134 WITH SCOTT: THE SILVER LINING 



afraid it might prove to be merely a 500-foot moraine. So 

 we arranged to spend the day in the matters most interesting 

 to us. Debenham climbed up some 2000 feet to the " coaly " 

 debris on the Kukri Hills. Wright (and Evans) investigated 

 the physics of the ice in the vicinity of Alcove Camp. 

 Debenham and I started together down the glacier, and 

 experienced considerable difficulty in leaving the ice. Captain 

 Scott had descended easily enough in 1903, so we kept along 

 the southern edge, seeking a convenient place. The steep 

 lateral slope gave way to a perpendicular cliff over fifty feet 

 high, and we had to cross many ridges and small crevasses 

 before we came to a gully which led to a " silt " fall. Here, 

 partly by slipping and partly by being lowered by the wick- 

 straps of my gloves, I managed to reach the lateral moat, and 

 Debenham followed safely. (Afterwards Debenham cut steps 

 up the less steep face nearer our camp.) 



Debenham finally climbed to an outcrop of black lava 

 forming a wall eighty feet high, and obviously representing 

 quite a late phase of volcanic activity. 



I carried lunch with me down the valley, and ate it under 

 a huge granite erratic abreast of the snout of the glacier. The 

 slopes of the hills contracted here, and practically enclosed the 

 glacier save for a deep narrow gorge just under the 500-foot 

 groin mentioned above. The slopes were strewn with frag- 

 ments of grey granite, of fawn granite, and of a felsite 

 containing hornblende laths and "zoned" felspars. Many 

 of the basalt fragments seemed to show the effects of wind 

 action, and exhibited the wedge form of " dreikanter." The 

 latter are elsewhere characteristic of desert regions, where also 

 wind action is more pronounced than water erosion. Many 

 of the large granite erratics contained felspars three inches 

 long, and every gradation between granite, gneiss, and felsite 

 seemed to be present. 



Many interesting features were shown by the glacier snout 

 immediately below me. Between the groin — which I named the 

 Bonney Riegel — and the glacier, extended an oval lake about 

 a mile long, and half that in breadth. This connected with a 

 much larger lake to the east by a deep waterway through the 

 Bonney Riegel. The whole lake — some four miles long — 

 I named Lake Bonney, after the President of the British 

 Association, himself a climber and student of the Alps. Between 



