1 62 WITH SCOTT : THE SILVER LINING 



miles from its snout. Its snowfield was very circumscribed, 

 but reached the summit of the bounding ridge in several 

 places. The glacier up here was not crevassed, and the main 

 surface lay only two hundred feet below me. After making 

 some rapid sketches I returned to the snout of the glacier 

 where the others had already arrived. 



This Davis valley contains a typical example of the " ice- 

 slabs " mentioned by Ferrar. But I do not agree with his 

 description of them. He writes, "They are the relics of 

 glaciers which once drained the snow valley ; but owing to 

 diminution of ice-supply, this has now become an inland basin, 

 and its overflows have slipped away from it, leaving a 

 subsidiary watershed bare." 



In the first place, the head of this glacier was a typical 

 cwm, with steeply sloping sides, and to all appearance a sharp 

 crest to the ridge at the back. It did not resemble the dis- 

 continuous lower portions of the Lacroix and Sollas Glaciers in 

 Dry Valley, which fully deserve the title of ice-slabs. The 

 latter lie supinely, one might say, on a gently sloping hill- 

 side, in which they have cut no definite trough. The method 

 of erosion of these curious valleys became clearer to me as we 

 saw other examples in the next fortnight. 



Monday^ February 20. — We spent the morning making a 

 depot on the Ice-Borne Moraines. We left the camera legs 

 with a flag thereon, and cemented them into the gravel by the 

 simple method of pouring a cup of water on to it ! The 

 seal's liver we put under the food stacked in the small sledge, 

 and I left a note of our whereabouts in the instrument box. 

 We took eighteen days' food with us. 



We crossed about one mile of good surface and then 

 reached "glass-houses," "craters," "pools," etc., through 

 which we struggled till two o'clock. After lunch Wright and 

 I prospected and found some " plough-share " ice about a mile 

 to the south-east. We made for this, having to cut tracks 

 along the bottom of the channels connecting "glass-house" 

 areas. Debenham and I pulled on short traces while the 

 others lifted the sledge over the constant succession of 

 obstacles. The sledge fell two feet into a hole and capsized, 

 but the brunt of the shock was absorbed by the empty oil 

 tins. We were always falling, and occasionally disappeared a 

 foot below the glass-house surface. 



