Beil IN THE MOAT 135 
We made good speed up the glacier and camped again at 
the west end of the Kukri Hills. After supper Wright and I 
went over to the great ‘ glacier moat’ which separates the ice 
from the granite clifis. I was very anxious to see whether there 
Was any evidence of erosion by the glacier on the cliffs at the 
foot of the moat. 
We carried ice axes and 120 feet of Alpine rope. At the 
edge of the glacier there was a sharp curve formed by a snow 
cornice. Carefully peering over the edge, we could see there 
was a frozen stream about 200 feet below. 
Wright lowered me over the edge—which I found was 
formed of soft snow and projected, like the eaves of a house, 
about ten feet. Some thirty feet down was a sort of platform 
and then the steep edge of the great glacier. 
Wright paid out the rope and I let myself down to its end, 
about 80 feet above the moat. I started cutting steps down the 
remainder, but my ski boots were so worn out I got no grip, 
and I reached the moat purely by the force of gravity. My 
instruments were luckily not damaged and I found the depth 
to be 207 feet, while the moat was 100 feet wide at the bottom. 
Débris screened the cliff foot and I could see no planation by 
fhe vice. 
I managed to cut steps up to the rope and reached the plat- 
form under the cornice. Wright hauled away manfully, with 
the natural but unexpected result that the rope cut through the 
snow cornice and his efforts resulted in my head being enveloped 
in snow, and there I stopped. I cried ‘ Lower away,’ reached the 
platform again, and crawled along under the cornice, but could 
see no way out of the cul-de-sac. Gloomily I returned to the rope 
and descended to the moat, arriving in exactly the same manner, 
save that the skin vanished from the knuckles of my left hand 
this time! However, after tramping some distance north we 
found a place where the cornice had broken off, and here I was 
hauled up, my ice axe finding a tender spot in my leg as I reached 
‘glacier’ firma. 
Our rest was disturbed all night by a sound like continuous 
volley-firing. This was due to the cooling temperatures causing 
the glacier to contract and split. 
In the forenoon Wright and P.O. Evans explored the ice 
falls and moraines near Solitary Rocks while Debenham and I 
