214 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Dec. 



day, and taking our coil of Alpine rope, with our crampons 

 and a supply of food, we set off over the rough ice of the 

 glacier. As this walk had several points of interest, I give its 

 outline from my diary : 



' Started at seven o'clock with a supply of pemmican, choco- 

 late, sugar, and biscuit in our pockets, and our small provision 

 measure to act as a drinking-cup. It is an extraordinary 

 novelty in our sledging experience to find that one can get 

 water by simply dipping it up. As we descended, the slope 

 became steeper, and soon the ice grew so disturbed that we 

 were obliged to rope ourselves together and proceed with 

 caution. The disturbance was of very much the same nature 

 as that which we had found on the south side of the Ferrar 

 Glacier ; the ice seemed to have broken down, leaving steep 

 faces towards the south. Here and there we found scattered 

 boulders and finer morainic material, and the channels of the 

 glacial streams became visible in places, to vanish again under 

 deep blue arches of ice. 



' At length we descended into one of these watercourses and 

 followed it for some distance, until, to our surprise, it came 

 abruptly to an end, and with it the glacier itself, which had 

 gradually dwindled to this insignificant termination. Before us 

 was a shallow, frozen lake into which the thaw- water of the 

 glacier was pouring. The channel in which we stood was 

 about twenty feet above its surface, and the highest pinnacles 

 of ice were not more than the same distance above our heads, 

 whereas the terminal face of the glacier was about three or four 

 hundred yards across. So here was the limit of the great ice- 

 river which we had followed down from the vast basin of the 

 interior ; instead of pouring huge icebergs into the sea, it was 

 slowly dwindling away in its steep-sided valley. It was, in fact, 

 nothing but the remains of what had once been a mighty ice- 

 flow from the inland. 



' With a little difficulty we climbed down to the level of the 

 lake, and then observed that the glacier rested on a deep 

 ground moraine of mud, in some places as much as ten or 

 twelve feet in thickness ; this layer of mud extended beyond 



