1911] OUR GOAL 145 
tance flowed under the moraine, and ultimately entered the seals’ 
sub-glacial stream and so reached the sea. Coleridge’s lines 
entered one’s mind: 
‘There Alph the sacred river ran 
Through caverns measureless to man 
Down to a sunless sea.’ 
So we christened this stream the Alph River. 
We marched along the lake and up the gully beyond. Here 
a tributary entered from a large cave in the moraine wall to 
the north. The roof of this cave was coated with most beautiful 
ice crystals, which resembled pine twigs in shape and were about 
two inches long. Many brownish ice stalactites and stalagmites 
fringed the walls of the cave and Wright was lucky in obtaining 
some beautiful photos of these structures. 
At 4 P.M. we reached our goal—the steep face of the Walcott 
glacier, but as the weather looked stormy we had to retreat 
immediately. Wright and I compared compass readings here. 
The needles swung extremely sluggishly, but we found they were 
reliable to four degrees—which is about eight times the ordinary 
error. The fact that magnetic south was nearly due north also 
complicated matters here! We marched back by a different 
route and discovered a strong outcrop of basic lava about fifty 
feet thick which was rich in olivine and had caught up fragments 
of garnet rock in its passage through the earth’s crust. 
The month of March opened with a bright sunny morning, 
just suited for our proposed climb up one of the hinterland 
ranges. We climbed up the slope about eight hundred feet and 
so reached the level floor of the ‘ hanging valley’ just behind the 
camp. We marched along this to the north end of the valley 
towards a prominent peak on the eastern ridge. A stiff climb 
over snow slopes and rugged granite led to the summit which 
we reached at 1 P.M. The aneroid made this 3000 feet above 
sea-level. It was a beautiful day and we could see Erebus, 
Discovery, Morning, and the Pyramid up the Koettlitz. Lister 
itself as usual was in the clouds, but nearly all below was visible. 
We could see numerous hinterland ridges reaching from the 
Lower Koettlitz to the Lister scarp, and satisfied ourselves that 
no lateral ‘Snow Valley’ existed below the scarp such as has 
been indicated in earlier maps. 
VOL. II—I0O 
