AURORA AUSTRALIS.
the snow trench, at the foot of the cliff, we roped ourselves together in the same order as before, and stood over towards a conspicuous fumarole. This was the one which bore some resemblance to a lion; it was about 20 feet in height; Mawson photographed this from here, and also took a view of the active crater, about one and a half miles distant. There was considerable difficulty in taking photographs on Erebus, owing to the focal plane of the camera having become frozen. Near the furthest point reached by us on the preceding afternoon, we observed that there were several patches of ice of a lemon-yellow colour, the yellow being due to sulphur. We next ascended several rather steep slopes, formed of alternating beds of hard snow and vast quantities of large and perfect felspar crystals, mixed with pumice; all these beds dipped away from the active crater. A little further on we reached the foot of the recent cone of the active crater; here we unroped, as there was no possibility of any crevasses ahead of us.
Our progress was now painfully slow, as the altitude and cold combined to make respiration difficult.
The cone was built up chiefly of blocks of pumice, from a few inches up to three feet in diameter. Externally these were grey, or often yellow, owing to
