Page:Aurora Australis.djvu/41

THE ASCENT OF MOUNT EREBUS. at once reinvigorated us. Once more we tackled the ascent. When close to the top Mackay, who had become separated from the rest of the party, started cutting steps with his ice-axe up a long and very steep névé slope. The task was almost impossible for one so heavily loaded as he was, but nevertheless, he won his way unaided to the summit.

By this time we had reached the rim of the main crater. Often, while toiling up its slopes, we had tried to picture to ourselves the probable scenery at the summit, and had imagined an even plain of névé, or glacier ice, filling the extinct crater to the brim, and sloping up gradually to the active cone at its southern end: but we now found ourselves on the very brink of a massive precipice of black rock, forming the inner edge of the vast crater. This wall of dark lava is mostly vertical, while in places it overhangs: it is from 80 to 100 feet in height. The base of this cliff was separated from the snow plain beyond by a deep ditch, like a huge dry moat. The ditch was evidently not a ‘bergschrund’, but was due chieﬂy to the action of the blizzards. These winds blowing fiercely from the south-east, and striking against the great inner wall of the old crater, give rise to a powerful back eddy at the base of the cliff, and it is this eddy which has scooped