Glossary
Barrier. The immense sheet of ice, over 400 miles wide and of still greater length, which lies south of Ross Island to the west of Victoria Land.
Brash. Small ice fragments from a floe that is breaking up.
Drift. Snow swept from the ground like dust and driven before the wind.
Finnesko. Fur boots.
Flense, flence. To cut the blubber from a skin or carcase.
Frost smoke. A mist of water vapour above the open leads, condensed by the severe cold.
Hoosh. A thick camp soup with a basis of pemmican.
Ice-foot. Properly the low fringe of ice formed about Polar lands by the sea spray. More widely, the banks of ice of varying height which skirt many parts of the Antarctic shores.
Piedmont. Coastwise stretches of the ancient ice sheet which once covered the Antarctic Continent, remaining either on the land, or wholly or partially afloat.
Pram. A Norwegian skiff, with a spoon bow.
Primus. A portable stove for cooking.
Ramp. A great embankment of morainic material with ice beneath, once part of the glacier, on the lowest slopes of Erebus at the landward end of C. Evans.
Saennegras. A kind of fine Norwegian hay, used as packing in the finnesko to keep the feet warm and to make the fur boot fit firmly.
Sastrugus. An irregularity formed by the wind on a snowplain. ‘Snow wave’ is not completely descriptive, as the sastrugus has often a fantastic shape unlike the ordinary conception of a wave.
Skua. A large gull.
Working crack. An open crack which leaves the ice free to move with the movement of the water beneath.