The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-04-06
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INTERIOR OF SPITZBERGEN,
Sir Martin Conway Describes 1t, and
starts 81 New Glacial Theory.
From the London Standard

Starts 81 New Glacial Theory.
From the London Standard.
With the aid of series of photos, Sir
Martin Conway enabled members of the
Royal Geographical Society at Burlington
House, last evening, to realize some of the
difficulties and dangers of Arctic explora-
ton. His account was of second visit
made to Spitzbergen in 1897 with Mr. e. j.
Garwood and two Norwegian seamen for
companions. Sir Martin explained that
their object was to Investigate the interior
of parts of the country believed to be 1ov-
cred by so-called finland ice"-that was to
say, by ice sheets of the Greenland char
acter Both Garwood Land and King
James Land were described on the chart
as covered with finland ice" If this
phrase merely meant glaciers, so that it
might be applied to the glaciers of any Gis-
trict of snow mountains such as the Alps
or Caucasus il was a useless phrase, ard
ought to be abolished. Most persons re-
ceived from it a different impression, and
judged 1t, to be descriptive of a complete
and continuous icy mantle enveloping a
whole country, as Greenland, for instance
was enyeloped. AS long however, as a
flowing body of land ice was contained
within definite watersheds and mountain
ranges, is was a glacier and not an ice
sheet The juxtaposition of no matter how
many glaciers did not form an ice sheet.
but merely a glacial area. 1t was neces-
sary, added Sir Martin, to be thus partic-
ular in definition, because he wished to
show that neither Garwood Land nor King
James Land, nor, indeed. any large part of
Spitzbergen, except New Freesland and
Northeast Land, was covered by an ice
CHI Nl1nxr OH frIp Hal 4
mountain areas The discovery of this
fact was the principal geographical result
of the expedition.
The old theory that glaciers excavated
their beds to any considerable extent was
practically abandoned. Its supporters nat
urally considered that the larger the mass
of ice the more vigorous would be it's ex-
cavatng action. A great Arctic ice sheet
was considered to be an extraordinarily
powerful excavator. We now knew that
moving land ice did not operate upon its
bed, but. beyond polishing the surface of
the rock 1t covered had mainly a conserv-
alive effect upon it. In the case of a coun-
try like the interior of Greenland, wholly
buried under ice, the buried land surface
was being modelled in the case of a gla-
cial region, where mountains rose above
the ocean level, and where rock faces were
exposed to the rapid denudation of all
snowy regions, great developments of sur
face formation were going forward. Under
an ice sheet the forces acting on the land
surface. were conservative; in the case of
glacial region the acting forces were
formative. Hence the immense Importance
of clearly distinguishing between these
two types of ice-bearing country. II fol-
| lowed from this theory that the distinction
| he had endeaVored to make between an ice
| sheet and a congeries of glaciers was a
distinction of the first Importance, for I'M
! der an ice sheet none of the processes were
| going forward which were vigorously pro-
ceeding in a glacial region. The old idea
Of Spitzbergen was that its interior con-
sisted of a great ice sheet. fringed at the
J edge by a number of DOGGY valleys and
| green hillsdes. Their explorations had
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 to-
ward the east, or whether the west pare
! of the island had merely been longer rails
| ed above the sea than the east part he did
| not attempt to determine. The fact, at any
| rate, seemed TO be that the forces of denu-
| dalton had 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 was most
| developed in the west and became contin-
ualy less developed toward the east All
| down the western region were highly spe-
| cialiZed mountain forms-peaks and ranges
| of considerable abruptness and marked in
| dividuality. As the traveller advanced east
ward the mountains became generally
more rounded, till the original plateau
! form and even parts of the unidentified pla-
teau itself were encountered. The whole
| of the north coast, as might be expected
! bore evidence of a more rigorous climate
| than districts further south. This was spe-
! cially noticed when proceeding down Wilde
| Bay, at whose mouth the snow lay down
to sea level In the month of August. while
| twenty miles in, the snow line was almost
! 1000 feet above sea level. The northern
rim, therefore, might be regarded as a sep
! arate geographical division. AL the north
west angle of the island was region OF
| very bold mountains and large glaciers.
| -S-e-e
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