Note 16 — Chapter VII · Land at Last

“We went on an excursion inland16 yesterday to see what our prospects might be if we should be forced to spend a winter here. I had hoped to find flatter ice farther in, but instead it grew worse and worse the nearer we went to land, and right in by the headland it was towering up, and almost impassable. The ice was piled against the very wall of the glacier. We went up on the glacier and looked at the sound to the north of the headland. A little way in the ice appeared to be flatter, more like fjord-ice, but nowhere could we see lanes where there might be a chance of capturing seal. There was no place for a hut either about here; while, on the other hand, we found on the south side of the headland quite a smiling spot where the ground was fairly level, and where there was some herbage, and an abundance of moss and stones for building purposes. But outside it, again, the ice towered up on the shore in chaotic confusion on all sides. It was a little more level in the direction of the fjord or sound which ran far inland to the south, and there it soon turned to flat fjord-ice; but there were no lanes there either where we could hope to capture seal. There did not seem much prospect of game, but we comforted ourselves with the reflection that there were tracks of bears in every direction, and bears would, in case of necessity, be our one resource for both food and clothes. In the cliffs above us crowds of little auks had their nests, as on all such places that we have passed by. We also saw a fox. The rock formation was a coarse-grained basalt; but by the side of the glacier we discovered a mound of loose, half-crumbled argillaceous schist, in which, however, we did not find any fossils. Some blocks which we thought very much like granite were also strewn about.17 Everywhere along the beach the glaciers were covered with red snow, which had a very beautiful effect in the sunshine.