THE FIRST WINTER 185 
as you have grasped these two facts your whole attention 
will be riveted to the amazing sight on your left. Here are 
thesouthern slopes of Erebus; but how different from those 
which you have lately seen. Northwards they fell in broad 
calm lines to a beautiful stately cliff which edged the sea. 
But here—all the epithets and all the adjectives which de- 
note chaotic immensity could not adequately tell of them. 
Visualize a torrent ten miles long and twenty miles broad; 
imagine it falling over mountainous rocks and tumbling 
over itself in giant waves ; imagine it arrested in the twink- 
ling of an eye, frozen and white. Countless blizzards have 
swept their drifts over it, but have failed to hide it. And it 
continues to move. As you stand in the still cold air you 
may sometimes hear the silence broken by the sharp reports 
as the cold contracts it or its own weight splits it. Nature 
is tearing up that ice as human beings tear paper. 
The sea-cliff is not so high here, and is more broken up 
by crevasses and caves, and more covered with snow. Some 
five miles along the coast the white line is broken by a 
bluff and black outcrop of rock; this is Turk’s Head, and 
beyond it is the low white line of Glacier Tongue, jutting 
out for miles into the sea. We know, for we have already 
crossed it, that there is a small frozen bay of sea-ice beyond, 
but all we can see from Cape Evans is the base of the Hut 
Point Peninsula, with a rock outcrop just showing where 
the Hutton Cliffs lie. The Peninsula prevents us from 
seeing the Barrier, though the Barrier wind is constantly 
flowing over it, as the clouds of drift now smoking over the 
Cliffs bear witness. Farther to the right still, the land is 
clear: Castle Rock stands up like a sentinel,and beyond are 
Arrival Heights and the old craters we have got to know 
so well during our stay at Hut Point. The Discovery hut, 
which would, in any case, be invisible at fifteen miles, is 
round that steep rocky corner which ends the Peninsula, 
due south from where we stand. 
Thereremains undescribed the quadrant which stretches 
to our right front from south to west. Just as we have pre- 
viously seen the line of the Western Mountains disappear- 
ing to the north miraged up in the light of the mid-day sun, 
