Looking over this region I am struck with the pronounced igneous or even volcanic character of the rock specimens, something very much like pumice and slag being abundant. Is it possible that the twin snow-mountains back of us are extinct volcanoes?
The march from Southwest camp to Observation Camp was the hardest and most disagreeable of all, and the thirty-six hours the most uncomfortable of the entire trip.
We got away from Southwest Camp at 2 A. M. of the 4th. The promise of the previous afternoon of good weather, had not been kept, and all but the base of the land was buried in cloud (Jesup Land of course invisible). For an hour we got along fairly well following the raised edges of a tidal crack, then fog descended upon us and we waded and floundered through pools of water to the land at West Point (which is really one of three islands). Along the shore of this, and the next island, was decent going on deep snow, and so across the ice-foot to the edge of the tidal crack west of Northwesterly Point and along this to the point itself.
From here to off Intermediate Point we had more trouble as the tidal crack was not so well marked.
It had commenced to snow at Northwesterly Point and from Intermediate Point we had it very uncomfortable. The snowfall steadily increasing blotted out every thing over a hundred feet distant, and was accompanied by a penetrating wind from the northeast and yet was damp enough to melt on our clothing, and saturate us wherever we had escaped wetting in our constant wading.
Impossible to pick a route, we could only work along in a general direction, guided by the wind.
For several hours it looked as if we would have to camp in the slush on the ice; then it lightened enough to let us pick a way, and at last after wading the broad ice-foot river, I stepped on the point at Observation Camp. Every thread on me was soaked with snow-water, and every joint and muscle ached with the exertion of pulling out the slush-laden snowshoes at every step. I was not inclined to complain however, for the gravel here, wet as it was, was much preferable to a foot of icy slush as a bed.
I still had a dry coat and dry stockings to sleep in, though my trousers and underwear were all I had, and should have slept fairly comfortably, but for a blinding headache from the fumes of the Primus stoves, which of course went particularly wrong now. This headache lasted me until I got out for a tramp after Ooblooyah had laboured five hours sewing my trousers, which the heavy snowshoeing and lifting on the sledges had completely wrecked.
It snowed incessantly after we arrived, making it impossible to pick a road through the icy swamps east of us.
A seal was seen near the ice-foot just before we got ashore here, and ten brant flew about our camp at Southwest Camp.