i 
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5 
if 
1911] DRY |) VALLEY eh 
Beyond the snout was a wide, bare stony trough, extending 
many miles to the east. The lower slopes were strewn with red- 
dish granite boulders. Here and there on the upper slopes piles 
of intensely black fragments—for all the world like coal dumps 
—marked recent lava flows. 
Between the serrated crests of the giant cliffs towering five 
or six thousand feet above us were cascading rivers of ice. These 
hanging glaciers spread out in great white lobes over the lower 
slopes of dark rock, and in some cases the clifis were so steep 
that the lower portion of the tributary glacier was fed purely by 
avalanches falling from the ice fields up above. And, most amaz- 
ing of all, not a snowdrift in sight. It was warm weather most 
of the time we spent in Dry Valley—trising sometimes above 
freezing-point—and everywhere streams were tinkling among 
the black boulders, so much so that this valley, in spite of its 
name, was certainly the wettest area I saw in Antarctica! 
About a mile back from the end of the glacier we made a 
permanent camp. We could drag the sledge no further, and I 
recognised that ‘ packing’ on our backs was the only way to map 
this snowless region. 
Bare ice surrounded us, forty-foot ice cliffs and a wide ‘ gla- 
cier moat’ separated us from the steep rock slopes. Nowhere 
could we find a place to stand easily—while it was impossible to 
pitch the tent. However the centre of the glacier was cut up 
by surface streams into deep gullies whose sunny southern sides 
were cut into a series of picturesque alcoves. They were most 
beautiful specimens of nature’s architecture, the steep walls of 
clear ice being fretted by the sun into a thousand pilasters and 
niches. We lowered the sledge down 20 feet into one of these 
Gothic apses, and found ideal conditions for a sheltered camp. 
We had a strongly running stream—an inch deep—alongside; 
and though the wind howled along the surface of the glacier 
nothing was even disturbed in Alcove Camp. 
We spent two days mapping the vicinity, and then started 
our trek to the sea. We packed up the tent, our sleeping-bags, 
and five days’ food. Our method of march was rather amusing. 
Wright carried his pack in the Canadian method by a ‘ tump- 
line’ round his forehead. He took the theodolite. P.O. Evans 
wrapped his goods and the tent round the tent poles and proudly 
carried them like a standard over his shoulder. Debenham 
