The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume XII, No. 2 [‎277r] (56/154)

AN EXPLORATION IN 1897 OF SOME OF THE GLACIERS OF SPITSBERGEN. 147
would have cut back and produced the mountain and valley forms that
we see in these cases, if water did not anticipate them. That glaciers
do not excavate their beds to any considerable extent is now practically
admitted; but that, by acting as carrying agents, they eat back into the
mountain-masses they drain, and thus perform a great function in the
processes which go to the shaping of mountains, is a fact which I think
has not been sufficiently emphasized. It follows that the distinction I
have endeavoured to make between an ice-sheet and a congeries of
glaciers is a distinction of the first importance ; for under an ice-sheet
none of the processes are going forward which are vigorously proceeding-
in a glacial region. The old idea of Spitsbergen was that its interior
consisted of a great ice-sheet, fringed at the edge by a number of
boggy valleys and green hillsides. Our explorations have shown the
utter falsity of this conception.
Whether at one time the whole island was enveloped in an ice-sheet
which was gradually withdrawn from the west towards the east, or
whether the west part of the island has merely been longer raised above
the sea than the east part, I do not attempt to determine. The fact, at
any rate, seems to be that the forces of denudation have been longer at
work, or, at any rate, more vigorously at work, all down the west part
of the island, and that the resulting mountain formation is most developed
in the Avest, and becomes continually less developed as you proceed toward
the east. All down the western region you find highly specialized
mountain-forms—peaks and ranges of considerable abruptness and marked
individuality. As you advance eastward the mountains become generally
more rounded, till the original plateau-form, and even parts of the
undenuded plateau itself, are encountered.
Bearing in mind this general structure of the land-surface, it will
now be easy to describe the character of different parts of the main
island. The whole of the north coast, as might be expected, bears
evidence of a more rigorous climate than districts further south. This
was specially noticed by us when proceeding down Wijde bay, at whose
mouth the snow lay down to sea-level in the month of August, whilst,
20 miles in, the snow-line was almost 1000 feet above sea-level. The
northern rim, therefore, may be regarded as a separate geographical
division. At the north-west angle of the island is a region of very bold
mountains and large glaciers. It is well represented by the beautiful
and often described Magdalena bay. Nothing is known about the
interior south-east of it, but some old Dutch charts mark a valley leading
from the east side of Mauritius bay up to a sequestered lake in the
bills. Whether the draughtsman intended his winding valley and river
to represent a glacier and the lake a snow-field, or whether a true lake
and river existed here in the eighteenth century, can only be settled by
an examination of the ground.
Passing southward down the west coast, we come to the seven parallel
L 2