468 NEW LAND 



obliterated, but it was quite enough to make one's blood run 

 quicker in one's veins. It led across to the other side of the 

 valley, where I was constrained to follow it, and it was not long 

 before I found myself on the lower marginal tracts of the gently 

 rising plateau, which, speaking generally, forms the surface of the 

 northern part of North Kent. The lower part of the valleys here, 

 where they cut through the abrupt fall of the plateau towards 

 a narrow anteriorly low glacier, were narrow and deeply cut, 

 but rose quickly at a steeper gradient to the depressions which 

 intersected the edge of the plateau, until little by little they 

 merged into the plateau itself. On the even rounded ridges and 

 mounds between these depressions, which for the most part were 

 filled with snow in huge drifts, the sheet of snow was thin and of 

 remarkable formation. Instead of a solid mass, the snow was 

 powdery, lying under a thin, shining crust, uneven, loose, and decep- 

 tive, like a kind of coarse granular rime. Through this protruded 

 the larger stones and a few blades of grass, and when one trod 

 through the crust the underlying crystal powder fell together and 

 covered the ground in a thin layer, through which the scanty 

 vegetation was visible, consisting of lichens and a few blades of 

 grass. 



'The animals had discovered this state of affairs, and there 

 were numerous tracks and the signs of much scraping, which 

 showed that they had often grazed here. Although the tracks 

 were old, I could not help going on a little farther. 



' It was very still, and the sun shone brightly, through a faint 

 haze, down on to the glaciated snowfields, where the light was 

 refracted from the ice-prisms and thrown back from the number- 

 less crystal facets so that the sunshine seemed to quiver in the air 

 above the hills, dazzling and confusing the eyesight in whatever 

 direction one turned. Everything seemed alive and moving. 

 Suddenly I saw away on a mound the dark forms of polar oxen 

 a few steps farther and I discovered them to be only a couple of 

 dark boulders quite near to me. All this lured me on, and at last 

 I reached the highest point of the crest where it fell down towards 

 the strait. In the south and west were the sunny hills of North 

 Kent ; beneath and before me the ice of the strait, broken off to 





