Chapter VI: Making Winter Quarters at Cape Evans (3)

About three miles beyond Lake Bonney we reached the water parting. The drainage from these high moraines was partly into Lake Bonney and partly to the east. Beyond we could see the valley contracting to a defile while striking knobs—recalling the Bonney Riegel—bounded the narrow gorge and led to terraces about 1700 feet high. To the south, however, an extension of these, 3000 feet high, quite barred the large valley we had just traversed.

It was now nearly six o’clock and my shoulder was aching with my pack. Judging from the readiness of the others to drop their loads, I concluded that they felt the same. But we all had an idea that a few minutes later would give us a view of the Ross Sea. We wondered if we could pass around the snout of the wonderful tributary immediately in front. It opposed a face of ice forty feet high; but just where it butted into the steep south slope of the defile, there was a narrow gap where thaw-ice had filled in the interspaces between the cliff debris. Over this we carried our packs; over this the seals must have laboriously crawled to die further inland. One seal reached no less than twenty miles from the sea, and ascended many hundred feet on its death journey. Another, near Solitary Rocks some ten miles further west, at a height of 2000 feet, may have ascended the Ferrar Glacier—an incredible journey for a marine animal like the seal.

Sketch section across the Taylor Valley at Suess Glacier, showing the
Nussbaum Riegel which bars it.
]

We scrambled up the slippery ice mantle below the snout of the Suess Glacier—as we named this striking glacier—and reached the highest portion of the valley since we had left the Taylor Glacier. The rock slopes looked full of interest. Here were vertical strata of limestone and slate, which were the first sedimentary rocks that we had examined _in situ_. Unfortunately they were so folded and altered that no trace of fossils could be expected.

We could not see the sea from the crest of the defile, where we were about 300 feet up, and so moved east down the other slope. We reached another lake nearly a mile long with a splendid gravelly shore, on which I decided to pitch the tent. We had brought no floorcloth; but after the wet and icy floor in the “alcove” we found the warm gravel most comfortable.

We had a frugal meal of biscuit, butter, and cold water. Our beverage from the lake was distinctly medicinal, and as the latter had no outlet we called it Lake Chad.

I was distinctly troubled over the topography of the day’s march. We had left a huge open valley—a suitable outlet for a large flow of ice like the Taylor Glacier—and had arrived at a narrow defile completely blocked by the tributary Suess Glacier. We reckoned we must be near the sea; but where was the large open moraine-strewn valley described by Professor David in 1908? I wondered if we had got into an unimportant tributary and missed the main outlet of the valley altogether! So after dinner Evans and I made straight for the top of the ridge (immediately south of the tent) which seemed to block the great valley. It was a stiff ascent of 1600 feet over rough blocks of slate. There we reached a flat, bare ridge with a further ascent to 3000 feet a little further west. To my surprise I saw that immediately to the south was a broad high-level valley gradually sloping to the east. I thought at first I was looking into the Ferrar Glacier, but soon saw that here in Antarctica was an example of the extraordinary valleys which are so characteristic of the Italian Alps. As shown by the cross section, the dry valley is barred by a huge Riegel, which is traversed by a deep defile at the north, and scooped out to some extent into a huge elevated, rounded channel on the south. From this ridge, above the mile long defile, Evans and I at last saw the sea gleaming in the east across some twelve miles of moraine-strewn valley.

On the 5th, Wright and Debenham remained near the camp, while Evans and I marched down to the sea to tie the survey on to Ross Island—if we could recognize any portion of that far distant feature. We each carried much gear, and the annexed rough sketch shows how a geologist is loaded when “on trek.”

It was extraordinary to find two more very large tributary glaciers on the south side of the valley—reaching some way into the ice-free main valley, and blocking up the main drainage to form a series of lakes. We named the first the Canada Glacier, and Wright later on clustered the names of various Canadian men of science on the adjoining peaks. The second we called the Commonwealth Glacier; and to the small glacier which we ultimately reached, on the north-east end of the Kukri Range, I gave the name of Wales Glacier, so that our party’s homelands are well represented in Dry Valley! We had to climb 400 feet up the slopes here before we could see anything definite to the east; but then I was able to sight the theodolite on to Mount Bird, Cape Bird, and Beaufort Island. It was a long and rough tramp back—across numerous little streams, running as usual to the north-east,—but we reached camp again at 9 p.m. and turned in thankfully.

After a somewhat _dry_ breakfast, Wright and I took the theodolite up to the top of the Riegel. We climbed some 2400 feet, but did not reach the top of Mount Nussbaum—the central summit,—which I estimated at 3000 feet high. When we reached the scarp facing up the valley to the west the wind was tempestuous, so that we could not stand against it, much less use the theodolite. We sheltered under the lee of some projecting dykes of dark rock for some little time. There came a lull, and almost before we got the theodolite ready the gale had veered to the east—diametrically opposite—and continued to blow almost as fiercely from that quarter. This violent storm would have been unsupportable on the Barrier, but the party in our camp below practically felt none of it. Our apparent fine weather was due less to absence of wind than to the absence of loose snow, and to the abundance of shelter.

I tramped to the south and found that the “Round Valley” ended in a 1700 foot scarp above the trough containing Lake Bonney. There was little wonder that we had not realized on our seaward tramp, _viâ_ the defile, that such a high-level valley existed.

“Anorthoclase” felspar, thrown out of Erebus, 2 inches long. The
characteristic mineral in kenyte.
]

This elevated ridge was comparatively free from debris, but there were huge erratics of granite with large felspar crystals three inches across. They were wonderfully scooped out by the wind, and were nearly twenty feet across in some cases. We also found small kenyte erratics containing large felspar crystals. These may have been carried across from Mount Erebus, or some unknown locality in the south.

After supper I took the prospecting dish (which was the last article purchased in New Zealand) and washed for gold in the gravels alongside the lake. There were numerous quartz “leads” in the slates and metamorphic gneisses, and eruptive rocks and limestone were in the vicinity. This is a juxtaposition which is always promising, and furnishes the “country rock” of most gold fields. But the quartz was too glistening and pure. It had not the “kindly” rusty appearance which the gold-seeker admires, and so I was not very sanguine. However, water was abundant in Lake Chad and I washed out many pans of dirt. The “tails” of heavy sand were not promising, even pyrites and magnetite being almost absent. We knew there would be no water available on the remainder of our journey, so I depôted the “pan” on a boulder by Lake Chad, where some future archæologist will discover striking evidence for the lost kingdom of Sheba!

Next day we started back to Alcove Camp, buoyed by the thought of hot pemmican after nearly a week’s cold “tucker.” We lunched just at the east end of Lake Bonney on our old site below the peak of the Matterhorn. The latter is the most striking mountain in the region. The conical summit (formed of black dolerite columns) perched on a broader granite base, certainly gives it a resemblance to its forerunner in the Alps. We estimated it to be 9000 feet high. Luckily we took careful angles which we worked out later in the hut. To our chagrin all observations resulted in a poor 5000! Such is the effect of lack of trees or any standard of comparison in Antarctic scenery. Continuing west we found that the penguins seemed to have the same queer habits as the seals, for we found a skeleton some fourteen miles from the sea.

We reached Alcove Camp about 5 p.m. and saw that our camp site was ruined by thaw water. We hunted around for a new floor, and the only available one seemed to be a pile of moraine rubble just like a heap of road metal! This we levelled off, and when the ice had melted away in the sun, we pitched our tent upon this stony bed. Then we had a hot meal, much appreciated after our days of cold food.

We were up at 7.20, Greenwich time (really 6.20, local) and shifted our gear from the heap of road metal to the surface of the glacier. We had a good breakfast, though I noted that twelve lumps of sugar did not seem to sweeten the cocoa. It was difficult to move the sledge, for the dark straps had sunk two inches deep in the hard ice and there frozen in again. We managed to get everything ready by 10 a.m., and moved up the glacier. It was very sunny, and Evans wore a huge “Madeira” straw hat, quite a yard across—a queer but useful article that his previous experience had led him to add to his kit.

We had lunch about six miles up the glacier in the medial moraine. I took careful notes of the latter, which differed conspicuously from those of temperate glaciers. It consisted of huge blocks of granite with smaller pieces of dolerite and sandstone. They were often 100 feet apart, so that this moraine compared with Swiss examples was a very “tenuous thread.” Comparatively little material can be supplied to these slow moving or stagnant glaciers, and all the small stones have undoubtedly sunk into the ice long ago.

The upper portion of the Kukri Hills hereabouts showed by the fragments of the Beacon Sandstone torn off by the intrusive eruptive rock dolerite that the latter was newer. The relative ages of the other rocks could be deduced in the same way. For instance, the dolerite sent “dykes” into the granite, so that the latter was older. These points are well shown in the section I sketched.

Near the Solitary Rocks the glacier was moulded into a gigantic furrow or longitudinal undulation. We followed this up toward the ice-falls from the upper glacier and camped for the night on a small patch of snow in the lee of some large boulders of the medial moraine. These boulders had lee-ridges of snow, which, we were interested to see, were generally turned into solid ice and formed part of the glacier itself. This shows that nothing but a maturing process (resembling that of wine!) is necessary to convert snow into glacier ice.

The age of rocks. The granite (Gr.) is the oldest; it is penetrated by
flat sheets of dolerite (D) at the junction with the main mass of
the latter. The beacon sandstone (B.S.) has also been torn up and
surrounded by the dolorite (below A and B), and has probably been
lifted up by the lava (to B.S.). The talus (Ta) of loose rock is the
latest deposit. From a sketch of the new end of the Kukri Hills made
February 1, 1911.
]

Wright and I went over to the Kukri Hills while the others pitched camp. I wished to measure the “lateral moat.” Near the edge of the glacier there was a thick coating of snow. At the actual edge there was a sharp curve downward, and carefully peering over we could see that there was a frozen stream at the bottom of the gully, over 150 feet below us. I determined to measure the slope and angle accurately, and for this we had brought the alpine rope and ice-axes. Wright lowered me over the edge, which I found was a snow cornice projecting over six feet. Under the cornice was a well-defined platform a few feet wide—which, however, narrowed on either side—and then came a long slope to the bottom. Wright paid out the rope, and I let myself down to its end. There I started to cut steps, but unfortunately slipped and fell the last thirty feet—luckily without damage except to my knuckles. I can remember thinking that an ice-axe was an uncomfortable companion in this roll down the slope and so threw it away for fear lest it should claim close acquaintance with my person. The stream was over a hundred feet wide, and then I reached the foot of a steep rocky slope formed of dolerite blocks fallen from a bold crag a few hundred feet up.

I climbed up the glacier side again, and then found that the large snow-shawls of the cornice prevented my getting back—for as Wright hoisted me the rope merely cut deep into the snow and soon my head was pulled into the lower parts of the huge cornice! I crawled along under the cornice, devoutly trusting it would not avalanche on me, but ultimately had to retrace my steps down to the stream. Again I slipped, and this time lost the skin off my other hand as I rolled once more into the moat. Luckily some few hundred yards north I saw a place where the cornice had fallen off, and here I was pulled up by Wright with such vigour that the ice-axe entered my leg!

The huge cross-section of these “moats” is worthy of note. They definitely prove that no _lateral_ erosion of any importance is occurring in this portion of Antarctica. After returning to the tent the glacier treated us to rounds of volley-firing! These were due to the opening of contraction cracks as the ice shrank in the colder night temperatures.

Wright and Evans spent the morning of the 9th over near the ice falls from the upper glacier. These we named after the famous Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge. They had to cross a surface compounded of “plough-shares” and “thumbmarks,” which they found intensely slippery, so that even surefooted Evans fell and nearly broke his elbow.

Debenham and I cracked sandstone boulders, but found nought of interest save worm burrows in some shaly bands. However, these indicate damp conditions for some portions of the Beacon Sandstone, and so show that the latter is not perhaps of desert origin.

The most extraordinary feature in this small ice plateau near Knob Head Mountain is that the moraines here lead down into Taylor Glacier. Hence they cut right across the upper portion of glacier above Cavendish Falls, and show that the ice west of the latter is almost wholly flowing into the Dry Valley region and not into the lower Ferrar, as was supposed. This looks as if the “South Arm” and the glacier from the north side of Mount Lister formed the main supply of the Lower Ferrar, while the northern portion (_née_ Upper Ferrar and Dry Valley) is a distinct glacier now temporarily united with it after the fashion of the Siamese twins. This type of union is by no means unknown, and indeed explains the structure of Lake Luzern—that beautiful high-cragged chain of lake basins in central Switzerland. Here also two independent glaciers (the Reuss and the Aar) cut out deep parallel gorges as they moved to the north.

Plan of the bygone _twin_ glaciers of Lake Luzern, whose overflow led
to the break through the high range near Vitznau. A close parallel
with the conditions near Knob Head between the Ferrar and Taylor
Glaciers.
]

They spread out laterally, and ultimately the Reuss Glacier overflowed to the west, and cut through the high ridge forming the picturesque cliffs of the Rigi and opposite shores.

As I have explained elsewhere (p. 280), when, after our return, I described this interesting parallel between Lake Luzern and the “opposed” glaciers at Knob Head, Captain Scott was good enough to honour me by naming the northern “twin” the Taylor Glacier.

That evening we camped near the ice divide between the glaciers. We had intended to ascend the South Arm, but after making our way in that direction for some time, we saw that a snowstorm was brewing, and so turned towards the Kukri Hills.

They seemed to me less than a mile distant, but knowing the difficulty of judging distances, I suggested we should camp under the slopes, “about a mile and a half on.” Wright, with his Canadian experience, thought this would be well over two miles, and I remember the distance turned out to be three miles! Thereafter I calculated apparent distances with great care, and when convinced I had allowed for everything I would use a “factor of safety” of 3—and come out about right!

Debenham finished cooking, and being already an adept, had very properly saved some “thickers” for his final “flutter” at breakfast. So Wright started with the evening meal. He imparted a scientific and physical aspect to the operation by suggesting a “drop test” to estimate the viscosity of the pemmican; an observation of its meniscus (or curved surface) to see its sticking power; notes on colour and taste; and—added one of his hungry audience—“I suggest 50 per cent. be subtracted from the cook’s allowance on account of grits!”

Perhaps as a result I had a dream in which my astral self did some logical reasoning! It is a fact that the fossils called trilobites gradually become more supple and less clumsily built as one traces them through newer formations. It occurred to me in the dream that this also held true for man and his monkey ancestors, and that the stiff, clumsy orang-outang, etc., developed into the limber human acrobat. Not a very epoch-making correlation, but the best my _astral_ self has accomplished to date!

On the evening of the 10th we reached our depôt at Cathedral Rocks. We could see our flag from five miles off with the glasses. On arrival we found the food uncovered, so that the sun had melted the pemmican and butter. The skua gulls had found the carcase of the Emperor, and our chance of a variation of the menu had departed with the skuas.

That evening we discussed literature. Seaman Evans had read many popular works, and was far superior in this respect to any of the other seamen with whom I had much to do. He had read some of Kipling’s poems, and “had no use for them,” nor did Dickens appeal to him. As was perhaps natural, he preferred books with more “plot” in them; especially did he delight in the works of the French writer whose name he anglicized as Dum—ass!

Our sledging library was quite extensive, for each of us had devoted a pound of our personal allowance to books. I will give the catalogue, if only as a caution to later explorers. Debenham took my Browning and the “Autocrat”; Evans had a William le Queux and the _Red Magazine_; Wright had two mathematical books, both in German; I took Debenham’s Tennyson and three small German books. The _Red Magazine_, the “Autocrat,” and Browning were most often read; Evans’ contribution being an easy winner. Somehow we didn’t hanker after German.

On the 11th Wright and Debenham carried out a very important operation to determine the movement of the Ferrar Glacier. They fixed stakes right across the glacier which were aligned on two prominent peaks. Some six months later Captain Scott re-measured this line, and found that very considerable movement, amounting to thirty feet, had taken place during the winter.

Meanwhile P.O. Evans and I prospected for a route up the steep snow slope of Descent Pass. Evans had been with Armitage when he used this route in 1903. We found the conditions very different. Soon we were sinking nearly two feet at every step in soft snow, through which I knew it would be almost impossible to drag the sledges. The slope soon increased to 11°, so that we found some difficulty in progressing even unencumbered. There I first made the acquaintance of the “Barrier Shudder.” Every now and then a shiver would shake the surface, and we could hear the eerie wave of sound expanding like a ripple all around. Sometimes one could see the whole snow surface sinking slightly, and at first the effect was very unpleasant.

We had been roped for two miles and were still ascending. We now began to get among crevasses, though few were visible through the thick sheet of snow. Quite suddenly I slipped in to the thigh, and sounding with the ice-axe just in front found two inches of snow over the crevasse and very little more behind me. I was evidently standing in a narrow bridge. At the same time Evans called out that he was over another about fifteen feet behind, so that for a few moments things were rather involved. He got back on to firmer ground and hauled me back, and when we saw the surface begin to cave in bodily we decided, in Evans’ graphic language, to “give it a miss.”

We seemed to be in the least impossible part of the pass, and I could see plenty worse ahead. So I decided to abandon this route and continue down the Ferrar to Butter Point, and so reach the Koettlitz Glacier _viâ_ the Piedmont Glacier.

During our absence Wright had also slipped into a crevasse while fixing the stake nearest Cathedral Rocks. We inspanned after lunch, and moved down the glacier to our old camp at the mouth of the Ferrar.

The morning of February 13 was bright and clear. We could see no change in the sea-ice filling New Harbour where we had crossed it a fortnight before. I therefore headed south-east towards Butter Point. Here we had an experience that might have ended our journey prematurely.

We got along at a good rate for two miles, when Evans drew my attention to something black sticking up in the ice just ahead.

We had noticed an unusual creaking sound, which I put down to ice crystals falling, but this strange object demanded investigation. I ran forward a little, and the black spike was obviously the back fin of a killer whale. The creaking was really a warning that the bay ice was on the move. Meanwhile the ice I was on moved off with a jolt, a mark of attention from the killer which we did not appreciate. However, I jumped the three-foot crack which resulted, and we hastened to the fixed ice nearly two miles south. It was a case of “_festina lente_.” We could not drag the heavy sledges more than two miles an hour, and were continually crossing cracks where the oozy snow and creaking showed how insecure was our passage. Soon after we reached the Butter Point piedmont the whole bay ice moved off in great floes to the northward, so that seven miles of it had broken away since the ship landed us. It is quite impossible to tell whether sea-ice is solid or not, for the first cracks are so small and the elevation of the eye so little that the only safe way to traverse sea-ice in late summer is to keep off it!

We expected to find the Butter Point piedmont an easy level surface, but of its kind it was the worst I met with down south. All the afternoon we were plugging up an interminable snow slope. Just as one got one’s foot braced to draw the sledges through the clinging snow, it would break through a crust and sink nearly to the knee. Then we would meet a few yards of firmer surface and bet whether we could make a dozen steps before the soft “mullock” started again. Even worse was the jar when you expected deep snow and found a firm crust one inch below the surface. I carried a pedometer, and when we had done 27,500 of these paces I felt we had earned our supper.

Blue Glacier now confronted us. P.O. Evans and I prospected across the snout, and were glad to find that though it showed crevasses in places, yet it was so free from snow that we should have no great difficulty in crossing them. They curved round parallel to the coast, and, of course, lay along the line of our march, so that we came on to them end-on and fell in several times. But by the evening of the 15th we were safely camped in the rugged ice south of the crevassed portion. Evans as usual enlivened us with navy yarns. He illustrated the kindness of the sailorman by a story of a mate of his who started a poultry-farm. To Jack’s disgust the ducks in his yard had no belief in altruism and with their broad bills gave the hens no chance. “So,” said Taff Evans, “evenchooly he gets a file and trims their bills like the hens, and then everything went all sprowsy!”

If any one had asked us what we should like sent post haste from civilization, there would have been a unanimous yell of “Boots!” The rough scrambling over the rocks and jagged ice of the past fortnight, and the alternate soaking and freezing they had experienced, had ruined mine completely. Deep constrictions formed in the leather across the toe and behind the ankle and raised great blisters, and even boils in Debenham’s case. I had no sole on the right foot, but within the next day or so the temperature fell considerably and the thin leather lining froze as hard as steel and so protected my foot. For days a loose boot-nail which had accidentally been pressed sideways into the sole when it was wet clung like a leech!

Each morning we had a painful ceremony when it was necessary to don our frozen boots. Remarks more fervid than polite flew about the tent, and some of us found that quotations from the poet philosopher lubricated the process.

“... Gritstone,—gritstone a-crumble:
Clammy squares that sweat, as if the corpse they keep
Were oozing through”

was supposed to be a very potent incantation. We carried no blacking, but this ceremony was called “Browning the Boots.”

Open water washed the face of the Blue Glacier. Black snaky heads—reminding me of prehistoric plesiosaurs—could be seen darting about amid the brash ice. They were Emperor penguins, which swim with their bodies submerged.

To the south of us stretched the sea-ice, which was evidently rotten and ready to move north. Beyond the Blue Glacier on the right stretched a broad fringe of moraine which extended fairly continuously along the north side of the Koettlitz Glacier. Immediately ahead of us was a fifty-foot ice cliff, but some distance to the south we found a lower place and managed with the Alpine rope to lower the sledges down to the sea-ice. We crossed the “pressure ice”— where great cakes had been up-ended to form a frozen rampart—and reached a good sledging surface at last. Near by was a great pool of water containing many seals, where jostling ice pancakes were surging about, so there was obviously no time to lose. We pushed gaily south and camped that night in a little gravelly dell among the moraines.

This crater-like dell was occupied by a frozen lakelet of greenish ice, the colour being due to algæ. On the slope above the lake was a blanket of alga forming a sort of peaty layer an inch thick.

The latter was apparently _in situ_, for it extended uniformly for about ten feet. This occurrence of peat points to an elevated old lake bottom, and we saw similar examples later on our journey. Even in Antarctica at present we see that considerable organic material is deposited, which might form a thin coaly layer in succeeding ages under suitable conditions. Indeed, the kerosene shale deposits of Australia are supposed to originate in some lowly plant-form like these algæ.

_February 17, 1911._—We had a calm, clear night, and all slept very well on the soft sand of the moraine crater. Just to northward was a little bay filled with pancake ice having two-feet motion. We made south across little bays over a very good surface, which was intersected by cross-channels of clear ice. Seals were very numerous along this coast. We counted one group of thirty. We could now see the first of the Ice Slabs (described in 1902), which seemed in its lower portion to run parallel to the coast.

Wright espied some white material in the moraines, and we walked across to see this. It turned out to be a huge deposit of Mirabilite (sodium sulphate), about ten feet across and fifty feet long. It was granular in texture, and the dip of the bed was quite high. The Mirabilite was originally a level deposit in a saline lake, so that, just as in the case of the algæ, we have evidence of strong upheaval of the moraine silts, since they experienced a long-continued phase of equilibrium. The granular mass was not unlike rock-salt in appearance.

We proceeded south and crossed the mouth of the large bay marked on the Discovery map. We halted off the southern headland for lunch.

I had a small adventure which might have been serious. On outspanning—which consisted in freeing one’s harness from the sledge—I walked over to look at a seal which had crawled about a hundred feet from the tide crack. He shook his head angrily at me, so that I made a loop on my harness—still attached to my belt—and lassoed him with unexpected ease. The seal bolted for the tide crack—and for a short distance they can “lollop along” fairly rapidly. It was amusing, at first, being pulled by an angry seal; but it suddenly struck me, “What will happen when the brute dives into the pool?” I could not get the loop off his neck, and had as much chance of stopping him as a railway train. I experienced some anxious moments before I managed to get ahead of him and jerk off the lasso, for it was impossible to slip out of the broad waistbelt in time. This adventure furnished considerable amusement to my unfeeling comrades, and became the subject of one of Wilson’s sketches in the _South Polar Times_.

After lunch we took a round of sights from this low headland. It was composed of moraine heaps with numerous circular sheets of water, which reminded one most strongly of crater lakes. On descending from the cape, Debenham found that the steep little cliff near the tide crack was formed of ice covered with a mere veneer of moraine silt. Probably a large portion of the promontory was ice, and we saw other examples of this pseudo-moraine further up the Koettlitz. As Debenham suggested, the crater lakes were due, in all probability, to the melting of the foundation ice. Probably the sun’s rays acting on the silt in a shallow pool have a powerful effect in deepening the lake when it is once initiated. The drainage of such a lake presents some difficulties, for though there was usually an apparent outlet, many were quite enclosed by a circular wall of debris. Steps of silt, appearing as small terraces, were common among the heaps. These probably represent crevasses in the underlying ice, and we actually saw several such crevasses in the ice exposure noted above. Perhaps these crevasses account for the (hidden) drainage, for ablation could not empty many of the lakes. The whole question of the origin of these unusual lakes is of great physiographic interest.

We could see fairly rough ice ahead, but hoped to be able to get the two sledges several miles further before depôting one during our work on the Koettlitz.

We proceeded somewhat to the east over blue ice. This soon became rippled and degenerated rapidly into a fearful “glass-house” and “bottle-glass” surface. We started to fall through the ice into hidden channels, and in some cases there was a foot of fresh water awaiting us. Things got worse and worse. We wriggled round ice “mesas” with vertical walls, over huge curved platforms which threw us all together in the centre and then dropped beneath us. We thought it might be better nearer the land, but at last had to lower the sledge down two feet to the lower level, which was silt covered and all the harder to sledge on for that reason. The “mesas” showed three layers. A flat cake of solid ice on top, then a few inches of very much weathered ice, and below a solid pedestal about three feet high. We hoisted the bamboo and flag and spread out to prospect. The ice became worse towards the coast, but Wright reported somewhat better going towards the centre of the gulf. However, it was obviously unwise to drag our unnecessary sledge further, so we turned in our tracks and crossing many “glass-houses” (into most of which we fell, though with little damage) we made for the headland where we had lunched.

It began to snow and looked very threatening around Mount Discovery. There was an ugly luminous patch in the sky to the south-west, and a heavy snow cloud with a very ragged edge. On Erebus alone was a red-gold ray of sunshine. From these portents Evans prophesied a blizzard. We reached land without undue difficulty and crossed the pressure ice, pitching our tent in a dell not unlike our last camp, though it was flatter and more exposed to the east. We carried the smaller sledge well inland, but left the large sledge below on the sea-ice, for we should have had to manœuvre it round an open channel, and we did not need it for laying our depôt here. This channel along the coast was about twenty feet across with a five-knot current in it, which was flowing strongly north. Seals swam up it quite frequently, and often used to halt and observe the strange visitors alongside. While the pemmican was cooking I went on to the ice and killed a seal and extracted his liver.

This camp marked the end of the third week. We celebrated it by eating a pound of mixed chocolates. Wily Evans led us to believe that _he_ was the donor; but as a matter of fact, each sledge had a box of them packed in for birthdays and feastdays.

The snow stopped about 8 p.m., but later in the night a strong wind from the south-east blew much sand on to the tent. We had an argument as to whether this was a blizzard or not, for there was no snow in the wind. Personally I now think it tends to prove that the snow in the blizzards is largely _old_ snow caught up again, for the force and direction of the wind were just those of typical blizzards. We were protected from the open barrier surface by Brown Island and the Koettlitz glacier, and this region is one of small snowfall in any case. So we were not inconvenienced by such blizzards as blew on this western coast.

The food was lasting out well. The first tin of biscuits was finished, and had lasted from the 3rd instant. (We had, however, an extra bag of loose biscuits.) I started my week of cooking on the 18th, and as we reached Hut Point in the seventh week I had only one turn at this duty.

_February 18, 1911._—It seemed advisable to get a good view of the Koettlitz from some high peak, so I decided to spend a few days in the vicinity of this camp before marching up the big glacier. We had a “make and mend” morning—sadly needed by our boots. I had saved some staples from the venesta boxes (thrown away at Butter Point) and found they were satisfactory in holding the soles together. Luckily the others’ boots were very much better, though Debenham’s were much improved by some of Evans’ sewing. We had a large fry of seal’s liver in butter, and Debenham and myself decided that as raw blubber tasted passably, we would fry liver in blubber for the next meal off seal meat.

In the afternoon Wright and I crossed Davis Bay to the mouth of Hobbs Glacier (about two miles to the north-west). The promontory on which we were camped was about a quarter of a mile across, chiefly built of basalt fragments rich in olivine.

The shore of the bay below Hobbs Glacier was in the form of an extraordinarily flat alluvial fan. This uniform level extended almost to the glacier for three-quarters of a mile, though it narrowed greatly away from the bay. It was mapped out in square “tesselations,” and at the sides were striking terraces about five feet higher with strongly marked, clean cut edges. The whole topography had a very recent appearance; but the only explanation I can give for these levels points to a period when Davis Bay was dammed by ice so as to raise the waterline to the levels of the various terraces. A parallel case of terraces in a waterless region is given in Utah, where the hills around the great basin are fringed by similar deposits indicating a bygone lake.

Down the fan ran a creek from the glacier, which cut into the silts at the shore to a depth of several feet. Evidently the base-line has been lowered by this amount since the fan was deposited. From the hill above the bay it could be seen that there were two fans, one of a lighter coloured silt being derived from the next valley to the south. We could also see that our camp was really on an island which corresponded to the stranded moraines south of Butter Point.

_February 19, 1911._—I cut out some sealskin from the carcase near-by to make a pair of “brogans” to cover my boots, lashing them over the sole with yarn, and over the sealskin I bound my iron crampons (steig-eisen) on. Then we all started to explore the valley immediately west of Davis Bay and south of the Hobbs Glacier. Leaving the sea-ice we reached a lighter coloured “fan” by a sharp step of five feet. Emerging through this broad gravel fan were “nunataks” of large stones which had evidently been deposited before the fan. They rose twenty or thirty feet above the fan, forming ridges leading towards the valley. We reached a gully about 500 yards from the bay, which was entirely water-cut, and was fifty feet deep. It had steep sides and its bed sloped considerably. The latter was filled with large rounded boulders, one or two feet in diameter, obviously waterworn. The account of the summer streams in 1903, given by Dr. Wilson, explains this striking example of ordinary _water_ erosion, which I was unprepared to meet in icy Antarctica.

The gully wound about through the morainic foothills, and widened considerably about a mile higher. Here it was occupied by an ice-sheet some 300 feet wide. In this sheet narrow little canyons four feet deep had been cut by the water, and very generally these canyons were roofed with ice. In other places the whole ice-shell had been undercut for thirty or forty feet by the relatively warm water.

Gradually the valley—which I named after Professor W. M. Davis—became wider, and a tributary joined it from the north. (See folding map at the end of the volume; and also p. 175, section No. II.) It drained the lowest slopes of the foothills, which extended to the scarp of the Western Mountains. These lowest slopes are largely covered by a gigantic deposit of moraine matter. This deposit extends many miles along the foothills, and can only be due to the great Koettlitz glacier.

Four or five miles from the coast the steep hillsides formed of solid rock rise somewhat abruptly from the moraine slopes to a fairly uniform height of 3000 feet.

The sides of the valley along which we were walking were marked by lateral ridges in several tiers. These were about thirty feet high, and in some cases certainly contained much ice. At one spot the silty covering of the side of one of these lateral ridges was marked by vertical stripes of darker silt, as if the whole ridge had moved slightly and cracked along these lines. These ridges followed the contour of the hill between the tributary and the main valley, and reminded me of the parallel roads of Glenroy (though on a very small scale, of course). They are, I think, like terraces or beach deposits due to a bygone ice dam across the mouth of the main valley, such as one sees in the Märjelen See above Fiesch in Switzerland. Later we saw “pocket editions” on Cape Evans.

Continuing up the valley we found it bounded between solid cliffs of limestone, which were altered in places to a marble. We called these the marble cliffs, and they culminated in a double peak of a fawn tint, which we called Salmon Peak from its colour. I kept along the base of these cliffs while the others walked up the thal-weg 200 feet lower. We soon saw that the upper portion of this “dry” valley was occupied by a glacier whose snout was forty feet high.

Some light snow had fallen lately and occupied the furrows of the “tesselations” which ornamented the floor of the valley. For some reason (probably the direction of the wind and sun’s rays) only the north-south furrows were now filled, and these white zigzag markings on the black basalt-debris resembled so many white snakes!

The Davis Glacier snout was about six miles from the sea. A range of mountains 4000 feet high blocked the upper end of the =ᑌ=-shaped valley. I was very anxious to see whether the glacier really came into the valley from some hidden angle, for if not this glacier was of great interest. Here was a glacier which could not be more than eight miles long, which had cut out a valley 3000 feet deep and a mile or so broad.

We separated here, Wright and the others taking the theodolite up a 3000 feet hill to the south, while I went a couple of miles further into the range to see the head of the glacier.

Empty hanging valley, on north wall of the Davis Glacier, showing
catenary curve due to former glaciation, February 19, 1911.
]

Everywhere were the signs of recent recession of the Davis Glacier. First I had to cross the mouth of a side valley opening 600 feet above the glacier. This was quite free from ice, and was a perfect “bowl-valley” or cwm. On the opposite side was another “hanging valley” at a lower elevation, with a most symmetrical =ᑌ=-cross section. It was abruptly truncated by the plane surface (35°) of the marble cliffs under Salmon Peak. I now climbed round the top of a cliff of ice which descended smoothly for 1000 feet to the glacier at an angle of 30°. After ascending over many outcrops of limestone schist, granite, and basic dykes, I reached the head of the glacier and saw that it originated in a cwm about three miles from its snout. Its snowfield was very circumscribed, but reached the summit of the bounding ridge in several places. The glacier up here was not crevassed, and the main surface lay only two hundred feet below me. After making some rapid sketches I returned to the snout of the glacier where the others had already arrived.

This Davis valley contains a typical example of the “ice-slabs” mentioned by Ferrar. But I do not agree with his description of them. He writes, “They are the relics of glaciers which once drained the snow valley; but owing to diminution of ice-supply, this has now become an inland basin, and its overflows have slipped away from it, leaving a subsidiary watershed bare.”

In the first place, the head of this glacier was a typical cwm, with steeply sloping sides, and to all appearance a sharp crest to the ridge at the back. It did not resemble the discontinuous lower portions of the Lacroix and Sollas Glaciers in Dry Valley, which fully deserve the title of ice-slabs. The latter lie supinely, one might say, on a gently sloping hillside, in which they have cut no definite trough. The method of erosion of these curious valleys became clearer to me as we saw other examples in the next fortnight.

_Monday, February 20._—We spent the morning making a depôt on the Ice-Borne Moraines. We left the camera legs with a flag thereon, and cemented them into the gravel by the simple method of pouring a cup of water on to it! The seal’s liver we put under the food stacked in the small sledge, and I left a note of our whereabouts in the instrument box. We took eighteen days’ food with us.

We crossed about one mile of good surface and then reached “glass-houses,” “craters,” “pools,” etc., through which we struggled till two o’clock. After lunch Wright and I prospected and found some “plough-share” ice about a mile to the south-east. We made for this, having to cut tracks along the bottom of the channels connecting “glass-house” areas. Debenham and I pulled on short traces while the others lifted the sledge over the constant succession of obstacles. The sledge fell two feet into a hole and capsized, but the brunt of the shock was absorbed by the empty oil tins. We were always falling, and occasionally disappeared a foot below the glass-house surface.

TRYING TIMES ON THE KOETTLITZ GLACIER, FEB. 2, 1911.

The sledge has fallen through “glass-house” ice into a thaw water
channel.
]

TABLES OR ICE “MESAS” IN THE LOWER KOETTLITZ CUT OUT BY THAW-WATER.

[_See p. 157._
]

Later we halted in a slight snowstorm. We were cheered to hear Evans say that it was the worst sledging surface he had ever seen, even though he added that it was not fit for sledges. I wore my iron steig-eisen all day, and so was able to hold my own somewhat; but the others preferred to slip about, for the irons certainly made one’s feet very sore.

For an hour we had fair going over “plough-share” and shallow glass-houses, during which we changed direction somewhat to the south. A thick snowstorm blotted all ahead, and we reached a region of “basket-work” ice structures, which we called “fascines,” and all sorts of ice tables. One shaped like an Armadillo standing on a pedestal was especially noticeable, and after pulling the sledge over three “roof-pillars” (the roof having long ago fallen in) we cried “enough,” and camped in the shadow of the “Armadillo.”

“It is fairly warm to-night, the others smoking peacefully. They have almost given up trying to make me smoke. I had a difficulty in getting Wright to eat some extra pemmican! ‘Sugar Vat,’ ‘Liver Chewer,’ and ‘Pemmican Tub,’ are common ekenames. And so to sleep.”

During the next four days we struggled up the middle of the Koettlitz Glacier. It was a strenuous time, but I recall a pleasant noon halt when P.O. Evans earned an honest penny. We saw him playing with the rope which lashed his sleeping-bag. Says Evans, “I’ll show you how to make a clove-hitch with one hand, and I bet you a 1_s._ 3_d._ dinner (our usual currency) you can’t do it after you’ve seen me do it six times!” Debenham took the bet, and we all watched Evans closely. Then “Deb” tried, and to our joy succeeded, for the handy-man was rarely “done.” But he never turned a hair, and booked the bets that now filled the air. Again Debenham proceeded to try, and failed—and Wright and I were equally unsuccessful. Evans made quite a haul, but after saying he had never seen any one do it by sheer luck before, he proceeded to teach us the dodge; and later Debenham became quite a knot-master under his willing tuition.

“A fine sunny morning, the first for many days. Even this scene of desolation looks cheerful.” Thus my sledge diary for the 21st. But the route did not improve. I wrote: “We got going on awful stuff—rounded pools of ice, between tables. It got worse and worse, and after many bumps and leaps and falls I decided to prospect. We had done half a mile in the hour.... We started again about 3 p.m. Awful heavy work over ‘glass-house’ and leaping three-foot chasms, between high fascines and across decomposing rivers of ice.”

About 4.30 we saw a ragged piece of skin projecting from under an ice-table, and found that it was part of a large fish. We spent half an hour chipping it out, and recovered the dorsal spines, skin, tail, and the vertebræ. These were preserved in a yellow fatty substance smelling like vaseline and quite soft. I made rather a ludicrous mistake here. I carefully preserved a very hard irregular mass coated with this flesh, thinking it was a bone, but later, after we had carried it for days on the sledge, we found that this “pelvic bone,” as we called it—melted in warm water! No head was found, and in this respect the fish—which was possibly about four feet long—agrees with the four large headless fish found by the _Discovery_ Expedition. We had a hot discussion in the hut as to this problem of decapitation, but came to no definite conclusion, for it seemed too far for seals to carry it.

That night we slept at Park Lane Camp. We had been traversing a frozen park, set out in circular beds with winding paths in every direction. The “flower-beds” were represented by elevated masses of ice thirty feet across, exactly like an apple pie with a raised crust—even to the four cuts made by the housewife across the top! The last two days we had only progressed seven miles, and for five of them we had carried the sledge rather than dragged it.

Next day, however, we found that to the south the glacier was nearly continuous. It had not been dissected by thaw waters to nearly the same extent, and by 4 p.m. we managed to advance ten miles to the south-west. We camped on a platform of weathered ice, so rotten that it resembled a layer of honeycomb. We found that this honeycomb ice was very common in this part of the Koettlitz.

We tried to find an easier way out of the numerous undulations which now characterized the surface, but unsuccessfully, and so plugged on south-west. We used to “pully-haul” up one side (_i.e._ hand over hand) and then toboggan down the other. P.O. Evans was an expert steersman, while we others used to keep the ropes clear. But we had some nasty falls, especially Evans, who got a cut deep in his palm from a piece of “bottle-glass” ice, in spite of his thick mits.

At noon we came across a picturesque tunnel in the ice, about three feet wide, seven feet high, and one hundred feet long. It had been cut out by thaw waters which had now drained away.

In and out wound the lanes, forming a regular network through all sorts of picturesque pinnacles. Here was one like a yacht on stocks, there a perfect wedding-cake twelve feet high, again a lady’s bonnet, and so on, in infinite variety.

The long promontories of “bastions” along which we skirted are probably dissected undulations of the original glacier surface, fifty to a hundred feet high. They are all steep to the north, and covered with sloping plough-shares on the south. The bergs which we left ten miles back were like _jumbled_ blocks, and were not separated by simple channels—which looks as if they had been floating separately at some period and then frozen together again. This may explain the presence of the sponges and fish which we found so far from any open water.

On the 24th I wrote: “This is the day of my release from the joys of cooking! We have done four weeks. A rotten night, cold, and pillow (of books, etc.) slipping away on the smooth surface. Every one restless. Smooth ice no good to sleep on, though I had a jersey under me. Bright next morning, and we took photos till 10 a.m. Then we made across country towards a hanging valley. Some of the lanes were overhanging, and I took a photo of Debenham and Evans sitting under a ledge. Sheets of plate-glass projecting from low bastions were common, but there was no undulating country. More common were sharp bottle-glass angles sticking up abominably from about eighteen inches to two feet, and impeding the sledges, while pot-holes (due to the sun eating round black silt) caught one’s boots.