342 BONDERS OF ANTARCTIC WORLD 



party, Sir Philip Brocklehurst. The next day they camped on the rim of an 

 old crater and explored its floor. Their attention was attracted to some curi- 

 ous mounds dotted over the snow plain. They found that they were fuma- 

 roles, or smoke holes, which in ordinary climates may be detected by the thin 

 cloud of steam above them. The fumaroles of Erebus have their steam 

 converted into ice as soon as it reaches the surface of the snow plain, and the 

 result has been the creation of the remarkably shaped mounds. The ice was 

 colored yellow on account of the sulphur. 



On the sixth day they reached the edge of the active crater and found 

 themselves on the lip of a vast abyss filled with a rising cloud of steam. 



"After a continuous loud, hissing sound," writes Lieutenant Shackleton, 

 "lasting for some minutes, there would come from below a big dull boom, 

 and immediately great globular masses of steam would rush upward to swell 

 the volume of the cloud which swayed over the crater. The air was filled with 

 the fumes of burning sulphur. Presently a light breeze fanned away the steam 

 cloud and at once the crater stood revealed in all its vast extent and depth. 

 It was between 800 and 900 feet deep with a maximum width of half a mile, 

 and at the bottom could be seen three well-like openings from which the steam 

 proceeded. On the wall of the crater opposite to the party beds of dark pumice 

 alternated with white patches of snow, and in one place the presence of scores 

 of steam jets suggested that the snow was lying on hot rock." 



The descent was rapid, for the party dropped down 5,000 feet in four 

 hours by sliding down the long ice slopes. 



The explorers ascertained the height of the mountain to be 13,350 feet. 



It is probable that the South Pole itself is buried beneath as much as 5,000 

 vertical feet of everlasting ice. For this reason, on account of the altitude 

 above the sea, its neighborhood may be expected to be colder than that of the 

 North Pole. Then again, because there is no water to render the climate 

 milder, it may be supposed that the temperature at the southern end of the 

 earth's axis is lower than at the northern end. 



It is deemed not at all Impossible that somewhere in the neighborhood of the 

 South Pole there may be a comparatively warm patch — a sort of oasis in the 

 midst of the icy desert, like Whale Sound in the far north. In such an oasis, 

 if it exists, may be found strange forms of life, of which we know nothing. 

 There might even be people there — human beings unlike any we are ac- 

 quainted with, who, for uncounted centuries, have been shut away from com- 

 munication with the rest of the world. 



