i9] THROUGH HOLE AND GULLY 25 



face of the Crozier cliffs, but we found a man-hole in the space 

 between the ice and the rock which was big enough, and only 

 just big enough, for us to crawl through one by one. [Bill dis- 

 appeared into the hole, and we followed and managed to wriggle 

 through, working ourselves over a gully the other side by jam- 

 ming our bodies against one side with our legs against the cliff 

 on the other. In another place we got up another hole between 

 two jams of pressure, rather like an enlarged rabbit hole. The 

 place was strewn with fallen ice blocks and rocks, and if one fell 

 on us we should have finished, also if the Barrier had just then 

 chosen to give a squeeze.] We had to leave the sledge here. 

 Once past this we were in an enclosed snow pit with an almost ver- 

 tical wall which required about fifteen steps to be cut to get out 

 of it. From here we had again a series of drift troughs between 

 the rock cliffs and the pressure ridges until at last we got out on 

 to the actual ice foot, overhanging the sea ice by a small over- 

 hanging cliff of i o or 12 feet. This was the lowest point of the 

 ice foot and there was no snow drift running down from it on 

 to the sea ice anywhere. This rather suggests that even this bay 

 ice was not at all old as yet -possibly not even a month old. 

 Farther on round the foot of the Crozier rock cliffs the ice foot 

 cliff was very considerably higher, 20 to 30 feet. 



The light was rapidly failing when we at last reached the sea 

 ice, and we had to be very quick in doing what we had to do here. 

 We saw there was no seal in sight. We saw also that there were 

 only about 100 Emperor penguins instead of a couple of thousand 

 as in 1902 and 1903. They were all standing in one compact 

 group under the ice cliffs of the Barrier a few hundred yards from 

 where we had emerged. We decided to get three penguin skins 

 with their blubber and a few eggs. We therefore left Cherry 

 on the ice foot with the Alpine rope to help us up again from the 

 sea ice. Bowers and I jumped down and went off to the Em- 

 perors. We saw at once that some of them were crouching with 

 eggs on their feet, as they tried to shuffle away with them with- 

 out losing their hold. As we hustled them, however, a good 

 many eggs were dropped and left lying on the ice, or were picked 

 up again by the unemployed birds that saw and took their oppor- 

 tunity to seize an egg. We collected six eggs and killed and 

 skinned three birds, and went back to the ice foot where Cherry 

 was waiting to help us up with the rope. We passed the eggs and 



