CAPE SUMNER TO DRAGON POINT 



enormous flanks. A snow-shower had just swept the awl- 

 pointed peaks standing in white and brilliant contrast to the 

 dark bands lower down. 



There was a storm from south-east, and the gusts of wind 

 swept down from the mountains with such force that it was 

 impossible to stand upright under their attacks. We pitched 

 the tents with great difficulty, and as soon as we had strength- 

 ened ourselves with some food, little Hendrik and I walked 

 along the ice-foot to Newman Bay to reconnoitre. We crawled 

 up on the ice-foot and crept slowly forward against the storm. 

 What we saw was not very encouraging ; on the morrow we 

 should once more have to hew our way towards the bay where 

 the ice seemed more even. We climbed the mountains to get 

 a view of the places where travelling might be easiest ; then we 

 returned to our comrades. On one crossing of the mountain 

 we were overwhelmed by weariness and the pain of our wind- 

 lashed faces, so we sought shelter behind a hummock of ice. 



Whilst we tried in vain to doze, our thoughts reverted again 

 and again to Markham's journey across this very Polar-ice, 

 through the frozen spray of which we were now about to force 

 our way. 



I have mentioned before in how slight a degree we were 

 impressed by the natural phenomena which so often had ren- 

 dered our predecessors speechless. Rut here, where for the 

 first time in my life I looked across the mighty ocean of the 

 Pole, I had no words to express the feeling with which this 

 living though ice-bound sea overwhelmed me. The infinitely 

 distant horizon, where on all sides one sees only endless white 

 ice-steppes, lying there without the evenness of the plain and 

 full of unrest, is like an Epos of nature which renders one 

 dumb. 



And whilst the wind raged round us and the steep moun- 

 tains of Cape Sumner stood threatening above our heads, the 

 surroundings forced me to go through again in imagination all 

 the sufferings which the stubborn Englishmen from Nares' 

 Expedition had undergone. 

 F 81 



