Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/145

again from the S.S.E. The scenery here was even wilder, the Admiralty Range towering over our heads and so steep that, except in the valleys, no snow or ice was able to lodge, and bare rock showed everywhere.

Large glaciers filled all the valleys, but the gradient was so steep that they were heavily crevassed from top to bottom.

By 5 o'clock we were off the Dugdale Glacier, which runs out in three long tongues, in places only 10 feet high.

It appeared to have altered considerably since Borchgrevink's time, as he charts only one long tongue. It was not a good place for wintering, the surface being crevassed and the sides too steep to be climbed; the ice tongue would have been a good place to lie alongside and land stores, but as some of this broke away and drifted out to sea a week later, it was as well we did not try.

After having a look at Duke of York Island we steamed up to the head of the bay, but with no better success. So about midnight we turned and made for Ridley Beach, a triangular beach on the west side of Cape Adare, the place where the Southern Cross Party wintered in 1900.

I was very much against wintering here, as until the ice forms in Robertson Bay one is quite cut off from any sledging operations on the mainland, for the cliffs of the peninsula descend sheer into the sea.

Pennell, however, had only just enough coal as it was to get back to New Zealand, so at 3 a.m. on the 18th we anchored off the south shore of the beach and commenced landing stores. A cold, wet job it was. A lot of loose