Our road lay eastwards through the Strait, some twenty-five miles in
width, which runs between the low, rather uninteresting scarp of White
Island to the south, and the beautiful slopes of Erebus and Terror to the
north. This part of the Barrier is stagnant, but the main stream in front
of us, unchecked by land, flows uninterruptedly northwards towards the
Ross Sea. Only where the stream presses against the Bluff, White Island
and, most important of all, Cape Crozier, and rubs itself against the
nearly stationary ice upon which we were travelling, pressures and
rendings take place, forming some nasty crevasses. It was intended to
steer nearly east until this line was crossed some distance north of
White Island, and then steer due south.
It is most difficult on a large snow surface to say whether it is flat.
Certainly there are plenty of big crevasses for several miles in this
neighbourhood, though they are generally well covered, and we found only
very small ones on this outward journey. I am inclined to think there are
also some considerable pressure waves. As we came up to Camp 5 we
floundered into a pocket of soft snow in which one pony after another
plunged deeper and deeper until they were buried up to their bellies and
could move no more. I suppose it was an old crevasse filled with soft
snow, or perhaps one of the pressure-ridge hollows which had been
recently drifted up.
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