From a mountain side 1,000 feet above Billen Bay I looked across the blue water laden with bergs toward the ever changing ice cliff and then over the miles of white of the great glacier coming from the inland ice sheet. Here and there nunataks, islands of brown rock, rose above the snow, and coming from each was a long train of dark stones quarried from the cliffs by frost. These curving bands of broken rock sweep down to the fiord and give visible proof that the ice sheet is in motion, and it is this slow onward movement that furnishes the supply for an endless calving of icebergs.

Around the edges of the glacier there was a broad band of bare rock, evidently not long ago covered, showing that at present thawing more than balances the outflow of ice from the glacial cap inland. Still farther away on each side a film of green began to hide the loose moraine, plant life very slowly taking possession of the barren surface set free by a slight improvement of climate.

Manuscript. A.P. Coleman. ca 1931 “Chapter II—Spitzbergen,” in A Geologist’s Adventures in the North. (Typescript): 69 - 70