i9l 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 i 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 IO 



