192 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [February 
' snout ' of the glacier just below us. The slope became too 
steep for the sledge and at six o'clock we halted to try and 
find a site for our camp. 
Beyond the snout was a wide, bare stony trough, 
extending many miles to the east. The lower slopes were 
strewn with reddish granite boulders. Here and there 
on the upper slopes piles of intensely black fragments — 
for all the world like coal dumps — marked recent lava flows. 
Between the serrated crests of the giant cliffs towering 
five or six thousand feet above us were cascading rivers of 
ice. These hanging glaciers spread out in great white lobes 
over the lower slopes of dark rock, and in some cases the 
cliffs were so steep that the lower portion of the tributary 
glacier was fed purely by avalanches falling from the ice 
fields up above. And, most amazing of all, not a snow- 
drift in sight. It was warm weather most of the time we 
spent in Dry Valley — rising sometimes above freezing- 
point — and everywhere streams were tinkling among the 
black boulders, so much so that this valley, in spite of its 
name, was certainly the wettest area I saw in Antarctica ! 
About a mile back from the end of the glacier we made 
a permanent camp. We could drag the sledge no further, 
and I recognised that ' packing ' on our backs was the only 
way to map this snowless region. 
Bare ice surrounded us, forty-foot ice cliffs and a wide 
' glacier moat ' separated us from the steep rock slopes. 
Nowhere could we find a place to stand easily — while it 
was impossible to pitch the tent. However, the centre of 
the glacier was cut up by surface streams into deep gullies 
whose sunny southern sides were cut into a series of 
