Sir William Martin Conway

“ Before packing up to descend we all joined in building a big cairn, which, I think, will last for many years. A hurried descent down rocks and screes and a fine ski-slide to camp set the blood circulating merrily in our veins. The tents were just within the margin of a fog, which hung like a veil over the western landscape, where a mottled roof of cloud above the jagged crest of the Cross Bay hills shone golden bright, fading away below into the misty grey foreground of vaguely-outlined, broken ice. ”

“ The drowsily creaking oars at length brought us to the mainland, where camp was quickly pitched on soft ground near a brook. There was no grotto anywhere in the neighbourhood. The slope of Blomstrand’s Mound rose temptingly behind. With plane-table and camera we hastened forth to gain a more commanding panorama. About 500 feet up was a convenient knoll, whence the upper part of the mound was displayed as an undulating plateau bending away to the culminating dome of the hill over a couple of miles of bog land and broken rocks, extraordinarily disagreeable to walk upon. ”

“ We hauled our heavy boat up high and dry with great toil, assembled in our larger tent the baggage we were going to leave behind, arranged the loads for our two sledges, and, in repeated journeys, laboriously dragged and carried them over bog and stones to the foot of the steep moraine, greatly disturbing the minds of a number of terns, who had their nests on the stony ground near the channels of the river. They swooped almost on to our heads, and hovered, screaming frightfully, not more than a yard out of reach. No bird that flies has a more frail or graceful appearance than a tern. ”

“ The culmination of the charm came when the small, partly ice-covered island rose into our foreground, and the surging waves of splintered glacier thrown up behind it contrasted with the smooth wide-spreading snowfields far beyond. The ice-cliff north of the island was more shattered than any we had yet beheld. Here the greatest floating bergs enter the sea. They do not fall into it, but simply float away, [143] being already quite detached from one another by the deep clefts of the ice. ”

“ They appear, moreover, to stand wider apart from one another, and the glacier, filling the valley more deeply, becomes itself considerably wider. Nevertheless, such is the fine form of the mountains that they still appear large, especially to an eye trained in greater ranges. Being themselves magnified, they proportionally magnify the aspect of the glacial expanse, which pretends to be of quite enormous extent—a spotless desert of purest white. The views on all sides were of entrancing beauty, especially the view back down the blue vista of Kings Bay. ”

“ They are far bluer than Alpine crevasses, almost purple indeed, in their depths. Here, of course, on the broken ice were no streams, though below the crevasses there had been so many that the air was filled with their tinkling, whilst the deep bass of moulins was continually heard. Ahead came the clouds, into which the glacier disappeared, the last outlines visible being low white domes of the usual arctic sort. It was pleasant to sit in the still, cool air while ice-lumps were melting and other preparations making for supper. “Look! look!” cried Nielsen, “there is a bird as white as snow.” ”

“ Hunger came to weaken us and double the apparent length of the way. At last we were on the col, but the downward slope was very gentle and the snow now became sticky, so that the ski would not slide. We bore away to the right in search of a steeper incline and struck blue ice covered with mere slush that even the ski sank into. There were dry patches of it, too slippery to stand on; it was a mere alternation of evils. Sometimes we stuck fast and sometimes fell heavily. ”

“ The hidden crevasses over which we slid were countless, but the ski deprived them of all power to injure or annoy. A slide from the rocks to the broad snow-saddle, then the ascent of the Diadem began. We knew that it would present no difficulties below the summit rocks. They were vertical on our side, but there were indications that the snow-slope reached far up them on the other. For some distance we could climb straight ahead; then the slope steepened and we had to zigzag, each man choosing his own route. ”

“ When the sun shines on them as they hover amongst the floating ice-blocks they seem the very incarnation of whatsoever is purest, gentlest, and most fair. But there is in every tern the pugnacity of a bargee and the fractiousness of seven swearing fishwives. They are everlastingly at war with the skuas and the kittiwakes, and they always seem to come off best in an encounter. ”

“ But when a cloud comes over the sun and casts a broad shadow on the névé, the varying illumination of the bending field becomes readily perceptible, though still faint and of marvellous delicacy, and a new order of beauty is revealed. He would be but a starved lover of mountain beauty whose eyes should desire to behold the regions of snow always beneath a cloudless heaven. ”

“ After six hours of hard work we agreed to camp (460 feet) —“the hardest day’s work I’ve done in a long time,” was Nielsen’s comment, and we believed him, for he put his back into it with hearty goodwill. Only when the tents were pitched had we leisure to enjoy the [81] warm sunshine and the exhilarating, absolutely calm air. Out on the ice we could sit in our shirt-sleeves without being chilled. All around spread the great glacier in its beauty; the sky overhead was blue; the bay reflected the sunshine; fleeces of mist adorned the hilltops. ”

“ The sledges seemed to grow heavier and more resistant every hour. One of them, of which the runners were not shod with metal, came to grief at a stream-gully, where it pitched on its nose and smashed a runner. At last the water was left behind and dry ice gained. At the foot of a long, downward slope we found a big, frozen lake that had not yet burst the bonds imposed on it by the previous winter; crossing its rough surface, we climbed on to the moraine beyond, at the foot of the side glacier now to be ascended. ”

“ Garwood and I, for exercise, started out on ski, not daring to go far in the dense fog, for, except by following up the track, it was impossible to find the camp again once it had passed out of sight. With the surface snow in such feathery condition, a track would be obliterated in two minutes, even by a light wind. Caution, therefore, was essential. The calm continuing, we indulged in longer excursions, trudging always uphill, and sliding down again with increasing confidence and ease. Assuredly, for the mere movement, ski-glissading is first-rate fun. ”

“ Enchanting to look upon are these sea-fairies, save to the victim to their embraces. Once inveigled, all their beauty vanishes, for within they are cold, cheerless, and grey, like the depths whence they spring. But to-day they were not destined to advance far. They came up boldly a while, then faltered and turned back, remaining thenceforward among the seracs and crevasses, except a few rambling outliers that floated away over the glacier or hovered as bright islands in hollows of the surface. ”

“ The bed of last year’s streams is of course filled up with hard-frozen snow, so that there is no exit for the waters till the cup is full. The moment it begins to overflow the cutting of the channel takes place. The pent-up waters are let loose and evidently operate with extraordinary force, excavating a deep cañon out of the glacier. The floating ice acquires a momentum, whereby it not merely gets ripped and broken up, but forced forward on to the dry glacier ahead, great tables of it being turned up on end or piled on one another two or three deep. ”

“ No matter how big stone-avalanches may come down the usual ruts, the birds watch them unconcerned. But when a stray stone fell down the cliff in an exceptional direction, the birds flew out in their hundreds and thousands, filling the air with protests, the fulmars swooping around, the little auks darting forth horizontally at a higher level straight out and back again, whilst the glaucous gulls more leisurely floated away on confident wing, their white plumage seeming scarcely more solid than the glowing air which sustained their poise. ”

“ There a frugal luncheon was eaten and pipes duly smoked, and there we left our cards in a crack, for there were no loose stones out of the snow wherewith to build a cairn, nor, if there had been any, was there room enough on the summit for a cairn to stand. In such raw atmosphere, however, motion is needful for enjoyment, so that neither of us was unwilling to commence the descent. Garwood’s notion of traversing the whole length of Mount Hedgehog’s summit-ridge to its north end and descending by another west arête from that point was silently abandoned. ”

“ As our distance from the south shore of the bay increased, the mountains behind it were better seen, and proved to be a fine ridge with many peaks, the watershed between Kings and English bays. A series of glaciers descend in their hollows, but none reach the sea, for there is a broad belt of flat land all along the southern shore. The view up Kings Glacier now became of entrancing beauty as the fog cleared away, and all our peaks from Mount Nielsen round to the Diadem were disclosed. ”

“ Where the descent was made they were relatively small and for the most part wedged with winter snow, strong enough to bear. Leaving the men to guide the sledges down, we gaily shot the slope, crevasses and all, on our ski. Though the ice was rough and much honeycombed, we covered a mile of descent in a few minutes, “everything safely,” as our dragoman used to say on the Nile in a gale of wind. At the foot, where the glacier became more level, prosaic marching order had to be resumed. ”

“ No exploration could be done, because nothing could be seen. We made useless expeditions to Kittiwake Glacier; we scrambled among the Stonehenge Rocks, and otherwise killed time. Thick clouds and the dipping sun made the nights so dark that candles had to be burnt in the tent during several hours. The sea became quite calm; birds seemed to increase in numbers upon the water, as though they were gathering in Horn Sound for their southern flight, just as the whaling fleet in old days used to gather either here or in Bell Sound. ”

“ There is no need to predicate for the glaciers any power of erosion; that is not the way arctic icesheets act, for the upper layers of ice flow over the lower at a far greater speed than is the case in glaciers under lower latitudes. Given an existing cliff, however, with a glacier below it, and the denuding agencies of frost and water at work upon it, that cliff tends to maintain itself and to eat its way back into the mountain mass behind, for its débris fall upon the glacier below and are carried away; they do not pile themselves up into a protecting slope at the base of the cliff. ”

“ The fog soon came down, denser than ever, and lasted the rest of the day. Only by the resistance of the sledges could the steepness of the slope be inferred. There was absolutely nothing to be seen. It is hard for any one who has not experienced it to conceive the absolute invisibility of everything in the rather dazzling light that pervades a fog upon snow. The effect is thus described by Mr. Peary, writing about Greenland: [3]
“Not only was there no object to be seen, but in the entire sphere of vision there was no difference in intensity of light. ”

“ Rocks were here disclosed, so Garwood went off geologising. The rest of us plunged into an island of fog, and hauled on up a steep slope, where the snow became good, and thenceforward remained in perfect condition for ski at that and all higher levels. Without ski it would have been impossible to do much, for we should have sunk up to, or above, the knee in snow, over which, with them, we slid in luxury. Above this slope the fog ended, and a wide, very gently sloping plain of snow followed, stretching afar on all sides. This is the highest basin and gathering ground of the glacier. ”

“ The mountain-tops were hidden. It is their remarkably bold forms that make fair-weather views of the sound so beautiful. All the glaciers, however, were clear of fog. The end of the sound is filled by a very big one; two others, descending from Horn Sunds Tind, jutted out the cliffs of their splintered sea-fronts between the end glacier and our point, whilst a whole series of [164] minor glaciers descend to, or almost to, the sea, along the north shore, the principal one debouching into a fine bay almost opposite to us. ”

“ The only sound heard, besides the screaming of the terns and the boom of the glacier-cliff, was the innumerable ploppings of water against the myriad floating blocks of ice. We landed on another island to cook a meal and survey. The little plants were putting on their autumnal colourings, most of the birds-nests were abandoned, the young broods—alas! sadly few in numbers—disporting themselves in the neighbouring waters. All the islands are [145] smoothed by ice, for the Kings Glacier was once at least 500 feet thicker and very much longer than now. ”

“ We left the sledges lying, and scattered to prospect. A way was eventually discovered whereby, when every one was fairly worn out, the worst part of the ascent was completed. After crossing the last big crevasse, it was agreed that enough had been done. Camp was pitched about 700 feet above the level of the bay.
Now only had we leisure to look about and drink in the fine quality of the scenery; not that a man is blind to scenery when engaged in toilsome physical exertion, but he is incapable of analysing it or noticing its more delicate and evanescent qualities. ”