Alph River is a small river

River

A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including...

 of Antarctica, running into Walcott Bay

Walcott Bay

Walcott Bay is a bay indenting the coast of Victoria Land between Walcott Glacier and Heald Island. Named by the British Antarctic Expedition in association with Walcott Glacier....

, Victoria Land

Victoria Land

Victoria Land is a region of Antarctica bounded on the east by the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea and on the west by Oates Land and Wilkes Land. It was discovered by Captain James Clark Ross in January 1841 and named after the UK's Queen Victoria...

. It is located in an ice-free region at the west of the Koettlitz Glacier

Koettlitz Glacier

The Koettlitz Glacier is a large Antarctic glacier lying west of Mount Morning and Mount Discovery, flowing from the vicinity of Mount Cocks northeastward between Brown Peninsula and the mainland into the ice shelf of McMurdo Sound....

, Scott Coast

Scott Coast

Scott Coast is that portion of the coast of Victoria Land between Cape Washington and Minna Bluff. Named by New Zealand Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1961 after Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Royal Navy, leader of the Discovery expedition and the British Antarctic Expedition , who lost his...

. The Alph emerges from Trough Lake, and flows through Walcott Lake, Howchin Lake

Howchin Lake

Howchin Lake is a lake of Antarctica, named in association with Howchin Glacier....

, and Alph Lake

Alph Lake

Alph Lake lies at the foot of Ward Valley on the north-west side of Koettlitz Glacier, Scott Coast, Antarctica. It is long, and surrounded by steep morainic walls. It was named by Griffith Taylor of the British Antarctic Expedition, 1911–13 in association with Alph River, which flows...

. It ends in a sub-glacial flow beneath Koettlitz Glacier to McMurdo Sound

McMurdo Sound

The ice-clogged waters of Antarctica's McMurdo Sound extend about 55 km long and wide. The sound opens into the Ross Sea to the north. The Royal Society Range rises from sea level to 13,205 feet on the western shoreline. The nearby McMurdo Ice Shelf scribes McMurdo Sound's southern boundary...

.

The river was named by Thomas Griffith Taylor

Thomas Griffith Taylor

Thomas Griffith "Grif" Taylor was a British / Australian geographer, anthropologist and world explorer. He was a survivor of Captain Robert Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica .-Early life:...

 of the Terra Nova Expedition

Terra Nova Expedition

The Terra Nova Expedition , officially the British Antarctic Expedition 1910, was led by Robert Falcon Scott with the objective of being the first to reach the geographical South Pole. Scott and four companions attained the pole on 17 January 1912, to find that a Norwegian team led by Roald...

 of 1911–13, who explored the portion north of Pyramid Trough

Pyramid Trough

Pyramid Trough is a deep trough immediately west of The Bulwark, through which a part of the Koettlitz Glacier formerly flowed north to Walcott Bay...

. He took the name from the opening passage in Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

's poem, Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep in 1816...

, as the stream continues north a considerable distance under moraine

Moraine

A moraine is any glacially formed accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris which can occur in currently glaciated and formerly glaciated regions, such as those areas acted upon by a past glacial maximum. This debris may have been plucked off a valley floor as a glacier advanced or it may have...

 and ultimately subglacially beneath Koettlitz Glacier to the Ross Sea

Ross Sea

The Ross Sea is a deep bay of the Southern Ocean in Antarctica between Victoria Land and Marie Byrd Land.-Description:The Ross Sea was discovered by James Ross in 1841. In the west of the Ross Sea is Ross Island with the Mt. Erebus volcano, in the east Roosevelt Island. The southern part is covered...

. The nearby Xanadu Hills

Xanadu Hills

Xanadu Hills are a ridge of hills lying between Ward Valley and the Alph River in Victoria Land, a region of Antarctica. They were named by the New Zealand Geographic Board in 1994 in connection with the adjacent Alph River, an earlier name inspired by a poem of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan....

are named from the same peom