chap xi FULMAR VALLEY 163 



knee ten minutes from the start, and remained wet the 

 whole day, with puddles of water squdging and plopping 

 inside the boots at every step. Besides streams there were 

 infinite dry, or almost dry, gullies to be crossed, each from 

 one to three yards deep, and with vertical sides, save 

 at intervals requiring to be sought, involving the sledges 

 in a zigzag route. Williamson, who is not over-burdened 

 with brains, was inclined to take the sledge he drove 

 straight across country, to its no small peril, for at one 

 moment it would be standing on its snout, at another on 

 its stern, whilst it frequently turned turtle. The iron 

 hooping we had nailed underneath preserved it from a 

 swift destruction. Garwood, who always acted as driver to 

 Spits, conducted the rough sledge which we bought from 

 the winterers for a few crowns. It was not much to look 

 at, but it held together wonderfully. Its chief defect was 

 a tendency to dig its nose into the ground, so that it often 

 acted more as a plough than a slider. Much pulling and 

 lifting thus befell, a work to which Gregory devoted the 

 best part of the day. 



On the whole, the ground traversed was the best we 

 had yet passed, for the season was now visibly advancing ; 

 snow had almost left the valleys and melted out of the 

 gullies, so that snow-bogs were become things of the past, 

 and the soft area of soaking ground which we were wont 

 to find at the foot of every snow-couloir was either greatly 

 diminished or wholly dried. Instead of the snow-bogs were 

 the gullies I have described, with their steep soft sides of 

 powdered paper-shales ; whilst the place of the larger flat 

 snow-beds was marked by areas of soft sticky mud, seldom 

 more than ankle-deep, and generally avoidable. All this 

 mud, and, in fact, the ground everywhere, was cracked or 

 cracking into roughly hexagonal lumps and bosses, either 

 with or without vegetation growing in the cracks, according 



