THE TERMINAL CAMP 143 



keep the ropes clear. But we had some nasty falls, especially 

 Evans, who got a cut deep in his palm from a piece of ' bottle- 

 glass ' ice, in spite of his thick mitts. 



At noon we came across a picturesque tunnel in the ice, 

 about three feet wide, seven feet high, and one hundred feet 

 long. It had been cut out by thaw waters which had now drained 

 away. 



In and out wound the lanes, forming a regular network 

 through all sort of picturesque pinnacles. Here was one like 

 a yacht on stocks, there a perfect wedding-cake twelve feet high, 

 again a lady's bonnet and so on in infinite variety. At close of 

 day we pitched Camp Labyrinth. 



On the 24th we emerged from the pinnacles and reached 

 the coast moraines again near Heald Island. Here I decided 

 to make our terminal camp. In a gravelly hollow we pitched 

 the tent and next morning was devoted to a ' make and mend.' 

 All our sleeping-bags and finnesko were wet with the sloppy ice- 

 floors of the last week for we had not been able to find any 

 snow-drifts on which to camp. They are much warmer and 

 drier than ice. 



Behind the tent to the north were slopes about 1000 feet 

 high leading to empty ' hanging ' valleys. These radiated from 

 the base of the Lister scarp, which rose in one steep face 10,000 

 feet to the summit. This face was pitted by gigantic cup valleys 

 or, as they are technically called, cwms, and presented a spectacle 

 which probably could be paralleled nowhere in the world. 



Looking southward across the Koettlitz from the mouth of 

 one of these hanging valleys one could see some sort of plan 

 in the icy maze which had so bewildered us. Above Heald 

 Island the valley was filled with the glacial stream in a normal 

 uniform mass, interrupted only by crevasses and falls. But to 

 the east of Heald Island it took the form of a glacier ' delta.' 

 Below the falls the ice descended to the east in a series of broad 

 undulations, a portion of which we had traversed on the 23rd. 

 Long promontories of ice fifty feet high extended from the un- 

 broken glacier mass and probably represented the crests of the 

 undulations. These degenerated at the ends into icebergs and 

 monoliths of ice, and these again had weathered into the bastions 

 and pinnacles. Lower down the thaw waters had etched these 

 into still smaller units, and along the coast just below me the 



