THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



with occasional high snow sastrugi, and here and there 

 a patch of rippled sea ice. There could be no doubt 

 about it being sea ice this time because in one place, at 

 the foot of one of these steep snow ridges, we noticed a 

 pool of water only thinly frozen over, and on breaking 

 the ice I tasted the water and found it was very salt. 



Towards the end of this day's sledging we passed a 

 long inlet trending north-westerly. This inlet was floored 

 with sea ice, and made a long, deep indentation in the 

 glacier ice. After our hoosh, and before turning into 

 the sleeping-bag, Mawson and I went on to the north over 

 some high hummocky ridges of the Dryalski Glacier 

 to look ahead. Mawson, after a while, returned to 

 camp, while I turned north-westwards to explore the 

 inlet. After falling into a few crevasses which traversed 

 the great billowy hummocks of blue glacier ice in all 

 directions, I got down into the inlet, and on following it 

 north-westwards, found that it gradually passed into 

 a definite glacial river channel, and became quite un- 

 practicable for sledging. It was quite clear from the 

 steep banks of this channel, cut out of the hard snow 

 neve and glacier ice, that during the few weeks of thaw 

 in this part of the Antarctic, great volumes of thaw 

 water must rush down off the higher parts of the glacier 

 towards the sea, and in their passage they tear out deep 

 canyon-like channels in the glacier ice and neve. This 

 channel trended at first exactly in the direction in which 

 we wished to make, but it was obvious that it was an 

 impossible route for the sledges. 



We decided on December 4 that we had better go on an 

 extended reconnoitring expedition before we again risked 

 landing our sledge in a labyrinth of pressure ridges and 

 crevasses. After hauling our sledges for a little less than 

 a mile, and meeting with steep slopes of snow dunes, we 

 halted. While Mackay sewed one of the tent-poles, 



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