Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 1.djvu/49

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Worst Journey in the World

personality of 6½ stones. Science singles out the Emperor as being the more interesting bird because he is more primitive, possibly the most primitive of all birds. Previous to the Discovery Expedition nothing was known of him save that he existed in the pack and on the fringes of the continent.

We have heard of Cape Crozier as being the eastern extremity of Ross Island, discovered by Ross and named after the captain of the Terror. It is here that with immense pressures and rendings the moving sheet of the Barrier piles itself up against the mountain. It is here also that the great ice-cliff which runs for hundreds of miles to the east, with the Barrier behind it and the Ross Sea beating into its crevasses and caves, joins the basalt precipice which bounds the Knoll, as the two-knobbed saddle which forms Cape Crozier is called. Altogether it is the kind of place where giants have had a good time in their childhood, playing with ice instead of mud—so much cleaner too!

But the slopes of Mount Terror do not all end in precipices. Farther to the west they slope quietly into the sea, and the Adélie penguins have taken advantage of this to found here one of their largest and most smelly rookeries. When the Discovery arrived off this rookery she sent a boat ashore and set up a post with a record upon it to guide the relief ship in the following year. The post still stands. Later it became desirable to bring the record left here more up to date, and so one of the first sledging parties went to try and find a way by the Barrier to this spot.

They were prevented from reaching the record by a series of most violent blizzards, and indeed Cape Crozier is one of the windiest places on earth, but they proved beyond doubt that a back-door to the Adélie penguins' rookery existed by way of the slopes of Mount Terror behind the Knoll. Early the next year another party reached the record all right, and while exploring the neighbourhood looked down over the 800-feet precipice which forms the snout of Cape Crozier. The sea was frozen over, and in a small bay of ice formed by the cliffs of the Barrier