Chapter I: The Geologists Visit the New Zealand Glaciers

On the morning of the 4th of November the Australian contingent reached Lyttelton. The first ship we saw was the _Terra Nova_ snugly berthed alongside the wharf, and separated by a few feet from the shed No. 5 in which most of the gear was stored. She was readily recognizable by her characteristic rigging surmounted by the crow’s nest. The funnel is painted a rather vivid yellow, and is decidedly abaft of the centre of the ship, a feature which is usually represented wrongly in the models of the ship displayed in some of the Dominion’s shops.

Technically the _Terra Nova_ is a barque equipped with an auxiliary screw. She was built at Dundee, and carries three masts (two square-rigged), of which the mizen, for reasons explained later, is rarely used. Socially she is a Royal Yacht, which means that she may fly the white ensign, a privilege only accorded to certain favoured vessels of the Empire. In fact, I think, apart from our barque, all the units of the Royal Yacht Squadron are on pleasure bent; and certainly no other is frozen in the Antarctic Pack as we are at the time of writing. Originally she was used as a whaler, and differs little in general arrangement from the _Nimrod_ (Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship), though she is approximately twice as powerful a vessel. Almost the only wooden vessels now built are those used in the polar seas, and as no steel vessel could stand the wear and tear caused by the constant collision with ice, it follows that an exploring expedition usually makes use of a converted whaling vessel.

When I first saw her in the West India Docks at London, she had a wide and spacious poop and a distinctly narrow and confined saloon. Now the proportions are reversed. The poop-deck consists merely of the space around the wheel and binnacle; all the remaining area has been filled with laboratories and with two central structures, the deck-house and chart-house. Below, a relatively noble room has been provided; with an enclosed balcony much more useful and not much less ornamental than the classic specimen in Verona!

In naval parlance, our saloon is dignified by the title of “wardroom,” and has none of the inconveniences usually associated with polar exploration. It is plainly furnished with a long centre table and two lateral leather-covered seats. The stove (not yet needed) certainly blocks the passage behind the head of the table, but under normal conditions, especially before the expansive after-dinner moments, there is sitting accommodation for seventeen officers. Three more sit on boxes at three corners—the fourth being left open as a breathing space for the steward. Hence twenty of the twenty-four constituting the “afterguard” are accounted for, and the remainder are usually on watch, and arrive uproariously hungry after the majority have reached the tobacco stage.

Section across poop of _Terra Nova_ (not to scale).
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On our early appearance we were cheerily hailed by the two officers on board. One had just converted the deck-house “balcony”—which overlooked the _wardroom_—into a bathroom, the other was devouring ham and eggs down below. But most of the officers, after their four months’ voyage, were staying in Christchurch some eight miles away, and came into the ship by early train. Lyttelton is a magnificent harbour of extraordinary origin. Port Phillip, it is well known, is a drowned coastal plain, hence its low banks and rounded contour; Port Jackson is a drowned river valley, as is obvious from its winding outline and deep frontage; while Wellington Harbour occupies earthquake landslides. But Lyttelton Harbour is a drowned mountain valley, with hills rising fifteen hundred feet almost continuously around the elongated basin. The eastern flanks of this isolated mountain (Banks Peninsula) are drowned in the Pacific; the western flanks are buried, several thousand feet probably, in the silts and shingle of the Canterbury Plains. The fair city of Christchurch, which has arisen on an even plain stretching twenty miles north, south, and west, has a wonderful harbour at her door, owing to this unique juxtaposition of plain and buried mountain. Most of the members of the Expedition tramped over the old bridle-track to see the view from the top, but all traffic passes through the railway tunnel—one and a half-mile long—cut deep in the volcanic rocks of the Peninsula.

The office of the Expedition was close to the cathedral in Christchurch, almost in the shadow of the steeple, which has a habit of toppling down under the stress of earthquake shocks. Here was the secretary struggling with a mass of correspondence—very largely letters asking for autographs, penguin eggs, and rocks from the south. These modest requests, however pathetically they are worded, cannot be attended to in the last few days of preparation of a large expedition. More annoying were the sheaves of letters sent later on board the _Terra Nova_, addressed in such terms as “Mr. Wood-B. Pole-seeker, King Edward VII. Land.” The addressees not being known, they will probably languish in a New Zealand Dead Letter Office.

Captain Scott arranged that those scientists who were specially engaged in glacier investigation should immediately proceed to the New Zealand Alps to study polar conditions amid somewhat less strenuous circumstances than in Antarctica. I do not propose to do more than give a brief outline of the features of this region, which may reasonably be supposed to be analogous to those obtaining in Victoria Land.

Harbours visited on the voyage to New Zealand.
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N.B.—In both these peaks and also in the Antarctic “Matterhorn” (in
Taylor’s Valley, _q.v._) the “faceted” slopes are due to the eating
away of the sides by cürm (cirque) erosion.
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We carried a pair of Norwegian ski as a present from the Expedition to the guide at the Hermitage below Mount Cook; and we were shod in Norwegian ski boots, whose chief characteristics are a square high toe—to fit the ski-iron—and a large size—to contain comfortably three pairs of socks! We were also provided with some special surveying instruments, aneroids made of aluminium and only half the ordinary weight, and a queer type of hand compass, the shape of a gypsy’s kettle. The needle was surrounded with a heavy oil and the case carefully sealed in, so that the oscillation should be “deadbeat,” and not waste valuable time in coming to rest.

A hundred-mile motor ride bridges the gap between the railway at Fairlie and the Government accommodation house “the Hermitage” beneath Mount Cook. As we rapidly traversed the foothills—bare but for coarse tussocks of grass—the Alps came nearer and were more visible. The snowline was very strikingly marked on the mountains. To the north Mount Cook (12,349 feet) showed almost 7000 feet of snow, and thence as the mountains decreased in height less and less projected above the snowline, until on those 5000 feet high only the peaks retained any snow. The Swiss Alps are _in the same latitude_ (44°), but there the snowline is at 8000 feet, so that to get an adequate comparison of the two Alpine regions one must add on 3000 feet to the European peaks. Or, put in another way, there is as much snow scenery on Mount Cook (12,349) as on the Matterhorn (14,780), one of the highest peaks in Europe. It is a striking example, illustrating the fact that the southern hemisphere is, on the whole, ten degrees colder than the northern. For both Alpine lands are, as is said above, about 44° latitude. If we use the accepted factor of 1° F. decrease in temperature for 300 feet ascent, we see that ten degrees difference in temperature would alter the snowline 3000 feet, as is actually the case.

The Mount Cook region forms an interesting stage in glacial development between Antarctica and the Kosciusko region in Australia. Later we shall see what are the appearances where the snowline reaches sea-level—just north of the Antarctic Circle. As we reach the Tasman valley draining the Mount Cook area, we are struck by several peculiarities in the scenery. There are no spurs projecting into the broad main valley, but each of the valley walls lies in one plane to a much greater degree than in normal valleys. Perched up on the high slopes are little hanging valleys, from which small streams cascade to the broad main valley. Along the slopes are lines of debris, like wandering railway embankments, which (though a thousand feet above the present river) mark the height of the ancient glaciers. These latter carved the undercut cliffs and left the tributary valleys up in the air. These signs are not wanting in the Australian glacial region, where, indeed, they may be more obvious than in Antarctica, for they have been exposed by the retreat of the glaciation, whereas they will be to some extent concealed _beneath_ the immense icefield of the south.

Map of glaciers in New Zealand visited in November, 1910, by the
geologists. N.B. The Tasmanian glacier from X to Y is covered with
moraine blocks.
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But in New Zealand are enormous glaciers, bigger than any in Europe, more accessible and (being under Government control) much more economical from the point of view of the ordinary tourist. Let us imagine ourselves a mile or so north of the Hermitage on the slopes alongside the Tewaewae Glacier. This hanging tributary is, however, never known by its Maori name, but by a more homely one (which can hardly be a _translation_)—the “Stocking.”

Just below us is the junction of the Hooker and Mueller valleys, each containing a large glacier. We have crossed the lower portion of the Mueller Glacier to reach this spot. It hardly presents the features usually associated with glaciers by those who gained their impressions from written descriptions. Here it is a disturbed sea of debris, consisting of blocks of slate varying in height from twenty feet to a few inches. Here and there large boat-shaped hollows show sheer black faces which glisten in the sunlight. Down these falls a constant stream of shingle, and occasionally a huge monolith tumbles with a roar into the body of the glacier. For there are ancient crevasses in the glacier, though it needs close inspection to see that their dark walls are formed of ice.

We must go several miles higher up the glacier to reach the clean white fields of snow and ice usually associated with the name. It is this tumbled debris—the surface moraine—which forms one of the most formidable obstacles to exploration of the coastal regions of Antarctica; while the smooth normal glacier surface is excellent travelling. All round the snout of the Mueller Glacier extends an almost circular rampart consisting of two lines of fortifications. There is an outer wall some 300 feet high, curving grandly from the Stocking’s wall right across the Hooker Valley, and thence above the Hermitage back to Kea Point. This is thickly covered with shrubs, and contrasts strongly with the somewhat lower inner rampart of new-piled blocks of slate. At first glance this suggests an ancient crater wall; but it is a glacial product, the terminal and lateral moraines shovelled out to the edges of the glacier by the ever-moving river of ice.

More striking still is the course of the water draining from the Hooker Glacier. This lies about two miles away to the north of the snout of the Mueller, and from ice caves in its terminal face a broad stream rushes to join the waters of the Mueller Glacier. It will be readily understood that in this small area, including the short ice-free strip of the valley and the snouts of the two glaciers (depositing huge piles of debris), the deposits are very erratically arranged. Moreover, the waters of the Hooker actually hit the side of the Mueller Glacier, dip underneath for half a mile, and then reappear as a sort of miniature maëlstrom. I dwell on this because it shows how difficult it may well be for geologists in the year 10,000 A.D. (when the ice has long vanished) to explain the origin of the topography in such a region as Mount Cook. Much the same difficulty has occurred time and again in regions glaciated in comparatively late periods, such as in England, U.S.A., and even in the Australian Alps. One of the most promising features in Antarctic scientific work is the light it is bound to throw on geological phenomena somewhat like this, though on a much grander scale.