ar or do any other
desirable task. This is a second relief for which we are most grateful.

At the lunch camp the snow covering was less than a foot, and at this
it is a bare nine inches; patches of ice and hard neve are showing
through in places. I meant to camp at 6.30, but before 5.0 the sky came
down on us with falling snow. We could see nothing, and the pulling
grew very heavy. At 5.45 there seemed nothing to do but camp--another
interrupted march. Our luck is really very bad. We should have done
a good march to-day, as it is we have covered about 11 miles (stat.).

Since supper there are signs of clearing again, but I don't like the
look of things; this weather has been working up from the S.E. with
all the symptoms of our pony-wrecking storm. Pray heaven we are not
going to have this wretched snow in the worst part of the glacier
to come. The lower part of this glacier is not very interesting,
except from an ice point of view. Except Mount Kyffen, little bare
rock is visible, and its structure at this distance is impossible
to determine. There are no moraines on the surface of the glacier
either. The tributary glaciers are very fine and have cut very deep
courses, though they do not enter at grade. The walls of this valley
are extraordinarily steep; we count them at least 60 deg. in places. The
ice-falls descending over the northern sides are almost continuous one
with another, but the southern steep faces are nearly bare; evidently
the sun gets a good hold on them. There must be a good deal of melting
and rock weathering, the talus heaps are considerable under the
southern rock faces. Higher up the valley there is much more bare rock
and stratification, which promises to be very interesting, but oh! for
fine weather; surely we have had enough of this oppressive gloom.

_Saturday, December 16_.--Camp 38. A gloomy morning, clearing at noon
and ending in a gloriously fine evening. Although constantly anxious in
the morning, the light held good for travelling throughout the day,
and we have covered 11 miles (stat.), altering the aspect of the
glacier greatly. But the travelling has been very hard. We started
at 7, lunched at 12.15, and marched on till 6.30--over ten hours on
the march--the limit of time to be squeezed into one day. We began on
ski as usual, Evans' team hampering us a bit; the pulling very hard
after yesterday's snowfall. In the afternoon we continued on ski
till after two hours we struck a peculia