THE BOAT JOURNEY 
a low morainic bank, rising twenty or thirty feet above sea-level. 
Soon we had converted the boat into a verv comfortable cabin 
d la Peggotty, turfing it round with tussocks, which we dug up 
with knives. One side of the James Caird rested on stones so 
as to afiord a low entrance, and when we had finished she 
looked as though she had grown there. McCarthy entered into 
this work with great spirit. A sea-elephant provided us with 
fuel and meat, and that evening found a well-fed and fairly 
contented party at rest in Peggotty Camp. 
Our camp, as I have said, lay on the north side of King 
Haakon Bay near the head. Our path towards the whaling- 
stations led round the seaward end of the snouted glacier on 
the east side of the camp and up a snow-slope that appeared to 
lead to a pass in the great AUardyce Range, which runs north- 
west and south-east and forms the main backbone of South 
Georgia. The range dipped opposite the bay into a well- 
defined pass from east to west. An ice-sheet covered most of 
the interior, filling the valleys and disguising the configuration 
of the land, which, indeed showed only in big rocky ridges, 
peaks, and nunataks. When we looked up the pass from 
Peggotty Camp the country to the left appeared to offer two 
easy paths through to the opposite coast, but we knew that the 
island was uninhabited at that point (Possession Bay). We 
had to turn our attention farther east, and it was impossible 
from the camp to learn much of the conditions that would 
confront us on the overland journey. I planned to climb to 
the pass and then be guided by the configuration of the country 
in the selection of a route eastward to Stromness Bay, where 
the whaling-stations were established in the minor bays, Leith, 
Husvik, and Stromness. A range of mountains with precipi- 
tous slopes, forbidding peaks, and large glaciers lay immediately 
to the south of King Haakon Bay and seemed to form a con- 
tinuation of the main range. Between this secondary range 
and the pass above our camp a great snow-upland sloped up 
to the inland ice-sheet and reached a rocky ridge that stretched 
athwart our path and seemed to bar the way. This ridge 
was a right-angled ofishoot from the main ridge. Its chief 
features were four roclcy peaks with spaces between that 
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