182 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
Cape Evans is a low lava flow jutting out some three 
thousand feet from the face of the glaciers which clothe the 
slopes of Erebus. It is roughly an equilateral triangle in 
shape, at its base some three thousand feet (,®,th mile) 
across. ‘This base-line, which divides the cape from the 
slopes of Erebus and the crevassed glaciers and giant ice- 
falls which clothe them, consists of a ramp with a slope 
of thirty degrees, and a varying height of some 100 to 
150 feet. From our hut, four hundred yards away, it 
looks like a great embankment behind which rises the 
majestic volcano Erebus, with its plume of steam and 
smoke. 
The cape itself does not rise on the average more than 
thirty feet, and somewhat resembles the back of a hog with 
several backbones. ‘The hollows between the ridges are for 
the most part filled with snow and ice, while in one or two 
places where the accumulation of snow is great enough 
there are little glacierets which do not travel far before they 
ignominiously peter out. There are two small lakes, called 
Skua Lake and Island Lake respectively. There is only one 
hill which is almost behind the hut, and is called Wind 
Vane Hill, for on it were placed one of our wind vanes and 
certain other meteorologicalinstruments. Into the glacieret 
which flowed down in the leeof this hill we drovetwo caves, 
which gave both an even low temperature and excellent 
insulation. One of them was therefore used for our mag- 
netic observations, and the other as an ice-house for the 
mutton we had brought from New Zealand. 
The north side, upon which we had built our hut, slopes 
down by way of a rubbly beach to the seain North Bay. We 
knew there was a beach for we landed upon it, but we never 
saw it again even in the height of summer, for the winter 
blizzards formed an ice foot several feet thick. ‘The other 
side of the cape ends abruptly in black bastions and baby — 
cliffs some thirty feet high. The apex of the triangle which — 
forms as it were the cape proper 1s a similar kenyte bluff, 
‘The whole makes a tricky place on which to walk in the 
dark, for the surface is strewn with boulders of all sizes and 
furrowed and channelled by drifts of hard and icy snow, 
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