of the 

 western glacier a great recess appears. A similar story is told by the 

 vast Nathorst Glacier on Icefiord, whose retreat is especially marked 

 on the westerly side near Safe Harbor; while between Bell Sound and 

 Icefiord one sees along the coast the long trough-like valleys, almost 

 wholly devoid of ice, but owing their form to the passage of glaciers. 

 The presence of such fiord valley on the sides of Icefiord, as well as 

 dying glaciers at the heads of that bay's branches, indicate that, at 

 one time, confluent glaciers filled Icefiord and extended seaward. It 

 is equally clear that the same condition existed on Bell Sound. So that 

 the extensive glaciers of West Spitzbergen, like the small glaciers of 

 Norway, must be regarded merely as remnants of a great sheet covering 

 the whole land and extending, finger-like, through gorges into the sea. 



The valleys- are not broad, with gently rounded outline, like very 

 many of those along Storfiord north from Marok, but they have 

 abrupt walls, resembling those of the deeper interior fiords along the 

 Norway coast. In some of the Norwegian valleys, especially along 

 Storfiord, the glaciers have changed the form of the valleys far beyond 



