chap, x THE TRIDENT 149 



face was determined when its drainage ran down Advent 

 Vale. Now the Esker and Turnback rivers have cut back 

 and robbed most of these waters. This lower, undulating 

 country is bounded by the glaciers and snowy hills near 

 the Baldhead, which spread away eastward till they merge 

 in a high glacier region, practically an ice-sheet, apparently 

 stretching as far as the east coast. This ice-sheet sends several 

 glacier tongues down into Turnback Valley and its branches. 

 One of these, of gentle slope, seemed so easy of access at 

 the foot that we thought it might prove the best avenue of 

 approach to Agardh Bay. As yet we did not know of the 

 existence of Fulmar Valley, and were still labouring under 

 the belief that an ice-sheet must be crossed before we could 

 arrive at the east coast. The prospect was a noble one in 

 all directions, but the freezing wind robbed it of charm and 

 made study of it painful. An hour's work was all I could 

 endure. 



On first reaching the top we noticed a strange white bed 

 of cloud, all isolated, covering a level place in the midst 

 of the neve below the snow-pass to Agardh Bay. It was 

 a bright round silver cloud, resting like a bubble upon the 

 snow. When it lifted two giants were revealed, a man and 

 a graceful and beautifully-draped woman in floating lilac 

 garments. They were both about two hundred feet high, and 

 there were giant children with them, also dressed in lilac 

 drapery. They seemed to dance upon, or rather to float over, 

 a wonderful dark-blue carpet, laid in the midst of the snow- 

 field. They moved very slowly, but with indescribable grace, 

 and the woman sometimes hovered over the man with her 

 veil falling in a glorious curve over her extended arm. As 

 we looked, they were gone, and in their place, in the midst 

 of the blue carpet, stood a magnificent tree, also lilac in 

 colour, with a great trunk and a huge extending top, in form 

 like one of Turner's pines. It also vanished, and other 



