T. W. Edgeworth David

“ When exploring one of these fumaroles, Mackay fell suddenly up to his thighs into one of its concealed conduits; he saved himself however, from falling in deeper still, with his ice axe. Marshall had a nearly similar experience at about the same time. Eventually we all arrived safely at our camp soon after 6 p. m., and found Brocklehurst progressing as well as could be expected.
As we sat on the rocks at tea, we had a glorious view to the west. While the foothills of Erebus flushed rosy red in the sunset, a vast rolling sea of cumulus cloud covered all the land from Cape Bird to Cape Royds. ”

“ All within the shadow of Erebus was a soft bluish grey; all without was warm, bright and golden. Words fail to describe a scene of such transcendent majesty and beauty.
After breakfast while Marshall was attending to Brocklehurst’s feet, the hypsometer which had become frozen on the way up, was thawed out with the heat of the primus, and a boiling point determination was made. This when reduced, and combined with the mean of our aneroid levels, made the altitude of the old crater rim, just above our camp, 11,400 feet. ”

“ In ordinary climates, a fumarole, or volcanic vapour well, may be detected by the thin cloud of steam above it, like breath exhaled on a frosty day, and usually one can at once feel the warmth, by passing one’s hand into the vapour column; but, in the rigour of the Antarctic climate, the fumaroles of Erebus have their vapour turned into ice as soon as it reaches the surface of the snow plain. Thus ice mounds, somewhat similar in shape to the sinter mounds formed by the geysers of New Zealand, of Iceland, and of Yellowstone Park, are built up around the orifices of the fumaroles of Erebus. ”

“ At the depot, the blizzard of Sunday the 8th, had made sad havoc of our gear; the sledge had been overturned, and some of our belongings blown right away, while the remainder had been scattered to some distance, and were now partly or wholly covered by drift snow. After setting up the tent, Adams and Marshall returned over half a mile to rejoin Brocklehurst. Meanwhile a slight blizzard had sprung up, which completely blotted out the depot from view; fortunately the wind soon died down, and Adams, Marshall, and Brocklehurst were able to regain the camp. ”

“ Rugged buttresses of dark volcanic rock, with steep snow slopes between, jut out at intervals, and support the rim of this second crater, which reaches an altitude of fully 11,400 feet. From the north edge of this crater the ground seemed to ascend, at first gradually, then somewhat abruptly to the third crater, now active, further south. It is above this last crater that there continually floats a huge steam cloud. At the time of Ross’ Expedition this cloud was reddened with the glow of molten lava, and some thought they saw lava streams descending from the crater. ”

“ A man after such a meal, in any but a polar climate, would have seen in his sleep ‘more devils than vast hell can hold,’ but it speaks volumes for the climate, as well as for the strength of the quintuple-whacker’s digestion, that on this occasion he slept soundly till dawn, and that too, with a volume of Paradise Lost in his pocket, without once seeing a vision of the swart hero of Milton’s epic. ”

“ Pulling the sledge proved fairly heavy work in places; at one spot, on the steep slope of a small glacier, we were struggling for some time, mostly on our hands and knees, in our efforts to drag the sledge up the surface of smooth blue ice thinly Coated with loose snow. This difficulty surmounted, we made the acquaintence of some obstructive ‘sastrugi’, which impeded our progress not a little. ”

“ On arrival in camp we had a hasty meal, and having hurriedly packed up, shouldered our burdens once more, and started down the steep mountain slope. Brocklehurst insisted on carrying his heavy load, in spite of his frost-bitten feet. We followed a course a little to the west of the one we took when ascending. The rock was rubbly and kept slipping under our feet, so that falls were frequent. After descending a few hundreds of feet, we found that the rubbly spur of rock, down which we were floundering, ended abruptly in a long and steep névé slope. ”

“ Provisions, cooking utensils with primus lamps, cooking pots and snow melters and paraffin oil, deer skin sleeping bags, tents and poles, ice axes, alpine rope, ski-boots, finneskoes and sennegraes, and crampons were all got ready in hot haste. The crampons had to be specially made for the occasion. They are stout leather soles, each furnished with seven iron spikes, and provided with loops, so that they can be strapped on to the finneskoes, to prevent the wearer slipping on hard snow or ice. ”

“ This sudden uprush was obviously the result of a vast steam explosion in the interior of the volcano, and proved that it still possessed considerable activity.
Although several expeditions had been in its neighbourhood, Erebus had never been ascended. For us, living under its shadow, the longing to climb it, and penetrate the mysteries beyond the veil soon became irresistibly strong. But there were difficulties in the way. In the first place, the only party who had ascended the foothills of Erebus had found their path barred by heavily crevassed ice. ”

“ As the hard snow slopes were mostly much too steep to climb, without resorting to the tedious expedient of cutting steps with an ice-axe, we kept as much as possible to the rocky arêtes. Occasionally, however, the arête would terminate upwards in a large snow slope, and in such cases we cut steps across the névé to any arête which seemed to persist for some length in an upward direction. ”

“ Some of us with our sleeping bags hanging straight down our backs, with the foot of the bag curled upwards and outwards, resembled the scorpion men of the Assyrian sculptures: others marched with their household gods done up in the form of huge sausages ”

“ On the following morning Lieutenant Adams decided that the supporting party might accompany the main party in the final attempt to reach the summit. We accordingly made a depôt of our sledge and of part of the provisions, as well as of the tent poles, floor cloths of the tents, and part of the cooking utensils, and marked the spot with a black flag on a bamboo pole. We each had to carry a weight of about forty pounds, consisting chiefly of sleeping bags, two tents, and rations for three days. Dr. Marshall having photographed us, we filed off in a procession more bizarre than beautiful. ”

“ Burdened as we were with our forty pound loads, and more or less stiff after thirty continuous hours in our sleeping-bags, and beginning besides to find respiration more difficult as the altitude increased, we felt exhausted, while we were still 800 feet below the rim of the main crater. ”

“ The scientific results of the ascent of Erebus will, it is hoped, prove of considerable interest. Probably there is no more important spot in the world for studying the movements of the upper atmosphere. ”