i 9 i i] DRY VALLEY 131 



Beyond the snout was a wide, bare stony trough, extending 

 many miles to the east. The lower slopes were strewn with red- 

 dish granite boulders. Here and there on the upper slopes piles 

 of intensely black fragments for all the world like coal dumps 

 marked recent lava flows. 



Between the serrated crests of the giant cliffs towering five 

 or six thousand feet above us were cascading rivers of ice. These 

 hanging glaciers spread out in great white lobes over the lower 

 slopes of dark rock, and in some cases the cliffs were so steep 

 that the lower portion of the tributary glacier was fed purely by 

 avalanches falling from the ice fields up above. And, most amaz- 

 ing of all, not a snowdrift in sight. It was warm weather most 

 of the time we spent in Dry Valley rising sometimes above 

 freezing-point and everywhere streams were tinkling among 

 the black boulders, so much so that this valley, in spite of its 

 name, was certainly the wettest area I saw in Antarctica ! 



About a mile back from the end of the glacier we made a 

 permanent camp. We could drag the sledge no further, and I 

 recognised that ' packing ' on our backs was the only way to map 

 this snowless region. 



Bare ice surrounded us, forty-foot ice cliffs and a wide ' gla- 

 cier moat ' separated us from the steep rock slopes. Nowhere 

 could we find a place to stand easily while it was impossible to 

 pitch the tent. However the centre of the glacier was cut up 

 by surface streams into deep gullies whose sunny southern sides 

 were cut into a series of picturesque alcoves. They were most 

 beautiful specimens of nature's architecture, the steep walls of 

 clear ice being fretted by the sun into a thousand pilasters and 

 niches. We lowered the sledge down 20 feet into one of these 

 Gothic apses, and found ideal conditions for a sheltered camp. 

 We had a strongly running stream an inch deep alongside; 

 and though the wind howled along the surface of the glacier 

 nothing was even disturbed in Alcove Camp. 



We spent two days mapping the vicinity, and then started 

 our trek to the sea. We packed up the tent, our sleeping-bags, 

 and five days' food. Our method of march was rather amusing. 

 Wright carried his pack in the Canadian method by a ' tump- 

 line ' round his forehead. He took the theodolite. P.O. Evans 

 wrapped his goods and the tent round the tent poles and proudly 

 carried them like a standard over his shoulder. Debenham 



