142 • A VOYAGE TO SPITZBERGEK, ETC. 



killed them all, without one attempting to take wing. The first 

 day's stalking in a broad valley running east from Green Haven 

 produced five Deer, all very fat and in high condition. Their 

 colour was blueish-grey, with a lavender tinge. All their horns 

 were in the velvet, and hundreds of the cast antlers lay scat- 

 tered about in the bed of the small muddy torrent which flowed 

 down the valley. Of birds seen inland Snow Bunting and Purple 

 Sandpiper were most numerous, a nest of the latter, with four 

 eggs, being also found to-day. On the fjord large numbers of 

 Eider Ducks and sea-fowl were shot as an addition to our bill of 

 fare, to which also numerous large Cod-fish caught by lines from 

 the steamer formed a material contribution. 



Other expeditions were made with varying success, and one 

 strange fact in Arctic conditions forced itself rather painfully 

 upon tis. This was that the extreme rarification, or clearness of 

 the atmosphere, practically abolished all appearance of distance, 

 and caused the most extraordinary deceptions. Thus a row 

 across a fjord, which appeared only a couple of hundred yards, 

 would prove to be two or three miles, and hills, etc., at a dis- 

 tance of seven or eight miles appeared to be less than one. These 

 deceptions sometimes entailed very severe work in the long in- 

 land expeditions. We now understood why the old Dutch navi- 

 gators turned back in fear from a land which seemed ever near, 

 yet took days to reach. 



Geologically the formation of "Western Spitzbergen is largely 

 of the Carboniferous period. Strange as the fact may appear to 

 a beholder of its ice-bound shores at the present day, there ap- 

 pears abundant evidence of their having in long-past ages luxuri- 

 ated in the temperate clime and abundant flora of that epoch ; 

 and on several of the sounds outcrops of coal of good quality 

 have been discovered. The hills consist largely of Sandstones 

 and Dolomite, or Mountain Limestone, interspersed with Granite, 

 and dykes of basaltic rock in vertical columns. But more strange 

 still is the fact that the comparatively recent formations of the 

 Miocene, a period almost unevidenced in the British Islands, 

 appears to be largely represented in Spitzbergen on the east 

 coast, though the intermediate periods seem to have left but 



