chap, xxii WESTERN BAYS 303 



sides and valleys were white with snow. If Cross Bay 

 presents an effect of depth and narrowness, Kings Bay, with- 

 out really being much wider, has an aspect of breadth. This 

 is due, partly to the fact that the mountains do not rise 

 directly from the water, but from the head of a wide sloping 

 beach ; partly because the end, instead of being enclosed 

 by a throng of peaks, is occupied by the broad front of a 

 splendid glacier, no less than six miles wide, flowing from 

 the south-east and draining the same reservoir which supplies 

 the great ice-tongues that empty into the north side of Ice 

 Fjord and round as far as Dickson Bay. From this glacier 

 rise the famous peaks called the Three Crowns. These, 

 according to the map, stand at the very head of the bay, and 

 should have been visible from its mouth. I was puzzled by 

 their non-appearance. In fact, they are not situated in the 

 position assigned to them, but farther north, their direction 

 being indicated by this, that when we were about two miles 

 due south of the Middle Hook dividing Cross and Kings Bays, 

 the three peaks were hidden behind the rounded promontory 

 of red glaciated rock which forms the east side of Blom- 

 strands Harbour. The Crowns did not appear till we had 

 cleared that promontory, and then not three in a row, but at 

 the points of a right-angled triangle. 



Again came the luck of a little sunshine, casting upon 

 the icy bay a brief aspect of gaiety. The wide glacier, 

 stretching back into the expanse of the interior, and burying 

 the bases of a number of considerable hills, was the centre 

 of attraction. On the north were splintered peaks of archaean 

 formations. The Crowns and their companions are built 

 of more recent rock, horizontally bedded, and which, by 

 its aspect of regularity, renders the hills like the work of 

 men's hands, so that their relatively small scale as natural 

 objects is forgotten. Each of the Crowns resembles the 

 second Pyramid of Gizeh — the one still capped with the 



