Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/95

360 3600 feet above sea level and past the Cloudmaker, which means that we are half way up the Glacier." We had done 12½ miles (statute).

The Beardmore Glacier is twice as large as the Malaspina in Alaska, which was the largest known glacier until Shackleton discovered the Beardmore. Those who knew the Ferrar Glacier professed to find the Beardmore unattractive, but to me at any rate it was grand. Its very vastness, however, tends to dwarf its surroundings, and great tributary glaciers and tumbled ice-falls, which anywhere else would have aroused admiration, were almost unnoticed in a stream which stretched in places forty miles from bank to bank. It was only when the theodolite was levelled that we realized how vast were the mountains which surrounded us: one of which we reckoned to be well over twenty thousand feet in height, and many of the others must have approached that measurement. Lieutenant Evans and Bowers were surveying whenever the opportunity offered, whilst Wilson sat on the sledge or on his sleeping-bag, and sketched.

Before leaving on the morning of December 18 we bagged off three half-weekly units and made a depôt marked by a red flag on a bamboo which was stuck into a small mound. Unfortunately it began to snow in the night and no bearings were taken until the following morning when only the base of the mountains on the west side was visible. We knew we might have difficulty in picking up this depôt again, and certainly we all did.

"It was thick, with low stratus clouds in the morning, and snow was falling in large crystals. Our socks and finnesko, hung out to dry, were covered with most beautiful feathery crystals. In the warm weather one gets fairly saturated with perspiration on the march, and foot-gear is always wet, except the outside covering which is as a rule more or less frozen according to existing temperature. On camping at night I shift to night foot-gear as soon as ever the tent is pitched, and generally slip on my windproof blouse, as one cools down like smoke after the