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We endeavoured without success to scale the steep ice-foot under the cliffs, and then proceeded up the bay. Pulling along the edge of perpendicular ice, we turned into a bay in the ice-cliff and came to a cul-de-sac, at the head of which was a grotto. At the head of the grotto and on a ledge of snow were perched some adelie penguins.
When we got to the Barrier-edge we found the ice-cliff on to the newly formed sea-ice not safe enough to bear us, so we had to make a detour along the Barrier-edge and, if the sea ice was not negotiable, find a way up by Castle Rock. At 7 p.m., not having found any suitable place to descend to the sea-ice we camped. To-night we have the Primus going and warming our frozen selves.
The stones which the glacier rubbed off the cliff beneath it it carried forward, slowly but surely, till they saw the light again in the face of the ice-cliff, and dropped out of it under the melting of the summer sun, to form a huge dam across the ravine; till, the "Ice age" past, a more genial climate succeeded, and neve and glacier melted away: but the "moraine" of stones did not, and remains to this day, as the dam which keeps up the waters of the lake.
I hope to make Hut Point to- morrow." Mackintosh and his companions broke camp on the morning of March 25, with the thermometer recording 55° of frost, and, after another futile search for a way down the ice-cliff to the sea-ice, they proceeded towards Castle Rock. While in this course they picked up sledge- tracks, and, following these, they found a route down to the sea-ice.
In the present instance it did so most effectually, for poor little Pussi and Tumbler were already rather awed by the grandeur and mysterious appearance of the sea-green cave. Turning instantly, they fled or toddled on the wings of terror, and with so little regard to personal safety, that Pussi found herself suddenly on the edge of an ice-cliff, without the power to stop.
At this point it may be well to explain, once for all, that our giant did not speak English, and as it is highly improbable that the reader understands the Eskimo tongue, we will translate as literally as possible merely remarking that Chingatok's language, like his mind, was of a superior cast. "Why goes my son to the ice-cliff?" asked Toolooha in a slightly reproachful tone.
Next hunting-day another dog sickened, and was killed then and there by Kotuko as he bit and struggled among the traces. Then the black second dog, who had been the leader in the old days, suddenly gave tongue on an imaginary reindeer-track, and when they slipped him from the pitu he flew at the throat of an ice-cliff, and ran away as his leader had done, his harness on his back.
A gentleman the other day pointed out to me a grand ice-cliff at the end of a hanging glacier, which must have been at least 100 feet high, and asked me whether that snow was three feet deep. Nothing is more common than for tourists to mistake some huge pinnacle of rock, as big as a church tower, for a traveller.
A feeling of gloom which he had not felt before, and which he could not banish, rendered sleep impossible; he therefore rose, and sauntered out of the cave. Outside he found Angut, standing motionless near the edge of an ice-cliff, gazing up into the glorious constellations overhead. "I can't sleep, Angut," said the seaman; "I suppose you are much in the same way?" "I do not know.
Then, stooping to pass the overhanging ice-cliff that here also disputed the pack upon one's back, we went down to the long, long stretch of jagged pinnacles and bergs, and our intricate staircase in the masonry of them. Shovelling was necessary all the way down, but the steps were there, needing only to be uncovered.
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