The Great White Silence (1924)

“An eerie feeling crept over me in the presence of this majesty of silence: a feeling of exhilaration and awe, as I thought of my remoteness from that great pulsating throng of life so many thousands of miles away. The desire to break the magic spell was irresistible, so I shouted a loud ’ Coo-ee ! ’ To my astonishment the precipice immediately responded, and shouted back ’ Coo-ee ! ’ It was thus I discovered one of the finest echoes I have heard in any land. I have listened to some of the most famous echoes of the Alps, mocking the yodelers and the Alp-horns ; but I have heard none so wondrously clear and ringing as the voice of this Antarctic glacier. I sang to it, and joked with it, and, if the sentences were short enough, it reproduced them perfectly; but longer phrases sent it all a-chattering with a babel of voices that became pandemonium“. Herbert George Ponting