Alph River
Alph River is a small river of Antarctica, running into Walcott Bay, Victoria Land. It is in an ice-free region at the west of the Koettlitz Glacier, Scott Coast. The Alph emerges from Trough Lake, and flows through Walcott Lake, Howchin Lake, and Alph Lake. It ends in a sub-glacial flow beneath Koettlitz Glacier to McMurdo Sound.
The river was named by Thomas Griffith Taylor, member of the Terra Nova Expedition of 1911-13, who explored the portion north of Pyramid Trough. He took the name from the opening passage of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, Kubla Khan, as the stream continues north a considerable distance under moraine and ultimately subglacially beneath Koettlitz Glacier to the Ross Sea. The nearby Xanadu Hills are named from the same poem.
