THE GRANITE HARBOUR EXPEDITION 345 



ridges. After making a sketch and searching for signs of open 

 water, luckily without result, we turned in and spent a 

 comfortable night. 



We awoke to a comparatively hot day ! I decided to try 

 one sledge first, and if all went well to tack on the other. 

 But to our chagrin we found that we could not manage one 

 sledge. By one o'clock we had managed to struggle along for 

 one mile, in the course of which Debenham had badly twisted 

 his knee. 



" I decided to go in for night marching, and we pitched 

 the tent, hung out our wet clothes in the hot sun, and had 

 lunch. Then we turned in and tried to sleep without success. 

 I read through one year of Horsfield's German Grammar, and 

 put a chinstrap on my hat, while Forde darned socks. It was 

 too hot to keep in the sleeping-bags, and so I lay outside 

 without a coat ! 



" At 7 p.m. it is distinctly cooler, so that ice does not melt 

 now if you touch it." 



These abnormal conditions were due to the bright sun, for 

 the air temperature was below freezing. But the solar rays 

 striking the tent melted any snow thereon until there were 

 pools on the flounce, while water inside the aluminium 

 cooker remained unfrozen for hours. 



Night marching commenced about 9 p.m. The surface 

 was much harder, and we just managed two sledges for a short 

 distance, but we had to relay most of the way. 



To the west is the great Piedmont Glacier, thirty miles 

 wide, and covering a ten-mile belt between the mountains 

 and the sea. The nearer mountains were all rounded and 

 smoothed by glacial erosion, while the higher peaks behind 

 rose into jagged summits, pitted by numerous cwm valleys, 

 which showed that they had never been beneath a thick ice 

 mantle. 



To the east appeared a brown island about 100 feet high 

 and a quarter of a mile long. It had a well-defined ice-foot, 

 and 1 hoped that we were to chart a new island. Gran and 

 Forde were eager to examine this, and while we were surveying 

 the coast they marched a mile or so towards it. But our 

 " island " was merely a stranded berg coloured brown by the 

 large amount of silt included in the ice. In some such way 

 numerous " islands," such as the Nimrod group, have crept 



