132 SCOTT’S LAST EXPEDITION [FEBRUARY _ 
copied the Australian swagsman with a bundle in front nearly 
balancing the main bulk behind. I found, as usual, that a strap 
over the right shoulder (as used by the Italian harpist) suited 
my convenience best. Very reluctantly we left our trusty cooker 
behind, but Debenham carried his camera and half the food, while 
I bore the remainder and a veritable goldminer’s dish, to try for 
gold in the gravels of Dry Valley. 
We marched down a narrow gap, cut through a great bar 
of granite, and saw ahead of us quite a large lake, some three 
miles long. It was of course frozen, but through the thick ice 
covering we could see water plants, and below the steep cliffs 
the water seemed very deep. We lunched at the east end of the 
lake—the first of many cold meals, and like all of them consisting 
chiefly of biscuit and butter, varied by biscuit without butter. 
However we had a cake of chocolate each afternoon and a little 
cheese. 
Hereabouts the wide valley was filled with morainic débris, 
and we passed close to several of the cliff glaciers. I was much 
surprised to find that the bed of the valley now commenced to 
rise, for we knew we were approaching the sea. We continued 
to ascend and could see no way out of the trough. Immediately 
ahead was a great rock barrier across the valley and evidently 
several thousand feet high. However in the next few miles I 
counted no less than thirteen dead: seals which had somehow 
come up from the coast, and I felt sure we could easily manage 
anything they could traverse. [See Illustration, page 420. ] 
Soon we began to open up a narrow defile down the north 
side of the valley, but this outlet-—a sort of notch one thousand 
feet deep scored in the bottom of the trough—was apparently 
barred by a tributary cliff glacier. . 
It was now nearly six o’clock and my shoulder was aching 
with my pack. Judging from the readiness of the others to drop 
their loads, I concluded that they felt the same. But we all 
had an idea that a few minutes later would give us a view of the 
sea. 
We wondered if we could pass around the snout of this won- 
derful tributary immediately in front. It opposed a face of ice 
40 feet high, but just where it butted into the steep (south) slope 
of the defile there was a gap. So narrow was this that one could 
almost touch the ice face on one side and the side of the defile on 
