chap, xv MOUNT LUSITANIA 211 



on, up the rounded ridge of gritty debris on our left to 

 the summit of the neighbouring Mount Lusitania, the self- 

 same mountain that Garwood and I were making for on 

 July 6, when the crevasses turned us back. The first thing 

 I saw from the top was the place of our enforced return. 

 The snow in which we so deeply waded was gone from it, 

 and the ice-surface revealed with its multitude of schrunds. I 

 gazed at the place with retrospective horror. A more cre- 

 vassed piece of glacier I never saw ; and we had no rope. 

 In future I shall say of unroped glacier-walking in July, "That 

 ain't Arctic." 



The view was important and interesting. There were two 

 hours' topographical work in it at the least ; but no one 

 could have stayed two hours to do it, for a cold and furious 

 wind made every moment a torture, sucking all the warmth 

 out of us, and swiftly taking every particle of feeling out of 

 the fingers, so that a little longer exposure would have resulted 

 in frost-bite. The time of our halt on the top was in every 

 respect horrible. I levelled the plane-table on the loose 

 flags, and then knocked it crooked when I moved, for the 

 flags on which we trod tilted one another, and the work was 

 to do again. In attempting to photograph I fogged three 

 plates out of eight through the clumsiness of cold fingers 

 and stupidity induced by the raging elements. Moreover, 

 there was need for haste anyhow, for clouds were rapidly 

 covering the hills, and one point disappeared after another. 

 It was infinitely annoying, for we were in the very centre 

 of the surveyed region, and could have corrected and added 

 many details. The heads of the complicated network of 

 valleys, whose mouths alone clouds had permitted us to see 

 on the way up Advent Vale, were all now revealed. We were 

 behind the outer ring of peaks that look down on that valley, 

 and the secrets of their structure were revealed. There 

 was the Sassendal in sight too, right up to Rabot Glacier, 



