Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/294

awaiting the end of their moulting season. They probably totalled one hundred. Only one individual was garbed in new and shining raiment, and him I slew in preparation for a change of diet if our appetite failed on a pemmican régime.

All next day we pulled steadily up the glacier to the west, encouraged by Evans's opinion that we should meet better sledging surfaces higher up the glacier.

On the 30th we had very heavy going up the broad ice undulations and about noon got among the crevasses. We all slipped in at various intervals, but they were quite narrow and gave us no trouble. The snow was a foot thick in many places and alternated with 'glass-roof' ice into which we fell frequently. However, we kept on till 9 p.m., when we reached the big moraine below Cathedral Rocks, and there made our depôt as Captain Scott had advised.

Above our depôt the slope was steeper, but we had only half the load to pull, and towards 6 p.m. on the next evening we reached the top of the lower Ferrar and found ourselves on a small ice plateau about 3200 feet above sea level. We now marched along the grandest geological section it has ever been my good fortune to see. The cliff to the north, 3300 feet high, was capped by yellowish sandstone. Beneath this were two wonderful horizontal sheets of dark lava which had intruded through the granite base so that the rocks looked like a gigantic sandwich composed of alternating yellow, black and red layers. The lower slopes of the red granite were covered by the old lateral moraine, a layer of dark débris left by the Ferrar Glacier when it almost filled the valley we were following.