It looks as if a piece of ground as big as an ordinary English field had been thrown up and left standing on end. Explain it who can. I cannot.
And here is an almost circular lake of great extent, in configuration not unlike Loch Ness in Scotland, with mountains rising up from its banks in the same wild way, all ice, all snow, a frozen river leading in and out of it and more than one frozen cataract.
Even Curtis, with all his science, felt puzzled, and could only reply to Ingomar’s queries by taking photographic snap-shots everywhere around him.
Perhaps our heroes were favoured during this dash towards the Pole with exceptionally fine weather, but the storms they did encounter were certainly most trying and severe. It was well for the dogs during those blizzards that snow fell and was blown or heaped over them—the Eskimo dog can live under snow as long as a Highland wether can—else their poor coats would have been frozen to the ground.
From this elevated region the land began to sink gradually, the track became easier, the mountains less high.
Then, one morning, shortly after starting, they came suddenly to cliffs or braes that led sheer down many hundred feet to a sea!
Curtis looked at Ingomar, who could only reply by smiling.
Do not mistake me, this was a frozen ocean, and a rough one too.
Descending by what they called a footpath, for want of a better name, the sledges remaining behind, accompanied only by the collie Wallace, they walked a good mile into or across this strange ocean.
The ice was examined, here and there wherever possible, and except on the top of the rugged bergs, which was melted and re-frozen snow, it was everywhere found to be green and salt.