snow to settle, we might find a way over the pass. But in any case it would have been a piece of difficult mountaineering, and I
could not afford to wait a week in a place where neither fuel nor
grass could be obtained, and where everything was buried in snow and ice. So I determined upon returning to my camp on the 'Oprang River, and gave up any further attempts at crossing the pass. We accordingly hastened back to our camp at the
head of the glacier, packed up, and marched round the glacier, the snowstorm still continuing.
September 17.—A heavy snowstorm during the night, and our camp in the middle of the glacier looked very cheerless this morning. Ponies, tents, baggage, and everything, were covered with snow, and snow was still falling heavily when we struck camp and continued our march down the glacier. We were able to make a double march, as we had the track marked out, and the bad places improved by our march up ; and now we are once again on terra firma, and camped where we can get grass for the ponies, and a certain amount of fuel, and nice smooth sand to lie upon at night, instead of the thin layer of sharp stones which separates us from two or three hundred feet of solid glacier ice.
The length of this glacier is eighteen miles, and its average breadth is half a mile ; it is fed by three smaller glaciers on the west and one on the east. At its upper part, immediately under the pass, it is a smooth undulating snowfield about a mile and a half in width. Lower down the névé is split up into crevasses which increase in size the further down we get. Then the surface gradually breaks into a mass of ice-domes, which lower down become sharp needles of pure white ice. On each side lateral gravel moraines appear, and other glaciers join, each with its centre of white ice-pinnacles and its lateral moraines, and preserving each its own distinct course down the valley until some three miles from its termination, when the icy peaks are all melted down and the glacier presents
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