Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/302

tributary glaciers, and had to cross many streams running across the plain from the southern wall. We reached a suitable station on the eastern slopes of the Kukri Hills and I took a round of angles with the theodolite which linked Dry Valley to Ross Island. We got back at nine o'clock and found that Debenham had collected many interesting minerals from the marble outcrops of the defile.

Next morning Wright and I ascended the Riegel which so nearly barred the valley. We climbed 2400 feet and then walked to the top of the scarp facing up the valley to the west. So tempestuous was the wind that we could not stand against it, much less use the theodolite. At last there came a lull, and almost before we had the theodolite ready the gale had veered to the east—diametrically opposite—and continued to blow almost as fiercely from that quarter. Our apparent fine weather in the west was, I think, largely due to the fact that there was so little snowfall there; in fact, this region would have been an arid desert even in more favoured climes.

After supper I took the prospecting dish and washed for gold in the gravels alongside the lake. There were numerous quartz 'leads' in the slates with which metamorphic and eruptive rocks were associated, while water was abundant in Lake Chad. In spite of these favouring conditions neither Debenham nor myself could get a 'colour.' Only a 'tail' of magnetite in the dish rewarded our perseverance. So we depôted the dish on a boulder in the defile, for we knew that there would be no water available for gold-seeking in the remainder of our journey.