998 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



DERRICK POINT, SHOWING THE METHOD 

 OF HAULING STORES UP THE CLIFF 



ASCENDING A GLACIER WHICH WAS I30 

 MILES IN LENGTH 



We encountered difficulties at once, for 

 the snow-slopes by means of which we 

 gained the glacier surface gave way to 

 blue ice, with numberless cracks and 

 crevasses, many of them razor-edged. 

 Traveling on this surface in finnesko was 

 slow and painful work. 



On December 5 Marshall and Adams, 

 who were ahead looking for a route, re- 

 ported that at a point close to the granite 

 cliffs a bird, brown in color, with a white 

 line under each wing, had flown over 

 their heads. They were sure it was not 

 a skua gull, the only bird likelv to have 

 been attracted by the last dead pony. It 



was a curious incident to occur in lati- 

 tude 83 40' south. We left the fourth 

 depot close to the foot of the glacier at 

 the foot of a wonderful granite cliff, pol- 

 ished by the winds and snows of ages. 

 On December 6 we took six hours to pass 

 about 600 yards of severely crevassed ice, 

 over which all our gear had to be relayed, 

 and on the following day we lost the last 

 pony, which fell into a crevasse dis- 

 guised, like so many others, by a treach- 

 erous snow-lid. Wild was leading the 

 pony with one sledge, while Adams, 

 Marshall, and myself went on ahead with 

 the other sledge and pioneered a practical 

 path. We had passed over a snow- 

 covered crevasse without noticing it, but 

 the greater weight of the pony broke 

 through the lid, and the animal dropped 

 through, probably to a depth of several 

 hundreds of feet. Happily the swingle- 

 tree snapped with a sudden strain, and 

 Wild and the sledge were saved. This 

 accident left us with two sledges and a 

 weight of about 250 pounds per man to 

 haul. Our altitude at this time was 

 about 1,700 feet above sea-level. 



During the days that followed we 

 made steady progress up the glacier, ex- 

 periencing constant difficulty with the 

 crevasses. We hauled well ahead of the 

 sledges, so that when one of us dropped 

 through a snow-lid the harness would 

 support him until he could be hauled up 

 again. We had many painful falls as a 

 result of having no footgear suitable for 

 the ice-climbing, and any future travelers 

 would do well to take boots with spikes. 

 A special form would have to be devised, 

 on account of the low temperature ren- 

 dering impracticable the use of ordinary 

 mountaineering boots. 



COAL AND FOSSIL WOOD DISCOVERED 



New land appeared day after day, and 

 we were able to make small geological 

 collections and to take some photographs. 

 The rocks were sedimentary, the lines of 

 stratification often showing clearly on the 

 mountain sides, and we made two geo- 

 logical discoveries of the first impor- 

 tance. In latitude 85 ° south, Wild, who 

 had climbed the slope of a mountain in 



