170 WITH SCOTT: THE SILVER LINING 



ski-boots, so that he did not move far afield for the next day 

 or two. 



After crossing two miles of moraines we reached a lake. 

 It was drained by a stream which ultimately reached the 

 pinnacles of the Koettlitz glacier. 



Between the ice cliffs and the lake this stream for a con- 

 siderable distance flowed under the moraine, and ultimately 

 entered the seals' sub-glacial stream and so reached the sea. 

 Coleridge's lines entered one's mind : 



" Where 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. 



It was a cold cloudy morning on the 27th when we 

 started off for a tramp over the ancient low-level moraines. 

 We could see a big tributary glacier about twelve miles away, 

 whose vertical front was separated from the Koettlitz by two 

 miles of bare moraine heaps. Debenham, with his bad heel, 

 stayed around the camp where there was plenty of collecting. 



We went a short distance along one of the moraine 

 avenues. Then we climbed eighty feet up and proceeded 



