Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
73
stove outside the tent and brewed tea. It was a pleasant meal, as they looked out to the
west across a vast layer of cumulus cloud banked halfway down the mountain and spread
far across McMurdo Sound. The western mountains shimmered in the glow of the set-
ting sun.
Up the next morning at 4:00 A.M., everyone but Brocklehurst set out for the summit
about two and a half miles away. They marched past the ice fumaroles standing sentry to
the fortress. From Cape Royds the plume had been like a siren's veil wafting gracefully
from afar. The challenge had been in the approach across the fields of ice and stone. But
now they were drawing close. The plume was no silken wisp, no insubstantial scarf. It
had loomed ever more powerfully as they had risen toward its hidden source. From camp
that morning as the cloud billowed broadly above the top, it felt as though they were ap-
proaching a dragon's lair. But now on the last steep pitch, as they scrambled breathlessly
on scree of pure crystal, deep, ancestral fears swelled in their chests. This was surely the
home of a god. Vulcan, Pele, Agni, diVerent folk had used diVerent names. Mostly these
gods slept, wheezing and belching foul breath, but if awakened they ignited the havoc of
molten rock, fire, and explosion. Another fifty feet to the edge. The steam was rising as
a billowy wall straight out of the ground. They could hear the constant hiss as it issued
from somewhere far below. As the men drew close, they sensed the mountain give a deep
shudder every several minutes, more a feeling in the body than a sound. But now as they
approached the rim, the feeling was audible, a deep boom from within the mountain, fol-
lowed by a surge of roiling steam. The anxious mortals crept to the edge and peered in,
praying that the god would not be awakened.
Nothing but murkiness, the rising swirl of steam, the stench of sulfur fumes. Why
do we have such fascination with these lesions on Mother Earth? Is it the power revealed,
the instinct for sacrifice and purification, the chance to witness the spirit of a possessed
mountain? The men trembled in expectation.
Then quite suddenly a breeze from the north lifted the veil from the bottom, and
there was the crater in its entirety, a nearly perfect cylinder a half-mile across, dropping
nine hundred feet vertically down to a flat floor (Fig. 3.5). They could make out three cen-
ters where most of the steam was venting, circular holes reverberating with the shrill re-
lease of pressured gas, and one of them was the source of the periodic boom. Alternating
horizons of black and white patterned the far wall. A whole row of tiny steam jets rose
from the top of the darkest pumice layer, coating the crater wall in a veneer of icy hoar
(Fig. 3.6). What the men were not able to see because of the steam was the floor of the in-
ner crater, where a lake of lava continuously churned with convection currents (Fig. 3.7).
The geologists worked busily—so much for worrying about waking the god! Maw-
son measured the crater dimensions and took photos. David collected fresh pumice and
sulfur. Both sketched. They noted volcanic bombs nearly a foot in diameter, hunks of
pumice coated with sulfur thrown out on the rim. Lava must have risen close to the vent
at times and been coughed out like phlegm from the volcano's throat, but today it was
less active. Each man took one last look at this natural wonder, listened to the hissing,
whiVed the sulfur, pocketed a few more crystals, and then headed back. It was time to
be getting down the mountain. By 3:00 P.M. the party had a good meal at camp, and
then the men shouldered their packs. Brocklehurst bravely insisted that he carry his own
