Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
56
to be out of the wind and in the relative comfort of their tents, but little did they realize
that they would be pinned down by this howling blizzard for a full week, testing every
man's ability to persevere.
Imagine what it was like in Scott's tent near the end of the week. Scott, Evans, and
Lashly were in their one-man sleeping bags, their noses barely poking out. The flapping
of the tent was so loud that one had to shout to be heard. But no one was talking. Con-
versation had been lively at the beginning of the week, but the usual subjects soon wore
thin. Scott had a copy of Darwin's Voyage of the “Beagle,” and readings aloud had been
amusing for awhile, but eventually everyone was bored of that, too. The high points of
the day were when the men rolled up their sleeping bags and lit the primus stove for the
morning and evening meals. It gave one something to do other than lie in the sack. These
were also the times for which one waited to answer the call of Nature. When someone
was out, there was a chance to hail the others inside their own cocoons to see how it was
going. Otherwise, no communication occurred between the tents.
Each time the stove was lit, however, some melting occurred from the frost on the
inside of the tent that collected from the men's breathing and from the snow that continu-
ously seeped in through small holes or burst in when the door was open. Add to this the
men's normal perspiration in the bags wetting them from the inside. Much as they tried
to avoid it, moisture was soaking into the bottoms of the sleeping bags, and the men were
beginning to find it hard to keep their feet warm. Even aside from cold feet, a man could
force only so much sleep, and then he had to lie there conscious, wishing for some activity
that would stimulate the atrophied muscles and bring concentration to a listless mind.
At that moment each man was just staring oV at some unfocused point on the ceil-
ing, and Scott was thinking to himself that regardless of the weather the next day, they
should make a run for it.
They did attempt the next day to dig out the sledges and supplies buried deep in
snowdrift, but wind quickly brought on frostbite, so the party waited out one more
day. On November 11, with the wind only partially abated and visibility still “thick as a
hedge,” the western party broke camp and headed oV in diVerent directions. Scott and
his men trekked west onto the plateau, while the geological party turned east to examine
the rocks up close.
This was the moment that Ferrar had been waiting for. As a member of the Armitage D
team the previous season, he had only glimpsed from the top of Descent Pass into the
outlet glacier that would come to bear his name. All the way up this season he had been
watching the mountains on both sides and examining the loose rocks in the moraines.
The main rock types came down to four: a coarsely crystalline granite, both pink and gray
varieties; metamorphic rocks, mainly banded gneiss (although Ferrar also had collected
marble around Blue Glacier the previous year); sandstone, a rich yellow color, mainly
rounded quartz grains; and dolerite, a dark, fine-grained igneous rock.
The explorer discovering new lands demonstrates those discoveries with a map of
terrain showing the mountains and drainages. The geologist fills in this map by showing
the distribution of rock types throughout the terrain. For a geologist like Ferrar, he was
both making the map and filling it in with geology.
