1911] THROUGH HOLE AND GULLY Fl 
face of the Crozier cliffs, but we found a man-hole in the space 
between the ice and the rock which was big enough, and only 
just big enough, for us to crawl through one by one. [Bill dis- 
appeared into the hole, and we followed and managed to wriggle 
through, working ourselves over a gully the other side by jam- 
ming our bodies against one side with our legs against the cliff 
on the other. In another place we got up another hole between 
two jams of pressure, rather like an enlarged rabbit hole. The 
place was strewn with fallen ice blocks and rocks, and if one fell 
on us we should have finished, also if the Barrier had just then 
chosen to give a squeeze.] We had to leave the sledge here. 
Once past this we were in an enclosed snow pit with an almost ver- 
tical wall which required about fifteen steps to be cut to get out 
of it. From here we had again a series of drift troughs between 
the rock clifis and the pressure ridges until at last we got out on 
to the actual ice foot, overhanging the sea ice by a small over- 
hanging cliff of ro or 12 feet. This was the lowest point of the 
ice foot and there was no snow drift running down from it on 
to the sea ice anywhere. This rather suggests that even this bay 
Ice was not at all old as yet—possibly not even a month old. 
Farther on round the foot of the Crozier rock cliffs the ice foot 
cliff was very considerably higher, 20 to 30 feet. 
The light was rapidly failing when we at last reached the sea 
ice, and we had to be very quick in doing what we had to do here. 
We saw there was no seal in sight. We saw also that there were 
only about 100 Emperor penguins instead of a couple of thousand 
as in 1902 and 1903. They were all standing in one compact 
group under the ice cliffs of the Barrier a few hundred yards from 
where we had emerged. We decided to get three penguin skins 
with their blubber and a few eggs. We therefore left Cherry 
on the ice foot with the Alpine rope to help us up again from the 
sea ice. Bowers and I jumped down and went of to the Em- 
perors. We saw at once that some of them were crouching with 
eggs on their feet, as they tried to shuffle away with them with- 
out losing their hold. As we hustled them, however, a good 
many eggs were dropped and left lying on the ice, or were picked 
up again by the unemployed birds that saw and took their oppor- 
tunity to seize an egg. We collected six eggs and killed and 
skinned three birds, and went back to the ice foot where Cherry 
_ Was waiting to help us up with the rope. We passed the eggs and 
