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!
[Illustration: The Morphology of frozen Ski-boots. 15 2 11]
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.
[Illustration: My footgear, 19·2·11]
_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.
[Illustration:
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.
[Illustration:
TRYING TIMES ON THE KOETTLITZ GLACIER, FEB. 2, 1911.
The sledge has fallen through “glass-house” ice into a thaw water
channel.
]
[Illustration:
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.”
[Illustration: How Evans won his bet. 20·2·11]
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.
“Lunched in this mullock about two and a half miles from the coast. Then
on practically straight, making fair progress with Evans and C. S. W. at
the sledge, lifting while we pulled. We had several upsets, and the
rucksack was jerked off, but the fossil fish has survived so far.
“After a final dash up over steep silt-bank between pinnacle ridges
(where the sledge balanced rockingly!) we reached a broad avenue between
moraines and Stonehenge pinnacles of ice. I went back for my brogans,
and fell a frightful ‘cropper,’ getting a spike in my fifth rib.
“After half an hour or so we plugged on steadily up a beautiful surface
for two and a half miles. The moraines were getting bigger and wider,
and were now about three hundred yards across. We finally reached a
fifty feet silt ‘col,’ and had to portage the sledge. It was mighty
heavy, and flattened our crampons. Later we reached a _cul-de-sac_ among
the moraines, and after a survey I decided to make a final camp, as we
were now favourably situated to explore ‘Snow Valley’ and Heald’s
Island. I don’t understand the ice-slabs or the promontory on the 1902
map. I guess it is wrong.
“The sun clouded and snow began. We put the tent in a sandy dell. It was
so small that we had the tent like an old sock at the side! However, we
are on earth again, and not on cold wet ice, even if one post of the
tent is on a huge stone.
“I cooked my last meal. Raisins in excess (× 2), sugardust about right,
cocoa × 2, chocolate short ¾, cornflour three portions left, cheese
short ¾, biscuits right, and pemmican two feeds left. Butter short owing
to seal-liver feast. We had a good hoosh and drank thick chocolate.
“My week’s cooking done, Praise Be! 9.20, snowing now and pretty cool.”
Next morning was devoted to a “make and mend.” All our sleeping-bags and
finnesko were wet with the sloppy icefloors of the last week—for we had
not been able to find any snowdrifts on which to camp. They are much
warmer and drier than ice.
Behind the tent to the north were slopes about 1000 feet high leading to
empty “hanging” valleys. These radiated from the base of the Lister
scarp, which rose in one steep face 10,000 feet to the summit. This face
was pitted by gigantic “armchair” valleys or, as they are technically
called, cwms, and presented a spectacle which probably could be
paralleled nowhere in the world.
Looking southward across the Koettlitz from the mouth of one of these
hanging valleys one could see some sort of plan in the icy maze which
had so bewildered us. Above Heald Island the valley was filled with the
glacial stream in a normal uniform mass, interrupted only by crevasses
and falls. But to the east of Heald Island it took the form of a glacier
“delta.” Below the falls the ice descended to the east in a series of
broad undulations, a portion of which we had traversed on the 23rd. Long
promontories of ice fifty feet high extended from the unbroken glacier
mass and probably represented the crests of the undulations. These
degenerated at the ends into icebergs and monoliths of ice, and these
again had weathered into the bastions and pinnacles. Lower down the thaw
waters had etched these into still smaller units, and along the coast
just below me the streams had formed a well-defined if narrow avenue of
smooth ice, which promised us an easier return.
On these slopes I found an ice-scratched block—the only specimen I had
seen in a hundred miles of moraine debris.
I walked along the margin of the glacier, and was amazed to see
seal-tracks in the fresh snow. We were over twenty miles from the sea,
and had not seen any possible route for seals on our outward journey.
Yet here were two seals—asleep as usual—on the old glacier ice. I
disturbed one of them to see what it would do. He sneezed and grunted at
me. When I teased him further he began to warble! I heaved a lump of ice
at him, whereupon he lolloped twenty yards to a wet patch, lay over on
his side, and produced a whole octave of musical notes from his chest,
ranging up to a canary-like chirrup. Finally he crawled under a deep
ledge, and vigorously butting with his shoulders, opened out a hole and
flopped under the avenue ice.
Later I came out among the moraines, and was unable to make out where
our tent was. Soon I saw Wright’s footprints in the snow—two sets, one
going each way. By Sherlockian logic, I decided to follow the
shorter-pace footsteps, judging that the weary owner would walk with
less “vim” returning, and they seemed to be “slurred” also. Finally, a
mile ahead I saw some skua gulls wheeling about, and sure enough below
them I found our tent.
When I reached camp I found that Wright and Debenham had both met
parties of seals. We all thought of the constant stream along the tide
crack by our last depôt, and came to the conclusion that this was
largely fresh water, and formed the main drainage of the Upper
Koettlitz. By this sub-glacial stream the seals penetrated nearly thirty
miles inland up the Koettlitz Glacier.
_February 26, 1911._—It seemed advisable to take the sledge as far up
the Koettlitz as we could without waste of time. So we portaged all our
loads out of the _cul-de-sac_ over a moraine col and so reached the
outer margin of the low-level moraine, where another avenue of smooth
ice ran parallel to the Grand Canal which we had been using. About two
miles to the west we passed a seal and its hole. Soon the pinnacle ice
came in so close that there was barely room to squeeze in between it and
the moraine. We had one spill within a few yards of our final camp, and
unfortunately it resulted in the destruction of the focussing screen of
my camera. In a sheltered bay among the moraine heaps we pitched our
furthest camp, where we remained four days.
About 2.30 we started for Heald Island, which lay three miles to the
south across a tumbled sea of ice practically impassable for sledges.
(This island is placed too far to the south on the _Discovery_ Map.)
First we crossed the definite line of high pinnacles which extended
almost continuously for twenty miles parallel to the coast. This we
called Stonehenge structure, for many ice masses strongly recalled the
Druid monoliths. Then over a comparatively level area of honeycomb ice
between low bastions. Finally we reached wide level lanes with a thirty
foot wall on the side facing the sun, while the opposite wall sloped
much more gently and was fretted into plough-shares.
Looking back towards our camp we were facing north towards the sun, so
that we saw the _sheltered_ side of the moraine heaps. The whole surface
seemed to be snow-covered. Yet from the opposite aspect the moraines
seemed to be bare. I expected this constant thawing on one side of the
moraines would have resulted in some asymmetry in their shape, but I was
not able to detect any such characteristic.
We had not much difficulty in traversing these lanes, and crossed
several cols, down which Debenham and I—who were not wearing
crampons—had to slide in somewhat undignified positions. Here we
separated, Wright and Evans making for the lateral gully north of the
island, while we moved more directly for its eastern face. We had been
steadily rising up the lanes and came to the divide near to Heald
Island. Here a narrow water-cut channel led down to a broad frozen river
100 yards across, which fringed the island on the east.
Debenham collected along the slopes while I pushed on to get a summit
view. This end of Heald Island was 1100 feet high, and the slope was
very steep, for the most part reaching 30°. It was covered with a talus
of schists, limestones, and basalt, the latter being erratic, while the
former were _in situ_ on the top of the hill.
I got good views of the topography from the comparatively flat top of
the island. The surface was scraped fairly smooth by glacial action, and
only a thin veneer of basalt rubble was present in this eastern portion.
I carefully noted the features towards the S.W., and was satisfied that
the slope glaciers (Walcott, Ward, etc.) headed in sharp ranges 6000
feet high, which joined to the scarp of Lister without any intermediate
longitudinal valley, such as was indicated on the 1902 map as “Snow
Valley.” The surface of the glacier through which we had passed was very
interesting. I could now see that it would take days to get the sledge
up the glacier to a spot where our view would be materially increased,
and judged it better to investigate fairly fully the features in this
interesting region of the valley.
The island evidently blocked the glacier greatly, for this was 700 feet
higher on the south-west face than where we had crossed it.
Next morning was foggy and cold, and there had been snow in the night.
We boiled the hypsometer and found that the camp was only 100 feet above
sea-level. At 11 a.m. we started off to explore a large tributary
glacier which we could see across the low-level moraine. Debenham had a
sore heel, due to the deep ridges which developed in our frozen
ski-boots, so that he did not move far afield for the next day or two.
After crossing two miles of moraines we reached a lake. It was drained
by a stream which ultimately reached the pinnacles of the Koettlitz
glacier.
Between the ice cliffs and the lake this stream for a considerable
distance flowed under the moraine, and ultimately entered the seals’
sub-glacial stream and so reached the sea. Coleridge’s lines entered
one’s mind:
“Where Alph the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
So we christened this stream the Alph River.
We marched along the lake and up the gully beyond. Here a tributary
entered from a large cave in the moraine wall to the north. The roof of
this cave was coated with most beautiful ice crystals, which resembled
pine twigs in shape and were about two inches long. Many brownish ice
stalactites and stalagmites fringed the walls of the cave, and Wright
was lucky in obtaining some beautiful photos of these structures.
At 4 p.m. we reached our goal—the steep face of the Walcott glacier, but
as the weather looked stormy we had to retreat immediately. Wright and I
compared compass readings here. The needles swung extremely sluggishly,
but we found they were reliable to four degrees—which is about eight
times the ordinary error. The fact that magnetic south was nearly due
north also complicated matters here! We marched back by a different
route and discovered a strong outcrop of basic lava about fifty feet
thick, which was rich in olivine and had caught up fragments of garnet
rock in its passage through the earth’s crust.
It was a cold cloudy morning on the 27th when we started off for a tramp
over the ancient low-level moraines. We could see a big tributary
glacier about twelve miles away, whose vertical front was separated from
the Koettlitz by two miles of bare moraine heaps. Debenham, with his bad
heel, stayed around the camp where there was plenty of collecting.
We went a short distance along one of the moraine avenues. Then we
climbed eighty feet up and proceeded over the more or less level moraine
debris for two miles. There we came on an interesting outcrop. It was
very unexpected to find a deep gully 100 feet below the general surface
with water still flowing in the creek at the bottom. The walls were
largely composed of ice hereabouts, and they were melting merrily in the
sun.
This stream originated in the lake which we had seen a day or two
before, and we reached it viâ some beautiful meanders. At its outlet was
a cave twenty feet deep cut in blue ice.
Evans and I had a bet as to the length of the lake, in which I recorded
a win; but “Taff” usually came off best in these encounters!
_February 28, 1911._—We awoke to foggy and cold weather, which was
unsatisfactory, as one of our chief objects was to climb a peak and get
a good view of the hypothetical Snow Valley (between Descent Pass and
the Walcott Glacier). Wright and I went back to Alph Lake some miles to
the west, while Evans and Debenham made another journey to Heald Island
and traversed it almost to its western end.
I investigated the cave in the silts at the lake outlet. The cave seemed
to be due to a block of ice breaking away at a silt band, for the roof
was filled with stones, while the mass above was clear ice. The interest
lies in the fact that these silts were obviously laid down in water, and
the large boulders arranged in uniform layers indicated that a strong
current had been operating.
I left Wright at the lake, which he crossed later to examine the
“crystal cave” we had seen previously. Meanwhile I climbed up the steep
delta of the stream leading to the “Ward Hanger,” and visited the latter
valley.
This gully was about a mile long with steep sides sloping thirty degrees
at first. I made for a black exposure which I could see ahead where the
gully cascaded down from the hanging valley. This was a bed of
decomposed basic lava, about twelve feet thick and pointing to fairly
late volcanic action.
Then I proceeded up the gully, scrambling over large rounded boulders. I
hurried to the top of the slope and found that a very definite dam
blocked the hanger, just as in the adjacent valley. These dams were, I
think, high-level lateral moraines left by the Koettlitz glacier, and
not _terminal_ moraines of the small tributary glaciers. I could see
that the latter (Ward) glacier now lay about five miles up the valley,
and resembled the others which we had observed previously.
Wright and I then traced the Alph River from the lake down to the
glacier opposite Heald Island. We had to climb over several rough
barriers of silt-coated ice, under which the stream flowed. The relative
movement of the frozen surface and overhanging ice cliffs led to very
queer twists and bends in numerous icicles, thus forming a striking
example of the plasticity of ice.
The water was flowing strongly with musical gurgles under a lacework of
crystal-edged ice. We got very wet boots by slipping through on our walk
at the foot of the steep slopes fifty feet high. The river ended in a
little round lake separated from the Koettlitz by the silt-covered
pinnacle described previously.
We walked along the glacier edge towards the camp. At one spot the water
was welling up through holes in the ice, and appeared to indicate a
slight tide, for it had spread out to varying boundaries at various
times. Probably a variation in temperature would account fully for the
difference in supply.
We reached the tent about a quarter past six.
The weather had been dull, and it was useless to expect a good view of
the western scarp and valleys. I decided to wait until the 3rd if
necessary to climb up for this view. The hills were now snow-covered,
and we had several valleys to the north to investigate before our
return.
The month of March opened with a bright sunny morning, just suited for
our proposed climb up one of the hinterland ranges. We climbed up the
slope about eight hundred feet and soon reached the level floor of the
hanging “valley” just behind the camp. We marched along this to the
north end of the valley towards a prominent peak on the eastern ridge. A
stiff climb over snow slopes and rugged granite led to the summit, which
we reached at 1 p.m. The aneroid made this 3000 feet above sea-level. It
was a beautiful day and we could see Erebus, Discovery, Morning, and the
Pyramid up the Koettlitz. Lister itself, as usual, was in the clouds,
but nearly all below was visible. We could see numerous hinterland
ridges reaching from the Lower Koettlitz to the Lister scarp, and
satisfied ourselves that no lateral “Snow Valley” existed below the
scarp such as has been indicated in earlier maps.
It was very cold on this hill (which we called Terminus Mountain); and
after swinging the theodolite and taking several photographs we hurried
back to the tent down Ward Valley.
On March 2 we started our homeward trek; nothing could be worse than our
outward track up the middle of the glacier—though we were able to study
the changes of the glacier ice and so did not regret it. I therefore
decided to hug the coast on our return, though near the depôt the ice
was so full of silt from the moraines that we had not seen any feasible
route along the coast thereabouts.
For the next few days we followed the course of the sub-glacial Alph
River. Some four miles down-stream from Terminus Camp a rampart of ice
pinnacles commenced, which recalled the monoliths of Stonehenge. These
walled off the rough sea of the Koettlitz Glacier from the frozen
surface of the “river.” This broad lane was here a quarter of a mile
wide and consisted of a level surface broken up by deep sunken “paths.”
The more elevated areas were preferable for sledging, for the paths
occasionally let us through into water. The whole structure was due to
the drainage of water away from rivers and lakelets whose surface had
frozen.
This splendid track—which we called “Alph Avenue”—enabled us to proceed
with unexpected ease, and each day we halted and explored one of the
numerous tributary valleys which characterized the hinterland.
Each valley was of the same type. A great bar of debris, some three
hundred feet high, blocked the mouth of the tributary. Within this was a
bare rounded valley extending to the foot of Lister. Some five miles
from the coast was the snout of a tributary glacier which had originally
deposited the moraine, but now was shrunk back to a mere shadow of its
former self.
All along our route were groups of seals, and numerous skua gulls
enlivened the surroundings. Coming back from one of our détours I was
much amused to see Wright crawling about among the seals in his
investigation of the ice—while thirty skuas were anxiously awaiting the
demise of this obviously crazy seal!
The summer was over now and we were getting fifty degrees of frost in
the nights. The weather was gloomy, the sun rarely appearing till it had
sunk below the level of the pall of stratus.
We had an eventful lunch just before reaching our depôt. We pitched the
tent and fastened the door to keep out the wind. I was sitting next
tothe door with my precious lumps of sugar on the floorcloth when I
noticed that water was creeping into the tent. In a few seconds it was
several inches deep. We bolted our raisins, pocketed the lumps of butter
and sugar and rushed out with the sleeping-bags. There was a small lake
all round us, rapidly rising round sledge and tent. The water was
rushing out of a crack one hundred yards below us, probably driven back
by a high tide. We had quite a pilgrimage to get our sledge packed
again, having to walk round the newly formed bay.
The avenue petered out here, after furnishing us with a magnificent
highway for twenty miles. We had some pretty rough work for the next
mile or so, but reached our depôt safely on the evening of the 5th.
Having now described many of the glacial valleys it is interesting to
see if we can discover how their peculiar topographies have arisen. One
great problem confronting geologists is to explain how the giant “steps”
and “basins” of the Swiss glacier valleys were produced. In Antarctica
the _gradual_ change in the character of the valleys as we proceed
northward from Mount Discovery has led me to put forward a theory which
I think holds good for these huge glaciers in latitude 78° S., and may
help to explain those in 45° N.
In old Greek manuscripts one can sometimes discern traces of an older
script half obliterated by the later writings—this MS. is called a
_palimpsest_. Just so in Antarctica—I think that beneath the largest
_outlet_ glaciers, such as the Ferrar and Taylor Glaciers, we can
perceive the relics of an earlier _cwm_ erosion.
[Illustration:
The “Palimpsest” theory. Generalised sketch sections, showing the
chief types of valley erosion. I. Early erosion like that shown by
Walcott Glacier, 78° 10′ S. II. Headward erosion producing a
“finger” valley, shown by Davis Glacier, 78° S. III. Plateau ice
overwhelming the cwm glaciers giving profile like the Ferrar
Glacier, 77° 40′ S. IV. Pronounced erosion by “thaw and freeze” (=
nivation), as shown in the Taylor Valley, 77° 30′ S.
]
Near Heald Island is the gigantic scarp of the Royal Society Range
10,000 feet high. Cutting into its face are simple cwm glaciers such as
the Walcott glacier. This stage is shown in section I. As the snow
accumulates (and turns into ice _in situ_) we get a gnawing process, in
the moat, etc., at the margin of the glacier, which gradually extends
backwards and eats out a long parallel valley such as the Davis Valley
(section II). If the plateau ice-cap increases sufficiently it will
drain to the sea as an _outlet_ glacier. This will obviously tend to
follow the lowest contours and so would naturally overwhelm a series of
cwm glaciers (such as shown in II). Hence we get a glacier falling over
steps (and cutting gradually through them) which were originally heads
of cwm valleys (see section III). Finally, these big glaciers may
retreat very slowly, and at their snouts—in a somewhat complicated way
which I have explained elsewhere—further erosion by nivation will
produce basins with level bottoms, such as those in the Taylor Valley[2]
(section IV). In the maximum of glacier flow (for which we have to go to
temperate climes for good examples) there is much “planing” by the
glacier, but not in Antarctica under the present conditions. At any
rate, the conclusion I have reached after two summers’ sledging, is that
considerable frost, wind, and water action is occurring in the Ross Sea
area, and very little true glacier erosion. Moreover, the gradual
succession of types of valley erosion which we investigated makes me
confident that some such cycle of evolution as sketched above is not
only possible, but has taken place in the south.
On arrival we swept the snow from our old ground and camped on the bare
gravel, for our floorcloth was quite soaked. I went over to the seal I
had killed a fortnight earlier and managed to cut through the frozen
hide. Evans and I then managed to prize off some blubber with the spade.
The blubber was quite soft where it was protected from the air. Evans
and Wright were frankly sceptical as to the value of blubber as a means
of frying!
[Illustration: Forks for Blubber 5·3·11]
“After cleaning out the aluminium base of the cooker, Debenham cut the
blubber into strips and heated it up. It soon began to melt and gave off
much steam at first. The smell was like fried herrings and not
unpleasant! We had thawed out some liver from my cache, and at +2° F. it
was as hard as iron! I cut it into strips and we cooked it in the
blubber for a quarter of an hour or so. Debenham tasted it, and then I
ate the first piece.
“Jolly good! Absolutely no taste of fish or oil, which was curious in
view of the smell of herrings. Evans took his bit gingerly, and then
handsomely acknowledged that he had been sold. He reckoned their cook
had tried to poison them in 1902. We used safety pins as forks, and my
bowie knife to turn it over. A vote of thanks to Deb was passed by the
company!
“With luck we shall camp in the middle of the Dailey Isles to-morrow
(Monday). On Wednesday get to Hut Point, and then two days to Cape
Evans.”
This prophecy was rather feeble! We took nine days to reach Hut Point,
and five weeks elapsed before we saw our own headquarters!
_March 6, 1911 (Monday)._—A fairly sunny morning with a temperature of
−8° at 9.30. We spent some time in packing all our depôted goods. I
carried an empty biscuit tin to the nearest large moraine heap, and
buried it halfway in the gravel with a note of our journey. The sun,
glancing on the bright metal surface, made this a very distinct landmark
some distance from the moraines.
We had now two sledges to pull, but the surface was very good. We made
for the nearest Dailey Island. After one and a half hours we reached old
ice at a higher level than the sea-ice we had just left. Here I mounted
a hummock and saw that open water extended to Davis Bay, and was
practically within one mile of our track. We were rather astonished, for
this ice (around Blue Glacier) had not been out for several years. We
pushed on and camped two and a half miles from West Dailey Isle for
lunch. Another two miles brought us to a most interesting locality. All
around us were heaps of large sponges half buried in snow and ice. The
three largest heaps were about 8 feet long and one and a half feet high.
The sponges were a foot in diameter, and among the long spicules we
found Bryozoa, Brachiopoda, Serpulæ, Molluscs, and a fine solitary
coral.
How did these marine animals come to be entangled in the old ice on
which we found them? The ice was apparently normal fresh-water
glacier-ice, but may have been originally sea-ice from which the salt
had drained out. At any rate, it was floating—for half a mile further
east was a succession of grinding ice-cracks. I believe the sponges were
pushed up (from a depth of twenty feet or so below water) by the edge of
the Koettlitz glacier, in some palæocrystic age when its snout was much
less advanced.
We pushed on about a quarter of a mile, and reached irregular ice
crossed by a deep gully due to tide cracks. Here we left the sledges,
and all climbed up the West Dailey Island. We attacked the nearest
snow-covered slope, though later we found it was the steepest portion of
the island. There was a fair route along the snow, however, and we soon
reached the top. Two asymmetric valleys crossed the island, whose cross
section seemed to indicate glacial erosion from the south-east. Blocks
of marble, kenyte, and gneiss were scattered over the island, which was
itself composed of basic lava. We were most interested, however, in the
view towards Erebus, for we hoped to see a clear route to Cape Evans.
[Illustration:
Map showing our journey round the breaking barrier.
]
Four miles north of us was a prominent crack leading east and west. All
the ice to the east and north-east was rough, pinnacled stuff as far as
we could see. In the distance Inaccessible and Tent Islands appeared
clearly, and also a curtain of frost smoke. We could not detect the
latter much south of Tent Island, and hoped this meant that the ice had
not gone out behind Glacier Tongue.
1 decided to camp after another mile, and then skirt along the pinnacle
(bearing towards Cape Royds) until it appeared feasible to cross to the
east. I photographed the little valleys on the island, and then we
returned down a much easier slope to sea-level. Here we saw a young skua
practising its first flights under the eye of two older birds.
We camped in the snow amid troubled ice just off the north-east corner
of West Dailey Island.
_March 7, 1911._—We had a wakeful night, for the pressure ice at 2.30
started groaning and creaking just under our heads. We had a temperature
of −13°, and the night was quite dark, though a glow was apparent to the
south. In the morning a cold wind from the south-east arose.
I had to prospect across half a mile of bad surface, but found a fair
route for a single sledge before the packing was concluded. The sledges
stuck badly on sharp snags, and we had to relay through tables and over
snow-covered ledges and crevices. Then we reached a glass-house surface,
which was fairly stable owing to the thick covering of snow. We held
along the west side of the broad tongue of bad ice and made fair
progress. It was pretty cold, however, and Debenham suffered two
frostbitten toes.
About 4.30 I felt that we ought to be near the end of the Pinnacle Ice
as shown on the map. So we pulled towards it, and reached high ridges
rather suddenly. We camped here, and Wright and I penetrated the ice for
a mile, making for a specially high pyramid. The surface was frightful,
consisting of big rough undulations much broken into snags and pyramids,
and crossed by frozen rivers with window-glass buried in snowdrifts. We
could see no difference in the distant east. It was evident that we
could not cross here, and must make still farther north. We felt that
the whole broad tongue had moved north. It was necessary, therefore, to
turn back and go rather to the north-west. Hence we called this Keerweer
Camp, after the Cape Keerweer where the old Dutch captain retreated from
Australia.
_March 8, 1911._—We moved off along the edge of the pinnacle to the
north. We did about one and a half miles, and got bogged in bad country.
A prospect ahead showed that we had entered a sort of _cul-de-sac_. We
could see frost smoke rising all around us, and heard seals; and,
apparently, orcas blowing and grunting, much closer than we could
explain, for we could see no water. Finally, we decided to keep to the
smoother ice, and so for the next mile or so were heading for Butter
Point, directly away from our destination at Hut Point. Soon we turned
more to the east, and topping a small rise, were confronted by a large
bay of open water in the pinnacle ice, in which several orcas were
apparently enjoying our discomfiture. The water lay right across our
path, and we made as rapid a course as we could lay for the further side
of the bay.
Before going many yards into the pinnacle ice we came on a labyrinthic
river of salt water fifty feet or so below the general level of the
pinnacle. Luckily the pancake had jammed in this valley, and it was
strong enough to carry the sledges. We had to haul up the sledges by
hand on the further (southern) side. Here we lunched, and soon after
came to a fifteen-foot drop, which necessitated casting off one sledge.
I prospected ahead, and the other three followed almost as quickly as I
could pick out a feasible route. Every now and again I climbed a
pinnacle, and got a fair view, and so we got along much more easily than
I had anticipated.
The grade was good, but necessitated much winding about, and very often
drifts of sand covered the ice and played havoc with the runners. The
drifts of snow, eighteen inches deep, were no trouble compared with a
thin film of sand on an ice ridge.
We could hardly get a fragment of ice hereabouts which was not full of
sponge spicules, which did not improve the hoosh. It was very curious to
see the skuas pecking at the numerous sponges lying around, while they
neglected the small frozen fish (Notothenia), of which I saw a dozen!
By six o’clock we brought up our second sledge to the site I had chosen
for a camp. Just north of the camp was a large cavern excavated in the
side of a thirty foot cliff by a meandering river, now frozen. We had a
fairly sheltered position for the tent, but there was no snow for the
flaps. However, ice blocks made that all secure. Before turning in we
took a round of angles, which should fix the position of the edge of the
open water quite accurately.
_March 9, 1911._—A comfortable night, the temperature only falling to
−3°. We picked a pretty fair route across the meandering gully. At one
place a snowdrift had built up a track above the undercut edge of the
river. Then we went down-stream a quarter of a mile, and then hauled the
sledges up the further bank. We could see quite a large patch of smooth
snow towards Observation Hill, and made in this direction. As we were
not more than sixty feet above sea-level, I judged this to be four miles
off, which turned out to be the case, though it took us nearly two days
to reach it.
We pulled in relays, doing one and a quarter miles with the light sledge
in less than an hour, and then returning for the heavy sledge with some
knowledge of the conditions ahead. Twenty-five minutes took us back to
the other sledge, and sixty-five minutes more with the heavy sledge
brought our whole equipment one and a quarter miles nearer Hut Point.
Bad sandy patches still annoyed us, but the ice was gradually becoming
more level as we penetrated further south. In the afternoon we did a
longer relay, with less sand but more snow. We had to cross several
creeks, and had some upsets, but at the end of our day’s work a climb to
a pinnacle showed up smooth sea-ice no great distance ahead in the
direction of Tent Island. Six hours’ hard work—largely hand-hauling—had
only given us three miles of progress. However, we were able to enjoy
the chocolate provided by Evans in honour of his own birthday, and we
christened the camp Birthday Camp in consequence.
I feel that I cannot more fittingly describe the last few days of our
First Journey than by transcribing my sledge diary. The style is
“choppy,” but if the reader will picture the conditions under which the
journal was written he will perhaps excuse lapses. We were now coasting
the breaking Barrier edge, just where Bowers’s party had gone adrift a
week before (see p. 197). It was getting very cold, and we had been
sledging six weeks—over really awful surfaces since mid-February—and
were feeling stale and in need of some comfortable rest at night.
“... _Friday, March 10._—I am writing this on the morning of the 11th,
after a rotten night. The tent is flapping and C. S. W. wears a worried
look as the icy aluminium pot sticks to his finger. I have filled the
cooker with powdered snow. There is drift everywhere, an eighth of an
inch thick in C. S. W.’s bag, who got out to survey the scene. I have a
blistered ear, and am wet everywhere owing to perspiration. There is no
joy in us, though sounding merry. I slept on the outside, where Debenham
has slept hitherto. However, I could get my back warm against him, which
is not the case when we reverse!
“We moved off about 11 a.m. with the light sledge. Debenham prospected
one-third of a mile, and then returned to say that we could go on with
both. So we pulled up the heavy one, and in less than half an hour
reached the level ice, about 11.45. Hence we traversed about six miles
of pinnacle ice. We had heavy going for a mile, owing to deep snow
between hard patches, occasionally knee-deep.
“Now a long argument arose as to the course. Debenham wished to head
straight for Glacier Tongue, and reach Cape Evans same night maybe. I
judged it not much further to Hut Point, and we were rather near the sea
edge. Evans felt frostbite in toes, but said later it was due to
chocolate-paper stuffing!
“We camped for lunch at 1 p.m., with good hopes of getting all ‘sprowsy’
by night. The others put on finnesko, as all very cold. My feet troubled
me least of all. Good ho! so I didn’t change from boots, though blisters
very raspy when one’s foot slipped into a deep crack! Left about 2.30
and surface got much better—patches of hard white snow and some ice. We
decided to get to Hut Point or bust! About 5 p.m. we decided to bust,
for there was apparently five miles of open water before the Hut! So we
deviated with what speed we might to the south, gradually veering
further south in the teeth of a young blizzard, which made much drift
and at times obscured land. We donned coats and windproof, and during
the last hour got very wet with sweat. Rather tired when at 6.30 we
stopped near snowdrift, being four miles from the sea.
“We had to put up the pole first and then the tent, which nearly blew
away, and the floorcloth afterward. I got into finnesko and got fairly
warm, though the primus went out several times through draught, etc.
Huge blocks of snow on flap. Rather slow prospect of a week or two at
Hut Point, when we felt yesterday pretty sure of getting to Cape Evans
in two days! Wind moderated at intervals in the night. Good sunset and
fairly clear, so this is not a true blizzard.
“_Saturday, March 11._—Fairly clear, still some snowdrift and gusty. Up
early. Every one uncomfortable in the night. Hope to reach the Hut _viâ_
Pram Point about 4 p.m.
“Drift packed hard round the tent, and had to dig out it and sledges.
“Made an early start at 9.45 a.m. Saw mists rising apparently all way
from Hut Point to White Island. One column of dark cloud very
persistent, the rest varied with wind somewhat. So we made for east
centre of White Island over poor surface owing to fairly soft snow.
“Finnesko nice and warm, felt as if one’s feet bare after boots. We did
six miles and camped where we seemed to see the crack petering out. Then
two miles in the hour to (3.45) where we deviated from White Island.
Here Castle Rock was occulted by Observation Hill. I thought end of
water would be only three-quarters of an hour away! We saw a black dot
and cairn of snow and decided it was the Barrier depôt.
“We had crossed one crack, probably an old one. The depôt turned out to
be a fawn-chested seal, active and bold, which moved off rapidly (4.30).
(The open water was here only half a mile away.) The cairn was pressure
ice, probably old line of permanent ice. About a mile further came on
sledge tracks of _depôt_ party.[3] Don’t see their depôt anywhere. Not
possible it has gone out, as undoubtedly some of Barrier has. At 5.30,
after doing about four and a half miles, we reached southern end of
broad bay of water.
“C. S. W. took photo here, but so cold that spring shutter didn’t work,
I fear. Then on for two miles further to our Barrier camp.
“_Sunday, March 12._—Rotten night; slept about four half hours and
shivered, sore ear, cold knees and back, everything wet (on outside).
Helmet a mass of ice, and so wrapped my head in windproof pants. Others
better. Dreamt six individual dreams, including our relief by a rival
party of kids! I got up to read aneroid and so acquired merit!
“Primus a great bother in the morning.
“Quite foggy and snowing considerably. Not safe to say where we’ll be
to-night!
“We left about 10. Foggy everywhere and drift blowing, but could see
sun. Went (S. 40° W. magnetic) for two miles or so, then steered by sun.
We saw a black object on ahead. Evans said an ice-foot; I said boxes.
They turned out to be bales of fodder nearly covered and an empty
dog-biscuit box. From here tracks of five sledges (no ponies) lead to
Pram Point. We piled up fodder higher, and left map and note tied to our
depôt pole.[4] By this time wind getting stronger.
“We marched on over undulations, mostly heavy going. Wind from the
south-east. About 11.30 a.m. followed sledge track right to a narrow
gulf leading into Barrier, with broken block sticking out. Ice twenty to
thirty feet above water, some snowy, new ice in the open gulf (elsewhere
all clear water). The shore went nearly due west from here. We crossed a
strong crack rising several feet. C. S. W.’s foot went in here. I
deviated to north-east from here, and pulled three-quarters of an hour
in worse wind and drift. Camped at 12.45, about four miles from main
edge and one and a half from crack (and edge). Very blowy and blinding,
and cold. Had lunch and no better! Stayed in tent, and here we are held
up indefinitely only six or seven miles from the Hut! We tried dancing
to warm feet. Played cards, sang, changed socks. Finally, about 4.30,
all went outside and filled cooker with snow. We decided to have an
early supper and turn into our wet bags. We lit the Primus, and let the
flames singe our feet to warm them. Talked of Cambridge cake and tea and
other delights. I put on pyjama pants for the first time. It may prevent
chills to-night, but I doubt it. Evans told cheerful tale of snow wall
round tent at Cape Crozier, when they were pinned in for five days in
September in 1903!
“We can’t see a hundred feet anywhere. The rime is dripping down my neck
and covering our bags. Drifts are slipping off the tent. Wind veering
somewhat southerly from south-east. Now and again we peeped out of
doors. No improvement. Couldn’t get into shore probably to camp, as
water is evidently exceptionally far to east. No camping on slopes, I
understand, and daren’t try to reach the Hut (eight miles or more round)
in this damned young blizzard. Guess we’ll shiver it out. Underpants
make much warmer, but toes nearly as cold as ever. 5.30 p.m. Booming of
lid of biscuit tin outside is like Inchcape Bell.”
[N.B.—13th and 14th written later in Hut.]
“_Monday, March 13._—Pretty miserable all day. Stayed in bags till 10 or
so. Tent flapping wildly. There had been a lull in the night; slight
shift to south-west at times set the door swinging. Couldn’t get going
at all. Had lunch at 12 (no breakfast). I didn’t like the idea of
Barrier edge being only one mile away, and we are on a bad crack; but as
thirty feet cliff, probably ice is eighty feet thick. Couldn’t see the
sun all day till late in the p.m. Evans told yarns as usual. We had
supper about 5 p.m., after trying a melancholy game of Rickety Kate, in
which we couldn’t deal in mits, and got frostbitten if we took them off.
I managed to read a bit of “The Great Plot.” C. S. W. cursed baccy, and
Deb lay low and felt cold. We turned into the bags very early, though
the sun appeared about 5 p.m., and could get a sight of land above the
drift.
“Evans said curious wind never to south-west, and so _not_ a real
blizzard.[5]
“_Tuesday, March 14._—Another night nearly as bad as the previous, with
sore backache added, for everything damp. Used to put head and all
inside bag for ten minutes and _hot_ up bag. Then open nose hole to get
oxygenated again!
“We got up at 7 a.m. and had early breakfast, but it came on very badly
about ten, and as we knew directions we decided to make for Castle Rock
anyway within half an hour. We dug out sledges and the tent flap. A long
lee snow slope lay a hundred feet to north of sledges. Instrument boxes
and tank full of drifts of snow, of course.
“Bags thrice proper weight. Mine worse split than ever, so I have no
hood now. We marched on rather difficultly, but wind helped us
considerably over small sastrugi and drifts. Helmets tight over head,
but _under_ chin[6] (_i.e._ not coldest). All our duds on—a mistake as
one gets so sweaty and it is tiring. Went on and on. Could see ice bluff
on left, passed it and approaching slopes. Wondering if we’d have
trouble at the tide cracks, which Evans described. All lost to sight in
fog about 1.30. Plugged on steadily, had hallucination of hawthorn trees
just behind one. (Why?) Told C. S. W. we were ascending, and wondered
where the tide crack was. We had steered for the cone all the way to
reach the incline as used by Evans (day of Vince disaster, 1902).
“Just about 2 p.m., I guessed we were over the tide crack, and the sun
appeared and showed us we were one-third way up the mountain! So we
joyfully had lunch in the strong wind. Then transferred all necessaries
to the big sledge (including ski boots), and left about 3.30 for the
climb to Castle Rock. Not half so bad as expected, steady pull up eight
degrees (about four miles), only two stops. Reached the top at 5.30,
without trouble except for some slipping on hard snow. We zigzagged a
bit. Castle Rock is composed of agglomerate with brownish outer zone,
over a darker centre. Height about 150 feet (boss). We had a short rest.
A very strong wind blowing across us now. Evans evidently had Vince in
mind, and wouldn’t let us pull quickly, though on a broad platform. We
saw here a team track, apparently a dog team with sledge-meter. We had
arguments as to its meaning and decided only one unit back. C. S. W.
reckoned all the ponies ‘gone under’ as no tracks. Plateau one and a
half miles long and one thousand feet high. Then we saw four men over
towards Crater Heights. A great sight, though comic, to see arms
swinging and fat wind clothes. Not like Penguins! They came towards us.
We guessed the names all wrong, except Birdie. (They were Dr. Bill,
Atch, and Cherry.) We heard all were safe and back, that the queer
tracks were due to rescue of Bowers, Crean, and Garrard. They took our
sledge down Ski Slope. Dr. Bill said, ‘Go and see the Owner.’ They were
just expecting us. I put on crampons and met Scott. He told me of loss
of ponies. Of the eight, three died in blizzard, three lost on floe, so
only two left. We got to the hut about 7 p.m. Found it all cleared out
by Atch and Keohane; very dark and sooty from the blubber stove. Only
one lantern, we sat around; and pots served out in fixed order. Owner
arranged for us to sleep in the ‘Sanctuary,’ opposite window. We had one
lantern over stove, and then turned in to wet bags and slept fairly.
Gran gave us finnesko. Will get Gran and Garrard’s yarns after.”
IV
A MONTH IN THE OLD _DISCOVERY_ HUT
MARCH–APRIL, 1911
[Illustration:
ALPH RIVER CUTTING THROUGH THE MORAINES AND ANCIENT ICE.
[See p. 170.
]
[Illustration:
“DISCOVERY” HUT, JAN. 25, 1911.
Showing the ice slope above the bay leading from the Gap to the Hut.
Note the eaves of the hut on left.
]
A MONTH IN THE OLD _DISCOVERY_ HUT
While we had been engaged on the western journey, Scott had made his
depôt at One Ton Camp, and had returned north to Ross Island, a
fortnight before we arrived. During February the sea-ice had broken away
far to the south of Glacier Tongue—which marked the water’s edge in
January—and it was now impossible to return to Cape Evans by the route
they had marched south.
Moreover, the icy slopes of Erebus were seamed with crevasses, and many
ice-falls lay at the root of Glacier Tongue, so that an overland journey
was out of the question also. Luckily the old _Discovery_ Hut had been
placed on the long rocky southern promontory of Ross Island named Cape
Armitage, and even under present conditions, with the water reaching to
Pram Point, it was possible to get to this hut from the Barrier
surface—as, indeed, the last chapter has shown.
A queer little hut indeed is this, compared with our palace on Cape
Evans! It is square in plan, and rises to a central peak. All around is
a sort of verandah, with outer walls reaching halfway to the ground.
This was designed to hold stores and protect them from the blizzard
snows. But the hut was hardly used at all by the 1902 expedition. When
we first saw it in January, 1911, it was filled with snow and ice to
within a few feet of the ceiling, and did not look by any means an
attractive place of abode.
During February, Dr. Atkinson and Crean had spent a large portion of
their time excavating the hut, and had ultimately cleared it completely
of ice. A great heap of ice blocks and chips marked the extent of their
labours. They had piled up the boxes of captain biscuits into a barrier
enclosing the north portion of the hut, and in this dark retreat the
western party found the depôt party on the 15th March.
We reached our refuge about 7 p.m. It was almost dark outside and quite
so inside. An acrid atmosphere of blubber, smoke, and soot enveloped us
as we occupied the rough planks grouped around the heart of the hut.
Here was built up a primitive blubber stove, crowned by a chimney whose
vagaries formed the chief topic of conversation among the inmates. Only
one dim candle in a sooty lantern illumined the scene. The windows were
deeply frosted, and it was getting on towards winter now, so that only
in the middle of the day could they give much light.
[Illustration: Sketch-map of the Environs of Hut Point in March April
1911]
As will be seen by the plan attached, our dining-room was at the north,
furthest from the blizzard winds. There were two bedchambers. One on the
_west_ side, where six of our sleeping-bags were disposed like sardines
in a tin; and another _central_ boudoir, rigged up out of antique canvas
left in 1902. This the occupants called—as it seemed to us west-enders
on a _lucus a non lucendo_ principle—Virtue Villa!
[Illustration:
Plan of the rejuvenated _Discovery_ Hut, March, 1911.
]
In the semi-gloom of the hut it took me some days to find out my
direction, for inside one seemed to be twisting as if one were in a
maze. In fact, to reach Teddy Evans’ quarters one had to return
practically to the door, having circumnavigated Virtue Villa.
That first evening we sat round the reeking stove and thankfully ate
seal hoosh out of the tin mugs, helped down—though little it needed
it—by unlimited captain’s biscuit nearly ten years old. Captain Scott
allotted the new-comers quarters in the west end, and we turned into our
soaking bags and slept fairly well in spite of the drips from the roof.
Each sleeper unconsciously rolled away from the drops, and many were the
territorial arguments caused by the drips from the ice-covered roof.
Next day at 6 a.m. the cooks (Meares and Keohane) turned out to prepare
the breakfast. The others got up an hour later, to find a thick pemmican
of seal meat and curry awaiting their attack. Thereafter we each had a
mug of cocoa. Work starts immediately, for we are literally living from
hand to mouth. So Wilson and most of the men go off to Pram Point to
kill our dinner. Teddy Evans with two mates puts in the morning cutting
up seal meat, while the western party set off to fetch in our second
sledge from the slopes below Castle Rock.
From the top of the promontory by Castle Rock we got a good view
northwards to Cape Evans, distance about twelve miles. There was open
water this side of the Tongue, but ice was forming on it. Further north
it looked more solid, and I lugubriously wrote, “It will be a fortnight
before we get off, I fear.”
The worst feature about Hut Point was the approach thereto. It was about
twenty-five feet above the waterline, which here was bounded by an ice
cliff twelve feet high at the foot of a quite steep icy slope. This
slippery route fringed the bay, and was of necessity traversed by any
one approaching from the north or east. As there was usually a blizzard
blowing directly down this slope to the water, it took us some days to
traverse “ski slope” with equanimity. We put rope grommets (brakes) on
the sledge runners, or the whole outfit would have sidled over the edge
into the water. By 5 p.m. we had brought all our specimens and
instruments safely to _Discovery_ Hut.
The other party had killed eleven seals, and returned two hours later.
We had a grand feed of seal-liver seasoned with peas. A box of dried
peas was one of the relics of the 1902 expedition, which was dug up from
the snow; and though the outside was black and mouldy, the heart of the
box furnished us with magnificent dishes of “pea-doo.”
The blubber stove worked better every day. One “fid” (or slab) of seal
blubber would soon make the iron top red-hot. So we were actually able
to wash the pannikins! Only those who have drunk cocoa and tea for
months out of mugs, used also for pemmican and blubber fry, can
understand the luxury of a _clean_ drink.
Never shall I forget my feeling of comfort that night. We had managed to
dry our bags in the midday sun, and I can still recall the springy
warmth of the reindeer bags, after so many days of what at best was
clammy discomfort.
[Illustration:
The blubber stove in the old _Discovery_ hut, March, 1911.
]
On the 16th Evans led a party to Corner Camp, about thirty-five miles to
the south, to get some fodder for our two ponies, and also some stores
for the sixteen men in our little community. He asked Wright to join
him, so that our mate was soon in the thick of the blizzards again.
Just outside the door were the dog-lines. The dogs lay in “rifle-pits”
dug out of the icy slopes above the bay. Poor fellows, their fur was
clogged with ice, and their short commons on the Barrier made them
woefully thin. Very miserable did they look for some days, for their
hair is normally so thick that it lends them a fictitious size. I
assisted Meares to dig the holes deeper, and build up barriers to the
south. It was pleasant to see how the rest and abundance of seal meat
soon improved them out of all recognition. Many of them were loosed when
we went for a walk. They would start out with us, and lend a touch of
home to the dour landscape, but they were not very companionable, and,
except for brown Tsigan, they always left us behind as too slow, and
later bolted for the hut.
In a day or two our party swung into routine in the old hut. We could
not move more than a mile or so from Hut Point. We had nothing here but
fragments left over from 1902, and some sledging rations, and yet the
time passed not unpleasantly, for there were a thousand and one jobs to
be done. I will quote my diary fairly fully for 17th March, for it was
typical of the next few weeks.
“We got up rather late, so that I read the thermometer at 9 a.m. instead
of 8 a.m. After that had breakfast of porridge and a ripping ‘hoosh’ of
liver. Then a cup of cocoa, to which three pills of Gran’s saccharine
gave a sweet inky taste. I next sewed up a six-inch tear in my
sleeping-bag. I did not sleep well last night, nor did Scott, who was
next; I will try fur _inside_ to-night. It is blizzing again, and I am
glad I am not on the Barrier with Evans, Wright, and the rest.
“Then I pared some sealskin soles thin (the fresh skin is just like soft
leather) and sewed them into the old finnesko presented to me by Gran.
We played “shut-eye” for a tin of marmalade. [I ladled out a spoonful,
and Scott, with shut eyes, said whose it was; and so on.] We had two and
a half spoons each, and as it was Keohane’s birthday I gave him the tin
to scrape out.
“At lunch we had a great discussion on Browning and Tennyson. My simile
comparing them to a rough rare mineral and polished rubbish was not
accepted! Scott preferred Keats. Meares opened tins with my dagger in
military fashion, as he had learnt in South Africa [_i.e._ he made a
fulcrum of a bar of wood beneath the blade]. Scott tried to improve the
lighting by smearing blubber on the windows, which at any rate made it
easier to flake the fresh ice off each day. Dr. Bill is mending gloves
with pared sealskin. Gran is making a ski-stick from a piece of bamboo
he’s found. Debenham is tidying the kitchen, and puts up racks to hold
the ‘spirtles’ (_i.e._ porridge-stirrers). I rifled the 1902 magnetic
huts, and cut out lids for the porridge-pans from sheets of asbestos.
Our literature consists of _Contemporary Reviews_, _Eclectic Magazines_,
_Girls’ Own_, and the _Family Herald_.”
We spent some time trying to make the hut snugger. We piled heaps of
snow and ice against the walls to keep off the blizzards. Among the
debris I found ancient dog biscuits which reverted to their original
purpose, and an old bag of oatmeal which went into our menu. A great
discovery was a torn copy of “My Lady Rotha.” The first and last
chapters were missing, but I gathered the loose pages and dried them,
and enjoyed reading it again. Curiously no one else in the hut had read
it, and as we had only about three books, every one read Weyman’s novel.
I couldn’t remember quite how it ended, for the plot is very
concentrated to the end; the elderly hero not having found a son or a
second wife; and the lady debating between the ancient count and the
lunatic lover. I am afraid I finished it off in several ways to various
applicants, none of which would have pleased the author!
There was another book which Gran had taken sledging and had torn off
the first few pages for pipe lights. This was “Springtime,” a romance of
medieval Italy. A good yarn, and Scott guessed it was by Hewlett. I
disagreed, but couldn’t remember the writer—who is H. C. Bailey, I
believe.
It was very curious how useful were the 1902 remains. That expedition
wintered on the ship, but some articles had been left ashore, and the
hut had only been used as a hospital.
However, we found old _awnings_, which Taff Evans used as arras (or is
it _arrases_?) for our bed-chamber! There were asbestos sheets with
which we levelled the floor, and made pan lids; brass nails, also from
the magnetic hut, which had not rusted of course; long stove pipes and
asbestos cement, with which we ultimately made a smoke-free blubber
stove. A dubious mass of brownish glue turned up under some snow. Bowers
tested this, and ultimately we had bovril flavouring in all our hooshes!
And there was of course the definite depôt of captain’s biscuits left in
1903, and also a few wholemeal biscuits which Shackleton had depôted in
1908. The latter swelled like muffins on the red-hot stove, and we used
to have one with butter as a special luxury. Those Shackleton biscuits
were a dream!
On the 20th seals were reported just under Hut Point, and of course were
much handier than the rookery at Pram Point. So Scott and four of us
went off to get them. We lowered Keohane and Evans down the steep cliff
below Vince’s Cross on to a piece of fixed floe, and the two seals were
killed with a few blows on the nose with a pick handle. Dr. Bill and
Meares went down to help cut them up, and Scott and I hoisted the flesh
up by the ropes. Just as we were finishing three more seals appeared,
and one crawled right up to the shambles. He stayed there all the time,
and only left when the carcases were thrown overboard.
That night there was a wild storm. Spray was blown up over the cape and
over the hut, where it instantly froze. It cemented the snow heaps, and
would have encased some of the dogs if they had not been freed from
their chains. Next morning I had to chip my way down to the shelf where
I had left the thermometers. We had to cut out fresh holes for the dogs,
during which operation one aggressive fellow got hold of another by the
neck, and the combined efforts of the sapping party could not drag him
off.
When the weather permitted we went off to get seals or to have some
exercise. A strong wind used to blow almost constantly towards the hut
through the “Gap.”
Often when one was loaded with seal blubber, or camping material, the
icy slope between the gap and the hut was dangerous work. By this time
our crampons (spiked overshoes) were useless, for the spikes had worn
quite blunt. The wind would catch us, and irresistibly slant us down the
ice slope to the sea. On several occasions, when one of the Western
Party was wearing his iron _steig-eisen_, an unfortunate crampon-wearer
would clutch hold of him and accept escort over this giant “slide.”
[Illustration:
_Photo by H. G. Ponting._]
CRATER HEIGHTS, THE GAP AND OBSERVATION HILL AS VIEWED FROM THE OLD
“DISCOVERY” HUT.
The catenary curve of the Gap, due to glaciation, is well shown. In
the foreground is the icy slope which ended (abruptly on the right)
in open water.
]
[Illustration:
_Photo by H. G. Ponting._]
MOUNT EREBUS FROM THE OLD “DISCOVERY” HUT.
The steam cloud is blowing to the south-east against the prevailing
surface winds. The small craters of Cape Armitage are shown on the
left as stumps of lava. A series of false moraines crosses the
picture (due to rock fall). In the foreground are the “tesselations”
due to soil-creep.
]
What long discussions we had! Scott was interested in everything, and I
note that one evening we discussed Mormonism, the medieval ramparts of
Aigues Mortes, and the pronunciation of ancient Greek!
On the 23rd March the Barrier party returned. They had experienced
temperatures of −42° F. Wright told me that it used to take three hours
to get warm—after they had thawed the ice out of their bags. On leaving
the tent in the morning in a clammy wet state, the instantaneous
freezing of their clothes felt like an electric shock!
I made a tour to inspect the “moraines” on Crater Heights, accompanied
by Dr. Wilson. I believe they are due to differential erosion of lavas
of varying resistance, and have not been left there by an upward
extension of the Barrier Ice Sheet.
[Illustration: Steig-eisen 11·2 11]
Dr. Bill told me of the loss of the ponies. He and Meares with the dog
teams made straight across to the hut over the sea-ice from the Barrier
camp. They noticed cracks every thirty feet or so, and so deviated
sharply to the east, and reached _terra firma_ at Pram Point. They then
started cutting a track up the ice slope for the ponies. Meanwhile
Bowers, Garrard, and Crean had not noticed the dog teams swerving, but
had turned back later. They had to camp on the sea-ice, because the
ponies were too “done” to get back two miles to the Barrier ice. They
woke in the small hours of 1st March to find that one pony had vanished,
and they were adrift on a broken floe. They drifted about all night and
next day, while Wilson could do nothing but watch them from the top of
Observation Hill. Wilson went off and met Scott, who had come to the
open water, and was able to tell him that there was a chance yet.
The pony party spent four hours or more trying to get to a large piece
of ice to the south, which seemed to be separated from the firm barrier
by a narrow crevasse. They left the ponies and went off to prospect, and
found the space was sixty feet wide and full of grinding floes! There
was a big swell all around, but Bowers gave Crean permission to try to
cross the gap. He managed to do so by some amazing jumps, and with the
aid of two ice-axes he climbed the edge of the Ice Barrier, and so
informed Scott of their danger.
Meanwhile Cherry and Birdie took things philosophically. I heard how
Birdie took angles with the theodolite to determine the position of
their floating island. A skua gull settled near them, and Cherry thought
it well to annex this food supply, and did so. I was told that Crean
made some stiff cocoa for them while they were trying to rescue the
sledges. In the dark he mixed the food bags and a strong decoction of
curry resulted. Nothing daunted, the Irish sailor declared it was as
warming as the other, and drank it off.
On the afternoon of the 1st the rescue party managed to communicate with
them, and Bowers and Cherry and most of the sledge stores were saved.
But the ponies had to be left that night with feed bags to comfort them.
Next day the three ponies had drifted to a more favourable spot farther
to the south-west. Here the rescue party busily set to work and cut out
a path up the face of the Barrier. Nobby was jumped from floe to floe,
and at length reached the firm ice of the Barrier. But the other two
ponies were weaker. The second jumped short, and though he managed to
scramble on to the floe again, he was too cold and weak to stand, and
fell into the water again. So, too, the third pony. All round were
eighteen killer-whales waiting for the end. To save them from a worse
death their owners pole-axed them as they feebly struggled in the icy
waters of the Sound.
[The tracks on the breaking edge of the Barrier were seen by us on the
11th March, just before the blizzard caught us and held us up two days.]
There were now again sixteen men in the old hut, and sleeping quarters
were arranged as follows. Scott, Evans, Taylor, Debenham, Wright, and
Forde slept in the West End; Wilson, Meares, Bowers, and Garrard in
Virtue Villa; while Gran, Taff Evans, Keohane, and Crean lay around the
stove.
[Illustration:
BOWERS’ PARTY ADRIFT ON THE SEA-ICE.
From a drawing by D. Low.
]
With so many human furnaces at work, the temperature inside the hut rose
to 46° F. on one occasion. As a natural result, our ceiling dripped
abominably. We laid hands on all the empty tins about, and tied them on
strings to the ceiling under the more obnoxious drops! Very skilfully we
each tried to lie between two small cataracts, with the result that
boundary commissions were frequently necessary to decide on encroachment
into foreign territory!
The activities of the geologists incited all the other officers
to emulation. Bowers was the most indefatigable of these
“pseudo-scientists,” and was always bringing some huge specimen along to
Debenham or myself. “Here you are,” Birdie would say of a particularly
uninteresting block, “here’s a gabbroid nodule impaled in basalt with
felspar and olivine rampant.”
The sun was giving us his farewell before winter. Very beautiful were
the sunset tints; and on the 25th I wrote: “Over Mt. Discovery are bands
of stratus, across a black sky, while in the foreground are pools in
thin ice looking like bog lands. To the south the sky shows
orange-yellow to white tints; to the north, beautiful lemon-green
verging into grey and yellow on the east. To the west, grey-green, with
a bright orange band against which stands the purple line of Mount
Lister. D—— fine, only I’d rather have two feet of solid sea-ice, and no
lemon-green reflections in the pools!”
Later in the day, Wilson gave Oates and myself a talk on tone-values. At
6 p.m. the landscape was rosy pink everywhere where the sun glanced on
the snow-fields, salmon to buff colour on the open water, and on the
newly freezing sea iridescent like tar. The shadow of Brown Island was
lemon-green, changing to purple on Mount Discovery—while for a few
minutes our own shadows were the most vivid bright blue!
It is impossible to imagine how striking if evanescent these colours
were, and as possibly some critics believe that Wilson’s sketches erred
on the bright side, I have here copied my notes made on the spot, while
Dr. Bill was drawing his sketches.
Next morning I was cook with Wright and Titus Oates. I lit the blubber
lamp and a candle while Oates set the fire going. Some chips and a page
or two of the _Quiver_ rubbed in blubber started it that morning. It was
then only necessary to put on a fid of fresh blubber from the tin
alongside, about the size of a bath bun. The blubber sizzled merrily on
the grid, a big hot flame sprang up and licked the blubber and melted
fresh supplies, and soon the stove was going strong. The hoosh was a
porridge-biscuit dish with a few bits of seal in for luck. After
breakfast I washed up the pots and cleaned the cookers.
[Illustration: The Sackcloth Helmet. 29·3·11]
Captain Oates apparently had a Spartan objection to our comfortable
clothing. I shall have something to say about his canvas trousers, but
his objection to our helmets resulted in a Dutch sackcloth affair which
was designed and made in the old Discovery Hut.
About this time Debenham was discovered to be an expert cook, and
thenceforward presided over the culinary mysteries. His speciality was a
confection known as “chupatties.” These were a kind of unleavened
currant scone, made of flour and biscuit-dust and some cornflour. We
used to have about four to a man, so that sixty-four of these took some
making.
Some of our fireside arguments were quite lengthy. I raised the question
of city design, advocating the cobweb pattern. I found that Wilson
agreed with me, while Scott and Wright took the opposite view. Belfast
and American cities, Paris, Melbourne, London, and even unborn Canberra
(the Australian capital) were dragged into the debate. After it was well
started we drew back and enjoyed the “cag” between Dr. Bill and the
Owner, each backing his own views with great pertinacity! On another
evening we had the oft-arising problem as to whether Lord Kelvin was a
Thompson or a Thomson, and I won a stick of chocolate through chancing
on the right spelling.
Towards the end of March the ice in the bay by the hut commenced to
freeze. On the 28th Wright was lowered on to the Bay and found the ice
three to four inches thick, so that we began to have hopes of getting to
our own headquarters in a week. Dr. Bill and Birdie made a remarkable
feast which they called seal-rissole. We indulged largely and—probably
in consequence—vivid dreams were retailed next morning.
There is nothing so boring as dreams, I am aware, but I am going to
quote my diary! “I was back in a suburb of Sydney, and in the distance
saw an acquaintance of mine (H——). He moved away hurriedly. I caught him
up, and told him I was really in Antarctica, but wanted him to note the
time when I astrally visited Sydney. I remembered his name was Rupert.
Guess this was the effect of the rissoles.”
[Illustration: Blubber-Lamp made from tin matchbox 22·3·11]
Every evening before sleeping, Scott, Wilson, Debenham, and I had some
sort of a scientific discussion, usually on a local geological
problem—such as the origin of Castle Rock—for many such confronted us.
For these evening occupations we used home-made blubber lamps. A
favourite make was based on a tin matchbox. Two ordinary wax matches
served as wicks. As usual with blubber, the black oil leaked everywhere.
On the 31st Wright and I found that Discovery Harbour had 7½ inches of
ice over its surface. The ice looked just like cocoanut ice and was no
harder, but was very elastic and supported us safely. We walked across
to Observation Hill, and saw a seal near the shore. I wrote, “Charles
smiled at him, and as he fainted I pole-axed him. He wriggled twice or
so and then died.” We climbed up and over the Gap, and got down on the
east side. Then we walked two miles to Pram Point. Here the ice varied
somewhat. In places huge splashes of slush had frozen; in others ribbons
eight inches thick had overridden each other. All seemed bumped up by
swinging against the fixed ice-foot. Black wedges of clear ice grew out
into the water channels, and the edges of the latter were often warped
and twisted. In Pram Bay there were numerous seals; one barked or
growled, another opened his jaws nearly 180°, and his tongue shivered at
us. A third gurgled musically, but only on one note. Later I saw one
menacing his neighbour and barking at him.
About 200 yards inland was a cache where we had seven seal carcases
ready for consumption.
As we returned I found some small fish, about eight inches long
(_Notothenia_) buried in the ice, and three smaller fry lying on the
surface. The stakes left by Ferrar in the ice across the Gap still
seemed to be in line, so that there had been no movement of the ice
since 1903. On reaching the hut we reprimanded Dr. Bill and Bowers for
collecting “gabbroid nodules,” etc., when their zoological tastes should
have sent them fishing. After which we exhibited the frozen sprats.
I began the month of April by helping Bowers as cook. I write: “At 7.15
threw back sleeping-bag after uncoiling my jersey from my neck. Put on
coat and finnesko, and was fully dressed. Curious that one feels no
worse for lack of a wash, bath or change, for over two months.”
We had a tasty bovril hoosh, flavoured by some of the treasure trove.
Debenham and Wright dived deeply into their pots and brought up chaff.
(Birdie’s joke for April 1st!) The seal we had killed was declared to be
suffering from liver complaint, and weak heart. Hence his susceptibility
to sudden shock! Anyhow the dogs ate all but the flippers and seemed
none the worse.
Wright and I went further south on our next walk, right beyond Cape
Armitage. I took to finnesko finally, for conduction along a big nail in
the leather boots had frostbitten my toe, and for months afterwards I
had little sensation in it.
“We saw an emperor penguin walking towards us with a rolling gait. He
retreated as we individually surrounded him, then bolted on his belly
with snaky neck vibrating amid squawks. He turned on Wright, who killed
him with two whacks on the neck and two picks in the brain. I pithed him
with my penknife. Unfortunately he bled muchly and spoiled his yellow
tie, so we dug a little pit and laid his head therein, to save the
plumage.”
Off the end of the Cape were many open pools of water, but I crossed
between easily enough. The water was washing across, and had perhaps
thickened the band of ice. Here I found many of the fish on the ice
surface. Probably they were chased into the mushy ice by seals, and
froze fast. I proceeded round to the east, and then climbed Observation
Hill, finding Dr. Bill on the top busily sketching.
As the sun sank below the stratus cloud the golden beams shone past the
Hut and showed up beautifully on the snowy surface of the Sound. We saw
this tawny area gradually advance to the fixed ice and give it a
rose-pink flush. The deep purplish shadow from Hut Point enchanted Dr.
Bill, who made a complete sketch in about ten minutes. The sun’s low
shadows on the slight corrugations of the ice and the elongated shadows
of Wright with the sledge were very striking.
Later Scott returned and complimented us on getting round the Cape
safely; in fact, he said that he was glad there were pioneers ahead when
he tackled it!
On the 2nd Scott reported the first aurora at 3 a.m. He said it extended
to within ten degrees of the zenith from the south, was of a reddish hue
and like a curtain with two folds. Birdie saw it later and said he
thought it was a peculiar cirrus cloud! So I felt that the colours could
not have been very brilliant.
Scott, Oates, and myself never aspired to be considered cooks, but it
was pleasing to see the anxiety of the others to earn a _cordon bleu_!
But I was quite willing to help if others shouldered the ensuing blame!
For instance, at lunch on this particular day Wright and I made what he
christened a “cheese sponge.” “We stirred it about an hour in hopes of
getting it to ‘jell,’ but it remained obdurately granular. However, by
carving off lumps of our butter it went down O.K. But a quarter of a
pound of butter for sixteen men is little enough!”
Lieutenant Evans started to cut a road down to the bay ice through the
twelve-foot ice cliff. We dumped the ice from the excavation on to the
bay ice, hoping to build up a ramp. The ice was in layers alternating
with snow, the former probably representing spray-cemented snow. Soon
the sea-ice cracked under the weight of our delta, and the latter sank
more and more. It was like filling the ocean, and at 7 p.m. only a few
jagged blocks showed where we had piled all our excavated material.
We had some of our penguin for supper. He weighed 92 lbs., and was about
a record.
The “pseudo-scientists” were keen collectors. Some augite crystals being
found on the side of Observation Hill—we geologists did not strain our
consciences much by assuring them that they were gems! As a matter of
fact, I once wore an augite as a stud; but it would only appeal to a
geologist. However, Birdie and Cherry spent several hours crawling up
the slopes of the hill. The augites took much finding, for they were
rarely half an inch long. “Dry-blowing” and scraping in the snow and
ashy rock with frozen fingers and colder toes was the method of work.
Some of the specimens picked out of a red tuff showed very pretty
crystal faces. But the mineral is nearly black and rather brittle, so
that their value is purely scientific.
One morning we were promised a new dish of “whales on toast” by the
indefatigable chefs. These were biscuits fried in butter and crowned
with two sardines. Unfortunately they all got burnt, and the many
requests for biscuits _au naturel_ disconcerted Birdie! In the evening
Evans and Wright laboured long at a dish which they finally labelled
“glue” in disgust, though they had hoped it would turn out a stew. So
Meares enlivened the gloom by a yarn. “A man went into a shop in our
town and took off an article on approval. Unfortunately he left no name.
The assistant said, ‘Whom shall we charge it to?’ The proprietor said,
‘Put it down on every one’s bill, and we’ll soon find out who didn’t
take it.’” Meares stopped, and we asked, “Well, how did it work?” “Oh,
the last I heard, forty of them had paid for it!”
On the 7th, Scott asked if any one wanted a walk round the sea-ice to
Castle Rock. Atkinson and I volunteered, and we got on our crampons and
_steig-eisen_, and I took an ice-axe. We went down to the sea-ice over
the ice cliff, using the old hawser left there in 1903. The ice was
about four and a half inches thick, and Scott tested its bearing
strength by the simple method of jumping on it hard. It bent
considerably, and water gurgled up through the holes, but this new ice
is fairly tough.
The surface was mottled, due to its being largely composed of cemented
pancake ice. The ice was mushy, and overriding was very common.
Occasional retreats and breaks led to leads of open water. Scott pointed
out to us where Vince was lost in 1903 on the icy slopes to the south of
Castle Rock. We discussed what a man should do if he fell into the sea
and was rescued, and Scott said the only thing was to keep on the move.
[Illustration:
Testing the sea-ice off Castle Rock, April 7, 1911. Atkinson, Scott,
and Taylor.
]
We crossed several “leads” of black ice, which I tested first with the
ice-axe. “I chipped at the next and saw that the ice was more than an
inch thick, so I boldly ambled across. I made a long step and one leg
gaily went through and the other followed, but I hung by my arms fairly
comfortably. Luckily I had an ice-axe. Atkinson stretched out his
ski-stick, but I drove the pick in and pulled over to the further firm
ice and managed to slide out, while Scott was getting over further to
the north. The water was not cold, and I didn’t feel excited at all. I
went in up to the armpits and was dripping, but only my toes were cold.
Scott said he was just going to tell me not to try there; and I told him
the practical experience should balance the foolishness!” Cherry
returned with me to the Hut about two miles south. Luckily there was no
wind, or twenty-four degrees of frost would have been serious. My
notebook was well inside my wind clothes, and the chronometer was not
hurt at all.
That evening there was a strong blizzard, and every vestige of ice blew
out to the Ross Sea. It was lucky that the wind did not spring up six
hours later, for Scott had decided to start off this very morning for
Cape Evans _viâ_ the sea-ice. As a result he determined to try a land
route along the promontory to Hutton Cliffs, and so reach sea-ice where
it was more land-locked and protected by Glacier Tongue.
[Illustration: From Castle Rock to Cape Evans 9–14–11]
Gran and I went off to Castle Rock to see what the ice looked like in
the bays to the north. We arrived at the base of this 200 feet crag
about 1 p.m., and decided to climb it. Gran was wearing boots and so
could get a grip, but I had on fur finnesko and found it a tough job. In
fact, Gran had to spread-eagle himself on the face of the cliff, and I
got up by climbing up him, like a human ladder.
This old landmark is 1340 feet high, and is built up of volcanic
agglomerate. There is an almost sheer drop of 1200 feet on the west; but
the top is nearly flat and offers a fine view. I could see a little
patch of sea-ice in the bay near Hutton Cliffs, but north of Glacier
Tongue the sun was in our eyes and we could not see if ice or water lay
between the Tongue and Cape Evans.
[Illustration:
OVER THE HUTTON CLIFFS TO TEST THE SEA-ICE.
From a drawing by D. Low.
]
On the 11th of April nine of us started for our own headquarters,
leaving Wilson in charge of a party to bring over the dogs and two
ponies. [The track is shown on the map, p. 88.]
“The ‘relics’ helped us up the two snow slopes. Birdie and Bill arranged
signals with fireballs at 10 p.m. on the first clear night in the next
three. Dr. Bill had an understanding with Scott that he should not move
with the ponies and dogs until the sea-ice had stood a blizzard. We
passed Castle Rock and were going strong at noon. I had been leading,
giving Scott my shoulder, but here he shortened my rope and I pulled
just behind him. Beyond Castle Rock all the land is untraversed. We kept
for one mile along a steep snow slope, seeing no crevasses, and easily
reached the flat top of the promontory. After about four miles we
approached Hutton Cliffs and could see patches of blue ice on the slopes
ahead. Soon we met some crevasses, and both of us fell into small ones.
We got to a ridge of boulders which showed where we were to get down to
the bay ice, if anywhere.
“Quite suddenly it began to drift heavily from the south, and we had to
put up the tents and camp. We had some tea and then prospected for a
route to the cliff edge. There were huge crevasses zigzagging across the
blue ice below us, but when the drift stopped we found a good track and
soon reached the cliff edge. Here it was thirty feet high with snow
whirling over on to the bay ice. Further south it was a little lower,
and here Scott lowered me on to some fallen blocks on the sea-ice. Then
Evans, Wright, and Bowers followed, and we guided the sledge down, fully
loaded, without difficulty. Two bamboos were stuck in and the rope
passed round. Crean arranged this, and Scott came last, being lowered
from below.
“We left the Hutton Cliffs about 5 p.m. and pulled north over two miles
of soft sea-ice to Glacier Tongue. We anticipated trouble climbing the
Tongue, but found a spot where its edge was only ten feet high. Evans
and I were lifted up, and in ten minutes both sledges and men were on
the Tongue. It was good fun crossing the Tongue, for there were numerous
crevasses to jump, none of which was particularly risky, though Evans
fell into one. We camped on the north side about 6.45. It was pretty
dark, but after some tea Scott decided to push on for the remaining five
miles.
“We had to steer across the bay ice by observing a star, for it began to
grow thick near the surface. I tested the ice with my axe fairly
frequently. We pulled all we knew, for occasionally our only beacon (the
star) was almost obscured. About 10 p.m. a black patch showed up, which
we guessed must be Little Razorback Island. Here Scott decided to camp.
We had a difficult job gathering mushy ice to weigh the tent-flaps, but
all turned in on the wet ice before midnight.”
[Illustration:
The two tents on the ice-shelf at Little Razorback Isle, April 12,
1911 (looking south).
]
I don’t think many of us enjoyed the situation. We were camped on new
ice and had not the faintest idea how far off the open water lay, and we
had practically no food with us. Next morning, before it was properly
light, a blizzard came up to add to our discomfort. We could not see
Cape Evans or tell whether there was ice or sea in the intervening two
miles.
I climbed up the Razorback, cutting steps up the soft ashy rock with my
bowie knife. Bowers and I explored an ice-ledge on the south side of
this little islet. On reporting to Scott he inspected it, and in the
afternoon we shifted camp up on to the ledge, whence we could not drift
out to sea if the blizzard increased.
“I snoozed about an hour during the night, pulled the flaps of my bag
tight, and apart from frozen toes—partly owing to my home-made sealskin
finnesko being too tight—and shivers in the back, and the soppy nature
of all my clothing, I was pretty comfortable!
“We roused at 7 a.m., and I had to wait half an hour before my fur mits
thawed out enough to be wearable. We finished up our pemmican and
biscuits. Birdie was cook, and as usual took too little for himself, and
made a fuss about filling up his own pot.
“We packed up at 8.15, and found that the wind helped us materially. The
ice seemed firmer here, and near Inaccessible Island we crossed tracks
and a silk line, evidently due to Simpson’s balloon experiments. We
rounded Cape Evans and saw the open water less than a mile off, so that
we were pretty close to it at Razorback.
“Another hundred yards and we saw the hut with two men moving about. We
went on silently (by order), and saw Lashley stand up, look our way and
stand rigid. Then he spoke to Anton (who phlegmatically took no notice)
and bolted into the hut. Soon they came streaming out in all sorts of
overcoats, etc., Demetri and Lashley leading, Day next, Ponting, Anton,
Simpson, and Hooper!”
Nelson was asleep, and Clissold too interested in some cooking!
We learnt that all had gone well except that one pony (Hackenschmidt)
had died of inanition and a bullet!
We pulled on, and Birdie fell into the broad tide crack. I got across
safely with the ice-axe and so to the hut.
I noticed the fine door-knobs, and the wooden number [Illustration: 1]
on our front door. The kitchen looked O.K. with bright tins and
acetylene lighting, and all else was much about the same.
_Postscript_ (that evening).
“Here am I in the hut, using my fountain-pen again after twelve weeks
without refilling—only it’s made a blob! It is midnight and I lie in my
bunk. ‘Marie’ Nelson is taking meteorological readings, and remarks that
the Skua Gull (_i.e._ G.T.) has resumed his predatory habits. The others
are sleeping except Ponting, from whom I got my candle. But everything
feels too warm and clean for sleep! Clocks are ticking everywhere!”
V
IN WINTER QUARTERS WITH CAPTAIN SCOTT
APRIL–NOVEMBER, 1911
[Illustration:
Plan of hut, 1911, showing nicknames and bunks of Explorers.
]
IN WINTER QUARTERS WITH CAPTAIN SCOTT
After our return from the summer’s sledging a new phase of Antarctic
life began. For the next seven months we were practically confined to
Cape Evans, and often to the hut itself.
During our “habitation enforced” it was rare for any man to be addressed
by the name inherited from his parents or chosen by his godfathers and
godmothers! The nicknames of the fifteen of the afterguard had by this
time become standardized, and I think merit a little attention.
Captain Scott was invariably known as _The Owner_, a naval term always
applied to the captain of a warship. Dr. Wilson (baptized Edward Adrian)
was always known as _Bill_. _Doctor Bill_ at first, _Uncle Bill_ later,
as one grew to rely on him more and more. Lieutenant Evans had four
pre-initials, but was always called _Teddy_, which eminently suited his
cheery frame of mind. Dr. Simpson was early caricatured as _Sunny Jim_
by Lillie, and soon every one, including our leader, called him nothing
else. Captain Oates was _Titus_ to all of us, except to Bowers, who
called him _Farmer Hayseed_, while Captain Scott usually referred to him
as _Soldier_. Ponting was _Ponko_, and his chief aim in life (to get us
to pose for him in all sorts of uncomfortable places) is perpetuated in
the verb “to pont.” Nelson was _Bronte_ naturally, and more obscurely
_Marie_ from some theatrical star met with in his varied career. Bowers
was _Birdie_, from his outstanding features and Titian crest. Atkinson
was shortened to _Atch_, or at times _Jane_. We were short of female
society—which lack also accounts for _Jessie_ Debenham as an alternative
to _Deb_. Cherry-Garrard was always _Cherry_—though an affectionate
variation was _Cheery Blackguard_, while the seamen—baulking at the
hyphen—called him Mr. Gerard! Our Canadian Imperialist, Charles Wright,
bore with equanimity the name of _Cousin Silas_, though perhaps
_Carolus_ and _Tranter_ (_Toronto_) were more to his taste. _Bernardo_
Day and _Trigger_ (Tryggve) Gran were less remarkable ekenames. I gave
up counting my own. _McCormick_ (Skua—alluding to the rapid
disappearance of some apricots), _Keir-Hardy_, _Sharn-Gatch_, and _Old
Griff_ were but a few.
Before we had time to change into semi-civilized garb the indefatigable
Ponting had us outside to “pont” for him. Luckily there were no melting
icicles available, and he was content to get us standing near the
sledges. Some of the others had already shaved off their beards, much to
Ponting’s disgust; but mine was so rudely criticised that I kept it most
of the winter to show _my_ opinion of it! I assisted Ponting to the best
of my ability by adding a touch of verisimilitude to Debenham’s
photograph, and threw some snow at him at the critical moment; but most
of us looked such pirates, that there was no need for any further touch
of Antarctica about us.
I spent the day sorting gear, “... and about 1 p.m. I had a gorgeous
bath—the first for three months. Funny thing, no effect from no wash, no
change, no hair brush, etc.”
I suppose the cold accounts for no ill consequences, but I have ever
since felt more sympathy for the Southern European peasants, for their
ablutions are equally simple; they also do without a lot of impedimenta,
and are equally healthy!
Ponting took his plates off to the dark room, and submitted proofs next
day! “Debenham says he looks just like an aboriginal—and far be it from
me to contradict him.” Captain Scott and Seaman Evans seemed to develop
an Irish appearance, while I scorn to repeat the comments on my
portrait.