Arctic Lands—Greenland—Spitzbergen—Iceland—Its Volcanic Phenomena and Geysers—Jan Mayen’s Land—New Siberian Islands—Antarctic Lands—Victoria Continent.

Greenland, the most extensive of the Arctic lands, begins with the lofty promontory of Cape Farewell, the southern extremity of a group of rocky islands, which are separated by a channel five miles wide from a table-land of appalling aspect, narrow to the south, but increasing in breadth northward to a distance of which only 1300 miles are known. This table-land is bounded by mountains rising from the deep in mural precipices, which terminate in needles and pyramids, or in parallel terraces, of alternate snow and bare rock, occasionally leaving a narrow shore. The coating of ice is so continuous and thick that the surface of the table-land may be regarded as one enormous glacier, which overlaps the rocky edges and dips between the mountain-peaks into the sea.

The coasts are beset with rocky islands, and cloven by fiords, which in some instances wind like rivers for 100 miles into the interior. These deep inlets of the sea, now sparkling in sunshine, now shaded in gloom, are hemmed in by walls of rock often 2000 feet high, whose summits are hid in the clouds. They generally terminate in glaciers, which are sometimes forced on by the pressure of the upper ice-plains till they fill the fiord, and even project far into the sea like bold headlands, when, undermined by the surge, huge masses of ice fall from them with a crash like thunder, making the sea boil. These icebergs, carried by currents, are stranded on the Arctic coast, or are drawn into lower latitudes. The ice is very transparent and compact in the Arctic regions; its prevailing tints are blue, green, and orange, which, contrasted with the dazzling whiteness of the snow and the gloomy hue of the rocks, produce a striking effect.

A great fiord in the 68th parallel of latitude is supposed to extend completely across the table-land, dividing the country into south and north Greenland, which last extends indefinitely towards the pole; but it is altogether inaccessible from the frozen sea and the iron-bound shore, so that, excepting a very small portion of the coast, it is an unknown region.

In some sheltered spots in south Greenland, especially along the borders of the fiords, there are meadows where the service-tree bears fruit, beech and willow trees grow by the streams, but not taller than a man; still farther north the willow and juniper scarcely rise above the surface; yet this country has a flora peculiar to itself. South of the island of Disco on the west coast, Danish colonies and missionaries have made settlements on some of the islands and at the mouths of fiords; the Esquimaux inhabit the coasts even to the extremity of Baffin’s Bay.

The pelasgic islands in the Arctic Ocean are highly volcanic, with the exception of Spitzbergen. In the island of Spitzbergen the mountains spring sharp and grand from the margin of the sea in dark gloomy masses, mixed with pure snow and enormous glaciers, presenting a sublime spectacle. Seven valleys filled by glaciers ending at the sea form a remarkable object on the east coast. One of the largest masses of ice seen by Captain Scoresby on the island was north of Horn Sound: it extended 11 miles along the shore, with a sea-face in one part more than 2000 feet high, from which he saw a huge fragment hurled into the sea, which it lashed into vapour, as it broke into a thousand pieces. The sun is not seen for several months in the year, when the intensity of the cold splits rocks, and makes the sea reek like a boiling caldron. Many have perished in the attempt to winter in this island, yet a colony of Russian hunters and fishermen lead a miserable existence there, within 10° of the pole, the most northern inhabited spot on the globe.

Although the direct rays of the sun are powerful in sheltered spots within the Arctic Circle, the thermometer does not rise above 45° of Fahrenheit. July is the only month in which snow does not fall, and in the end of August the sea at night is covered with a thin coating of ice, and a summer often passes without one day that can be called warm. The snow-blink, the aurora, the stars, and the moon, which appears ten or twelve days without intermission in her northern declination, furnish the greatest light the inhabitants enjoy in their long winter.

Iceland is 200 miles east from Greenland, and lies south of the Arctic Circle, which its most northern part touches. Though a fifth part larger than Ireland, not more than 4000 square miles are habitable, all beside being a chaos of volcanos and ice.

The peculiar feature of Iceland lies in a trachytic region which seems to rest on an ocean of fire. It consists of two vast parallel table-lands covered with ice-clad mountains, stretching from N.E. to S.W. through the very centre of the island, separated by a longitudinal valley nearly 100 miles wide, which reaches from sea to sea. These mountains assume rounded forms, with long level summits or domes with sloping declivities, as in the trachytic mountains of the Andes and elsewhere; but such huge masses of tufa and conglomerate project from their sides in perpendicular or overhanging precipices, separated by deep ravines, that the regularity of their structure can only be perceived from a distance; they conceal under a cold and tranquil coating of ice the fiery germs of terrific convulsions, sometimes bursting into dreadful activity, sometimes quiescent for ages. The most extensive of the two parallel ranges of Jockuls or Ice Mountains runs along the eastern side of the valley, and contains Ordefa, the highest point in Iceland, seen like a white cloud from a great distance at sea; the western high land passes through the centre of the island.

Glaciers cover many thousand square miles in Iceland, descending from the mountains, and pushing far into the low lands. This tendency of the ice to encroach has very materially diminished the quantity of habitable ground, and the progress of the glaciers is facilitated by the influence of the ocean of subterranean fire, which heats the superincumbent ground, and loosens the ice.

The longitudinal space between the mountainous table-lands is a low valley 100 miles wide, extending from sea to sea, where a substratum of trachyte is covered with lava, sand, and ashes, studded with low volcanic cones. It is a tremendous desert, never approached without dread even by the natives—a scene of perpetual conflict between the antagonist powers of fire and frost, without a drop of water or a blade of grass; no living creature is to be seen—not a bird, nor even an insect. The surface is a confused mass of streams of lava rent by crevices; and rocks piled on rocks, and occasional glaciers, complete the scene of desolation. As herds of reindeer are seen browsing on the Iceland moss that grows plentifully at its edges, it is presumed that some unknown parts may be less barren. The extremities of the valley are more especially the theatres of perpetual volcanic activity. At the southern end, which opens to the sea in a wide plain, there are many volcanos, of which Heckla is most known, from its insulated position, its vicinity to the coast, and its tremendous eruptions. Between the years 1004 and 1766 twenty-three violent eruptions have taken place, one of which continued six years, spreading devastation over a country once the abode of a thriving colony, now covered with lava, scoria, and ashes: in the year 1846 it was in full activity. The eruption of the Skaptar Jockul, which broke out on the 8th of May, 1783, and continued till August, is one of the most dreadful recorded. The volcanic fire must have been in fearful commotion under Europe, for a tremendous earthquake ruined a wide extent of Calabria that year, and a submarine volcano had been burning fiercely for many weeks in the ocean, 30 miles from the south-west cape of Iceland. Its fires suddenly ceased, the island was shaken by earthquakes, when, at the distance of 150 miles, they burst forth with almost unexampled fury in Skaptar. The sun was hid many months by dense clouds of vapour, which extended to England and Holland, and clouds of ashes were carried many hundreds of miles to sea. The quantity of matter thrown out in this eruption was computed at fifty or sixty thousand millions of cubic yards. The lava flowed in a stream in some places from 20 to 30 miles broad, and of enormous thickness, which filled the beds of rivers, poured into the sea nearly 50 miles from the places of its eruption, and destroyed the fishing on the coast. Some rivers were heated to ebullition, others dried up; the condensed vapour fell in snow and torrents of rain; the country was laid waste; famine and disease ensued; and in the course of the two succeeding years 1300 people and 150,000 sheep and horses perished. The scene of horror was closed by a dreadful earthquake. Previous to the explosion an ominous mildness of temperature indicated the approach of the volcanic fire towards the surface of the earth; similar warnings had been observed before in the eruptions of Heckla.

A semicircle of volcanic mountains on the eastern side of the Lake Myvatr is the focus of the igneous phenomena at the northern end of the great central valley. Leirhnukr and Krabla, on the N.E. of the lake, have been equally formidable. After years of quiescence they suddenly burst into violent eruption, and poured such a quantity of lava into the lake Myvatr, which is 20 miles in circumference, that the water boiled many days. There are other volcanos in this district no less formidable. Various caldrons of boiling mineral pitch, the shattered craters of ancient volcanos, occur at the base of this semicircle of mountains, and also on the flanks of Mount Krabla: these caldrons throw up jets of the dark matter, enveloped in clouds of steam, at regular intervals, with loud explosion. That which issues from the crater of Krabla must, by Mr. Henderson’s description, be one of the most terrific objects in nature.

The eruptive boiling springs of Iceland are perhaps the most extraordinary phenomena in this singular country. All the great aqueous eruptions occur in the trachytic formation; they are characterized by their high temperature, by holding siliceous matter in solution, which they deposit in the form of siliceous sinter, and by the discharge of sulphuretted hydrogen gas. Numerous instances of spouting springs occur at the extremities of the great central valley, especially at its southern end, where more than fifty have been counted in the space of a few acres—some constant, others periodical—some merely agitated, or stagnant. The Great Geyser and Strokr, 35 miles north-west from Heckla, are the most magnificent; at regular intervals they project large columns of boiling water 100 feet high, enveloped in clouds of steam, with tremendous noise. The tube of the Great Geyser whence the jet issues is about 10 feet in diameter and 75 feet deep; it opens into the centre of a basin 4 feet deep and between 46 and 50 feet in diameter: as soon as the basin is filled by the boiling water that rises through the tube, explosions are heard, the ground trembles, the water is thrown to the height of 100 or 150 feet, followed by large volumes of steam. No farther explosion takes place till the empty basin and tube are again replenished.

MM. Descloiseaux and Bunsen, who visited Iceland in 1846, found the temperature of the Great Geyser, at the depth of 72 feet, before a great eruption, to be 260¹/₂° of Fahrenheit, and after the eruption 251¹/₂°; an interval of 28 hours passed without any eruption. The Strokr (from stroka, to agitate), 140 yards from the Great Geyser, is a circular well, a little more than 44 feet deep, with an orifice of 8 feet, which diminishes to little more than 10 inches at a depth of 27 feet. The surface of the water is in constant ebullition, while at the bottom the temperature exceeds that of boiling water by about 24°. By the experiments of M. Donny of Ghent, water long boiled becomes more and more free from air, by which the cohesion of the particles is so much increased that when it is exposed to a heat sufficient to overcome the force of cohesion, the production of steam is so instantaneous and so considerable as to cause explosion. To this cause he ascribes the eruptions of the Geysers, which are in constant ebullition for many hours, and become so purified from air, that the strong heat at the bottom at last overcomes the cohesion of the particles, and an explosion takes place. The boiling spring of Tunquhaer, in the valley of Reikholt, is remarkable from having two jets, which play alternately for about four minutes each. Some springs emit gas only, or gas with a small quantity of water. Such fountains are not confined to the land or fields of ice; they occur also in the sea, and many issue from the crevices in the lava-bed of Lake Myvatr, and rise in jets above the surface of the water.

A region of the same character with the mountains of the Icelandic desert extends due west from it to the extremity of the long narrow promontory of the Sneefield Syssel, ending in the snow-clad cone of the Sneefield Jockul, 5000 feet high, one of the most conspicuous mountains in Iceland.

With the exception of the purely volcanic districts described, trap-rocks cover a great part of Iceland, which have been formed by streams of lava at very ancient epochs, occasionally 4000 feet deep.

The dismal coasts are torn in every direction by fiords, penetrating many miles into the interior, and splitting into endless branches, in these fissures the sea is still, dark, and deep, between walls of rock 1000 feet high. The fiords, however, do not here, as in Greenland, terminate in glaciers, but are prolonged in narrow valleys, through which streams and rivers run to the sea. In these valleys the inhabitants have their abode, or in meadows which have a transient verdure along some of the fiords, where the sea is so deep that ships find safe anchorage.

In the valleys on the northern coast, near as they approach to the Arctic Circle, the soil is wonderfully good, and there is more vegetation than in any other part of Iceland, with the exception of the eastern shore, which is the most favoured portion of this desolate land. Rivers abounding in fish are much more frequent there than elsewhere; willows and juniper adorn the valleys, and birch-trees, 20 feet high, grow in the vale of Lagerflest, the only place which produces them large enough for house-building, and the verdure is fine on the banks of those streams which are heated by volcanic fires.

The climate of Iceland is much less rigorous than that of Greenland, and it would be still milder were not the air chilled by the immense fields of ice from the Polar Sea which beset its shores.

The inhabitants are supplied with fuel by the Gulf Stream, which brings drift-wood in great quantities from Mexico, the Carolinas, Virginia, the river St. Lawrence, and some even from the Pacific Ocean is drifted by currents round by the northern shores of Siberia. The mean temperature in the south of the island is about 39° of Fahrenheit, that of the central districts 36°, and in the north it is rarely above the freezing point. The cold is most intense when the sky is clear, but that is a rare occurrence, as the wind from the sea covers mountain and valley with thick fog. Hurricanes are frequent and furious; and although thunder is seldom heard in high latitudes, Iceland is an exception, for tremendous thunder-storms are not uncommon there—a circumstance no doubt owing to the volcanic nature of that island, as lightning accompanies volcanic eruptions everywhere. At the northern end of the island the sun is always above the horizon in the middle of summer, and under it in mid-winter, yet there is no absolute darkness.

The island of Jan Mayen lies midway between Iceland and Spitzbergen; it is the most northern volcanic country known. Its principal feature is the volcano of Beerenberg, 6870 feet high, whose lofty snow-capped cone, apparently inaccessible, has been seen to emit fire and smoke. It is flanked by enormous glaciers, like frozen cataracts, which occupy three hollows in an almost perpendicular cliff, which descends from the base of the mountain to the sea.

The group of New Siberian Islands, which lie north of the province of Yakutsk, and in about 78° of N. lat., have so rude a climate that they have no permanent inhabitants; they are remarkable for the vast quantity of fossil bones they contain: the elephant’s tusks found there have for years been an article of commerce.

The south polar lands are equally volcanic, and as deeply ice-bound, as those to the north. Victoria Land, which from its extent seems to form part of a continent, was discovered by Sir James Ross, who commanded the expedition sent by the British government in 1839 to ascertain the position of the south magnetic pole. This extensive tract lies under the meridian of New Zealand; Cape North, its most northern point, is situate in 70° 31' S. lat., and 165° 28' E. long. To the west of that cape the northern coast of this new land terminates in perpendicular ice-cliffs, from 200 to 500 feet high, stretching as far as the eye can reach, with a chain of grounded icebergs extending for miles from the base of the cliffs, all of tabular form, and varying in size from one to nine or ten miles in circumference. A lofty range of peaked mountains rises in the interior at Cape North, covered with unbroken snow, only relieved from uniform whiteness by shadows produced by the undulations of the surface. The indentations of the coast are filled with ice many hundreds of feet thick, which makes it impossible to land. To the east of Cape North the coast trends first to S.E. by E. and then in a southerly direction to 78¹/₄° of S. lat., at which point it suddenly bends to the east, and extends in one continuous vertical ice-cliff to an unknown distance in that direction. The first view of Victoria Land is described as most magnificent. “On the 11th of January, 1841, in about latitude 71° S. and longitude 171° E., the Antarctic continent was first seen, the general outline of which at once indicated its volcanic character, rising steeply from the ocean in a stupendous mountain-range, peak above peak enveloped in perpetual snow, and clustered together in countless groups resembling a vast mass of crystallization, which, as the sun’s rays were reflected on it, exhibited a scene of such unequalled magnificence and splendour as would baffle all power of language to portray, or give the faintest conception of. One very remarkable peak, in shape like a huge crystal of quartz, rose to the height of 7867 feet, another to 9096, and a third to 8444 feet above the level of the sea. From these peaks ridges descended to the coast, terminating abruptly in bold capes and promontories, whose steep escarpments, affording shelter to neither ice nor snow, alone showed the jet black lava or basalt, which reposed beneath the mantle of eternal frost.”... “On the 28th, in lat. 77° 31' and long. 167° 1', the burning volcano, Mount Erebus, was discovered, covered with ice and snow from its base to its summit, from which a dense column of black smoke towered high above the other numerous lofty cones and crateriferous peaks with which this extraordinary land is studded from the 72d to the 78th degree of latitude. Its height above the sea is 12,367 feet, and Mount Terror, an extinct crater near to it, which has doubtless once given vent to fires beneath, attains an altitude little inferior, being 10,884 feet in height, and ending in a cape, from which a vast barrier of ice extended in an easterly direction, checking all farther progress south. This continuous perpendicular wall of ice, varying in height from 200 to 100 feet, its summit presenting an almost unvarying level outline, we traced for 300 miles, when the pack-ice obstructed all farther progress.”^[89]

The vertical cliff in question forms a completely solid mass of ice about 1000 feet thick, the greater part of which is below the surface of the sea; there is not the smallest appearance of a fissure throughout its whole extent, and the intensely blue sky beyond indicated plainly the great distance to which the ice-plains reach southward. Gigantic icicles hang from every projecting point of the icy cliff, showing that it sometimes thaws in these latitudes, although in the month of February, which corresponds with August in England, Fahrenheit’s thermometer did not rise above 14° at noon. In the North Polar Ocean, on the contrary, streams of water flow from every iceberg during the summer. The whole of this country is beyond the pale of vegetation: no moss, not even a lichen, covers the barren soil where everlasting winter reigns. Parry’s Mountains, a lofty range, stretching south from Mount Terror to the 79th parallel, is the most southern land yet discovered. The South Magnetic Pole, one of the objects of the expedition, is situate in Victoria Land, in 75° 5' S. lat., and 154° 8' E. long., according to Sir James C. Ross’s observations.

Various tracts of land have been discovered near the Antarctic Circle, and within it, though none in so high a latitude as Victoria Land. Whether they form part of one large continent remains to be ascertained. Discovery ships sent by the Russian, French, and American governments have increased our knowledge of these remote regions, and the spirited adventures of British merchants and captains of whalers have contributed quite as much.^[90] The land within the Antarctic Circle is generally volcanic, at least the coast-line, which is all that is yet known, and that, being covered with snow and ice, is destitute of vegetation. [The land described by Sir James Ross as Victoria Land, was, in fact, discovered by the U. S. Exploring Expedition, under the command of Charles Wilkes, Esq., U. S. Navy. He says:—“That land does exist within the Antarctic Circle is now confirmed by the united testimony of both French and English navigators. D’Urville, the celebrated French navigator, within a few days after land was seen by the three vessels of our squadron, reports that his boats landed on a small point of rocks, at the place (as I suppose) which appeared accessible to us in Piner’s Bay, whence the Vincennes was driven by a violent gale; this he called Clarie Land, and testifies to his belief of the existence of a vast tract of land, where our view of it has left no doubt of its existence. Ross, on the other hand, penetrated to the latitude of 79° S. in the succeeding year, coasted for some distance along a lofty country connected with our Antarctic Continent, and establishes beyond all cavil the correctness of our assertion that we have discovered, not a range of detached islands, but a vast Antarctic Continent. How far Captain Ross was guided in his search by our previous discoveries will best appear by reference to the chart, with a full account of the proceedings of the squadron, which I sent to him, and which I have inserted in Appendix XXIV., and Atlas. Although I have never received any acknowledgment of their receipt from him personally, yet I have heard of their having reached his hands a few months prior to his Antarctic cruise.”]—Wilkes’s “Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition,” vol. ii., p. 281-2.