P^'gy^v«7???T*v7^T HE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Sl>. ■:$m fe^iv>' 0'-:5-i''.:'S<,,':,, /-■^'k O^"') & ^f^^M )^^.^ Mil , H.SHACKLETON THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC THE NORTIIEUN I'AKTV AT THE SOUTH MAGNETIC I'OLE FROM LEFT— DR. MACKAY, I'ROFESSOR DAVHX DOl (;l,ASMA\YS()N THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC BEING THE STORY OF THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION 1907-1909 BY E. H. SHACKLETON, C.V.O. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HUGH ROBERT MILL, D.Sc. AN ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST JOURNEY TO THE SOUTH MAGNETIC POLE BY PROFESSOR T. W. EDGEWORTH DAVID, F.R.S. VOL. n PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1909 Copyright, 1909, by J. B. Lippincott Company Published November, 1909 Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company The Waihington Square Preit, Philadelphia, U.S.A. Content?! of a^olume Ctuo CHAPTER I PAGE SOME NOTES ON THE SOUTHERN JOURNEY 1 CHAPTER II SUMMER AT THE WINTER QUARTERS 22 CHAPTER III RETURN OF THE "NIMROD" 40 CHAPTER IV THE BLUFF DEPOT JOURNEY 52 CHAPTER V THE WESTERN JOURNEY 61 CHAPTER \1 PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE 73 CHAPTER \TI PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE (CONTINUED) 92 CHAPTER VIII PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE (CONTINUED) Ill CHAPTER IX PROFESSOR DAVTD'S NARRATIVE (CONTINUED) 129 CHAPTER X PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE (CONTINUED) 147 CHAPTER XI PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE (CONTINUED) 166 CHAPTER XII PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE (CONTINUED) 183 V CONTENTS CHAPTER XIII PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE (CONCLUDED) 207 CHAPTER XIV ALL ABOARD: THE RETURN TO NEW ZEALAND 223 APPENDIX I BIOLOGY. NOTES BY JAMES MURRAY, BIOLOGIST OF THE EXPEDITION 283 APPENDIX II GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN ANTARCTICA BY THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. 1907-1909. BY PRO- FESSOR T. W. EDGEWORTH DAVID. B.A., F.R.S.. AND RAY- MOND E. PRIESTLEY, GEOLOGIST TO THE EXPEDITION . 276 NOTES IN REGARD TO MOUNT EREBUS. BY PROFESSOR T. W. EDGEWORTH DAVID AND RAYMOND PRIESTLEY. . 324 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON ERUPTIONS. BY JAMES MUR- RAY 327 APPENDIX III SCIENTIFIC RESULTS OF THE WESTERN JOURNEY. SEC- TION I: GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL. BY RAY- MOND E. PRIESTLEY, GEOLOGIST TO THE EXPEDITION. 332 SECTION II: DESCRIPTIONS OF THE STRANDED MO- RAINES AND DRY VALLEY. WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE RECENT ELEVATION OF THE LAND BORDERING McMURDO SOUND 341 SECTION III: EFFECT OF THE SUMMER SUN ON DIFFER- ENT VARIETIES OF ICE AND SNOW 351 APPENDIX IV NOTES ON PHYSICS, CHE^^STRY AND MINERALOGY: ICE AND SNOW. NOTES BY DOUGLAS MAWSON, B.Sc. B.E. 354 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY JAMES MURRAY 360 MINERALOGY AND CHEMISTRY. NOTES BY DOUGLAS MAWSON. B.Sc, B.E 366 METEOROLOGICAL OPTICS. NOTES BY DOUGLAS MAW- SON, B.Sc, B.E 367 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY JAMES MURRAY 370 MAGNETIC OBSERVATIONS. THE MAGNETIC POLE AND THE AURORA. NOTES BY DOUGLAS MAWSON. B.Sc, B.E. 382 Ti CONTENTS NOTES ON THE AURORA AUSTRALIS. BY JAMES MUR- RAY 386 TIDES AND CURRENTS. BY JAMES MURRAY 392 APPENDIX V METEOROLOGY. A SUMMARY OF RESULTS. BY PRO- FESSOR T. W. EDGEWORTH DAVID, B.A., F.R.S., AND LIEU- TENANT ADAMS, R.N.R., METEOROLOGIST TO THE EX- PEDITION, 1907-1909 402 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY JAMES MURRAY 412 NOTE ON THERMOMETERS FOR POLAR WORK. BY JAMES MURRAY 417 CLOUD FORMS. BY JAMES MURRAY 418 APPENDIX VI REPORT ON THE HEALTH OF THE EXPEDITION. BY DR. ERIC MARSHALL, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P 426 APPENDIX VII SOUTHERN JOURNEY DISTANCES 429 APPENDIX VIII CONSUMPTION OF STORES AT WINTER QUARTERS 435 APPENDIX IX THE NIMROD'S HOMEWARD VOYAGE— IN SEARCH OF DOUBTFUL ISLANDS 437 APPENDIX X ESTIMATED COST OF THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPE- DITION 1907 UP TO AUGUST 1909 445 INDEX 447 Lijst of ^UuiStrationiS of Bolumc Ctoo The Northern Party at the South Magnetic Pole Froniitpiece From left: Dr. Mackay, Professor David, Douglas Mawson COLOURED PLATES The Returning Sun 26 The Depot Party Amongst Crevasses S6 A Blizzard on the Barrier 82 A Parselene 164 The Emperors' Conclave 240 Return of the Penguins 264 PLATES The Hut in Summer Time: Coal Bags at the left 6 Another View of the Hut in Summer. The Meteorological Station CAN BE seen on THE EXTREME RIGHT 6 Bay op Whales, or Balloon Bight (Sketch by G. Marston) 14 The Motor-car in Soft Snow, after the Return of the Ship 14 Penguins listening to the Gramophone during the Summer 14 Glacier South of Cape Barne, with Motor travelling on Sea Ice. 24 A Seal destined for the Larder 24 Fetching Snow for Cooking Purposes 24 Transporting a Sledge over bare Rocks for the Summer Journey TO the Slopes op Mount Erebus 24 P.'iRAsiTic Cone on the Slopes op Mount Erebus , 24 Smoke streaming from the Crater of Mount Erebus 24 Start of Western Party from Cape Rotds 34 ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Motor neab the Winter Quarters S4 A Haul of Fish 34 Serrated Edge of Glacier soijth of Cape Barne, Ross Island 43 View from High Hill after second arrival of the "Nimrod." The Ship in loose pack 42 Group in the Hut in the Summer: Joyce at the Sewino Machine. . 48 Bluff Depot Party on the Barrier 48 A Dog Team with Loaded Sledqe ooinq South to lay a Depot for the Return op the Southern Party 52 Depot Party pitching a Tent 52 The Bluff Depot 52 Digging to ascertain the depth of snow covering a depot left by the Discovery Expedition 58 A typical Crevasse on level surface. The Snow Bridge fell in just after the Bluff Depot Party had passed over it 58 The Winter Quarters, with Mount Erebus in the background. The Dog-kennels are seen on the left 58 Camp on December 17 on the Ferrar Glacier below Sentinel Rock 62 Rough Ice Surface near Windy Gully 62 The Western Party Ca.mped on the Ferrar Glacier on December 18. Heavy hanging Glaciers on the Hills 62 Western Party in Camp on December 20 66 Western Party's Camp on December 28 below a hanging glacier at the Cathedral Rocks 66 Looking down the Eastern Arm of the Ferrar Glacier towards Dry Valley from Solitary Rocks 66 Dry Valley 66 Picking up the Western Party 74 The Motor-car in the Garage, and Maize-crusher on the right. . 74 The Start op a Blizzard from the South; Drift coming bound Mount Erebus 80 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Mabston and Murray at the Doob of tue Hut 86 Daisy's Third Litter at the Winter Quarters 86 The Motor haulinq Stores fob a Depot 86 MoRAiNic Cone with raised Beach material. Mount Labsen on the BIGHT. "Backstairs Passage" is behind the Cone 94 One of the Sledges taken by the Northern Party 94 Taking possession of Cape Bernacchi, Victoria Land 94 Dark Enclosubes of Hornblende Rock in Gneiss, Depot Island 104 Seals on Coast of Victoria Land 104 Adelie Penguins Visit a Camp 112 Seals at the Ice-edge 116 Cliff down which the Sledges were lowered on the North Side of the Nordenskjold Ice Babbieb Tongue 122 A Pause by the Way 122 Skua Gulls at the Ice-edge 138 Depot on the Dbygalski Babbier 160 "Backstairs Passage" on the Ascent from the Sea Ice to the Pla- teau. Mount Laesen on the left 160 The Nobthebn Pabty on the Plateau 180 Pool of Thaw Wateb fobmed by the euergence of a Sub-glacial Stream South-east of Mount Larsen 180 Watching for Seals at the Ice-edge 200 "Nimrod" picking up the Northern Party at the Edge of the Dby- galski B.tJlEIER 208 The "Nimrod" held up in the Ice 214 Captain Evans and the "Nimrod" after .k Blizzard 214 The Deck of the "Nimrod" after a Blizzard 214 Party setting out from Ship 220 The Crow's Nest of the "Nimrod," as seen fbom the Deck 224 The Ship off Pbam Point, just before leaving for the North 224 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Motor-car beino taken aboard the "Nimrod" for the return Journey 224 Readt to Start Home 224 New Coast-l:ne West of Cape North (Sketched by G. Marston) 228 Floating Ice off Cape Adare 230 Last View op Cape Adare 230 The first Landing in New Zealand on the return of the Expedition. A Bat in Stewart Island 230 Open Water at Green Lake in Summer Time 238 Claws of a Water-Bear, magnified about 500 Diameters 238 A NEW Species op Rotifer found at Cape Rotds. Its distinctive feature is the possession of WING-LIKE PROTUBERANCES AT THE Sides 238 A large FREE-SWIMMING ROTIFER, CALLED HyDATINA. It IS VERT PLEN- TIFUL IN THE Coast Lakes in the Summer 238 Viviparous Rotifer from the Salt Lakes. The oval Bodies seen in THE Adult Animal are the Young 238 The Gregarious Rotifer, which forms Blood-red Patches in the Lakes at Cape Rotds 238 A Single Specimen of Gregarious Rotifer. The Dark Portion is THE Stomach, and the oval form of an Unborn Young Rotifer CAN BE seen 238 The Commonest Water-Bear in the Cape Rotds District 238 MURRAT HOLDING TOUNG PeNGUINS 242 JOTCE AND THE DOGS IN THE Pe.NGUIN RoOKEKY 242 Two Emperor Penguins 242 Adelie Penguins 242 Emperors Visit the Adelie Rookery; Ceremonial Bowing 250 Emperors Bowing to one Another 250 Coy 250 Adelie keeping her Young One warm 250 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS An Adelie inspecting a Dog 250 Group showing a Moulting Penguin 250 Building the Nest 250 An Adelie calling for a Mate after commencing the Nest 250 Mother Bird leaves the Nest 254 Strangers displaying Interest in the Lonely Chicks 254 Young Adelie and Parents 254 An Adelie refusing to be frightened 254 Adelie trying to Mother a couple op well-grown Strangers 254 Emperors Tobogganing 262 Birds rising from Snow 262 A View of the Rookery after a Blizzard 262 Emperors on the March 262 Emperors at rest 262 Killer Whales Sounding 266 Seal suckling Young, and taking no notice op the Motor-car 266 Joyce lifting a Baby Seal 266 Skua Gulls 266 Seals Emerging from the Water at their Blow-holes 266 Weddell Seals Quarrelling 268 A Weddell Seal Asleep 268 Some of the Dogs 268 Priestley beside an erratic Granite Boulder lying on Kenyte at Cape Royds 282 Granite erratic at Cape Royds 282 Summer effect on a Berg: Icicles forming 292 The Barrier Edge south of Hut Point, after the Sea Ice had broken away 292 xiil LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Two ERRATIC Boulders of Granite on the Slopes of Erebcs 292 The Barrier Edge breaking away four miles sodth of Hut Point. . . . 302 A Weathered Kentte Boulder near the Winter Quarters 306 Felspar Crystals from Summit of Mount Erebus (natural size) 306 Fossil Wood in Sandstone, from a Moraine in Latitude 85° South . . . 316 Blocks of Ice hung in the Wind at Winter Quarters in order to ASCERTAIN THE RaTE OF EVAPORATION 316 Erebus in Eruption, June 14, 1908 3'Zi Side of Ferrar Glacier. Figure of Man in lower left corner. . . . 336 Moraine Organisms from Raised Beach S.E. of Mount Larsen, Vic- toria Land (magnification IJ) 336 Stream op running water in the middle of the Ferrar Glacier in Midsummer 352 Ice Crystals on Roof of the Hut Porch 354 Ice Formations 354 Pressure Ice 358 Crystals on Sea Ice 358 Rectangular Crystals of Ice 360 Ice Crystals formed on a line 360 Ice Crystals (The Reproduction of the Compass on the upper picture is of natural size) 362 Ice Crystals formed on the line of a Fish-trap 366 A Photograph of the Aurora Austbalis. The Lights in the Sky indicate the Position of the Streamers 380 The Tide-gauge 392 MURR.VY AND MaWSON AT A HoLE MADE IN ONE OF THE FROZEN L.'IKES.. 392 Cloud Spirals above Mount Erebus 404 Cloud Spirals in Upper Currents of Air near Erebcs 404 Dumb-bell Cloud above Erebus 406 Panorama illustrating the Northern Party's Journey 1 , ... [ In pocket of Panorama of Mountains South of Mount Markham J '"'"'•"3-<^<'»6 xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT Section showing fobmek thickness of West Br.vsch or Great Icb Babrier when it filled McMubdo Sound at maximijm of Recent Glactation 287 Sections showing relative heights of Mountains and of the Great Snow Plateaux 306 Fungus — Peat and Ice Deposits 320 Eruption of June 14, 1908 328 Eruption of November 27, 1908 328 Great Steam Eruption, September 8, 1908 329 Temperatures of Ice of Blue Lake 363 Diagram of Prismatic Arch, March 13 371 Lunar Halo, Bright Patches and Beam, June 12 374 Inverted Rings Round the Sun, Feekuakt 7, 1909 375 Iridescent Clouds, August 22 377 Earth Shadows, April 12 378 Curved Line joining Erebus Summit and its Shadow on the Western Mountains, April 12 378 Earth Shadows, October 15 379 Earth Shadows, September 17 380 Part of Curtain Display, April 28 387 Curtain Band Circling Erebus, Mat 26 388 Arch and Curtain, June 19 389 Great Beam of Light, Mat 23, 1908 390 Aurora on August 31 391 Diagram showing the Principal Parts of the Tide-gauge 393 Tracing of Tide Record from Third Quarter to New Moon (New on 28th)... 394 Tracing of Tide Record from Jult 20 to 27, 1908 395 XV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Wind-driven Ice stopped by Current from Xorth, March 1G 399 Eddt of Pack in McMurdo Sound, January 1909 400 Variation in Direction of Current, June 30 to July So 400 The Curvb of Atmospheric Temperature from Cape Uovds to Summit of Erebus 408 Diagram showing D.ult Means of Barometric Pressure, Wind and Air Temperature 411 Comparisons of Temperature 415 Stratified Cloud on Erebus, October 13 419 Spiral Cloud, July 23 419 Spiral Cloud, September 25 HO Whale-backs, September 16 421 Whale-back Clouds, September 16 422 Undulate Strips of Cloud, July 88 422 Interlacing Clouds, September 16 423 Saw-edged Stratus and other Clouds, October 1, 1908 423 Water-gauge 444 MAPS In pocket of binding-case General Map showing the Explorations and Surveys of the Expedition Route and Surveys of the South Magnetic Pol.vr Party Route and Surveys of the Southern Journey Party, 1908-9 NOTE In the photographs the microscopic animalt are magnified about 200 diameters xvi THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC SOME NOTES ON THE SOUTHERN JOURNEY \ A/^ brought back with us from the journey towards the ' ^ Pole vivid memories of how it feels to be intensely, fiercely hungry. During the period from November 15, 1908, to February 23, 1909, we had but one full meal, and that was on Christmas Day. Even then we did not keep the sense of repletion for very long, for within an hour or two it seemed to us that we were as hungrj' as ever. Our daily allowance of food would have been a small one for a city worker in a temperate climate, and in our case hunger was increased by the fact that we were performing \agorous physical labour in a very low temperature. We looked forward to each meal with keen anticipation, but when the food was in our hands it seemed to disappear without making us any the less ravenous. The evening meal at the end of ten hours' sledging used to take us a long time to prepare. The sledges had to be unpacked and the camp pitched. Then the cooker w^as filled with snow and the Primus lamp ht, often no easy matter with our cold, frost-bitten fingers. The materials for the thin hoosh would be placed in the boiling- pot, with the addition, perhaps, of some pony maize, and the allowance of tea was placed in the outer boiler. The tea was always put in a strainer, con- sisting of a small tin in which wt had pfunched a 1 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC lot of holes, and it was removed directly the water had come to the boil. We used to sit round the cooker waiting for our food, and at last the hoosh would be ready and would be ladled into the pannikins by the cook of the week. The scanty allowance of biscuit would be distributed and we would commence the meal. In a couple of minutes the hot food would be gone, and we would gnaw carefully round the sides of our biscuits, making them last as long as possible. IMarshall used sometimes to stand his pannildn of hoosh in the snow for a little while, because it got thicker as it cooled, hut it was a debatable point whether this paid. One seemed to be getting more solid food, but there was a loss of warmth, and in the minus temperatures on the plateau we found it advisable to take our hoosh very hot. We would make the biscuits last as long as possible, and sometimes we tried to save a bit to eat in the sleeping-bag later on, but it was hard to do this. If one of us dropped a crumb, the others would point it out, and the owner would wet his finger in his mouth and pick up the morsel. Not the smallest fragment was aDowed to escape. We used to " turn backs " in order to ensure equitable division of the food. The cook would pour the hoosh into the pannikins and arrange the biscuits in four heaps. Perhaps some one would suggest that one pannikin had rather less in it than another, and if this view was endorsed by the others there would be a readjustment. Then when we were all satisfied that the food had been divided as fairly as possible, one man would turn his back, and another, pointing at one pannikin or group of biscuits, would say, " Whose? " The man who had his back turned, and therefore could not see the food, would give a name, and so the distribution would proceed, each of us always feeling sure that the smallest 2 PONY FLESH share had fallen to our lot. At lunch-time there would be chocolate or cheese to distribute on alternate days, and we much jDreferred the chocolate days to the cheese days. The chocolate seemed more satisfying, and it was more easily di\dded. The cheese broke up into very small fragments on the march, and the allowance, which amounted to two spoonfuls per man, had to be divided up as nearly as possible into four equal heaps. The chocolate could be easily sejiarated into sticks of equal size. It can be imagined that the cook for the week had no easy task. His work became more difficult still when we were using pony-meat, for the meat and blood, when boiled up, made a deUghtful broth, while the fragments of meat sunk to the bottom of the pot. The liquor was much the better part of the dish, and no one had much relish for the little dice of tough and stringy meat, so the cook had to be very careful indeed. Poor old Chinaman was a particularly tough and stringy horse. We found that the meat from the neck and rump was the best, the most stringy portions coming from the ribs and legs. We took all the meat we could, tough or tender, and as we went south in the days when horse-meat was fairly plentiful, we used to suck frozen, raw fragments as we marched along. Later we could not afford to use the meat except on a definite allow- ance. The meat to be used during the day was generally cut up when we took a spell in the morning, and the bag containing the fragments was hung on the back of the sledge in order that the meat might be softened by the sun. It cut more easily when frozen than when partially thawed, but our knives gradually got blunt, and on the glacier we secured a rock on which to sharpen them. During the journey back, when every ounce of weight was of great importance, we used one of our 3 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC geological specimens, a piece of sandstone, as a knife- sharpener. The meat used to bulk large in the pot, but as fresh meat contains about 60 per cent, of moisture, it used to shrink considerably in the process of cooking, and we did not have to use very much snow in the pot. We used the meat immediately we had started to kill the ponies in order to save the other food, for we knew that the meat contained a very large percentage of water, so that we would be carrying useless weight with it. The pemniican and biscuits, on the other hand contained very little moisture, and it was more profitable to keep them for the march further south, when we were likely to want to reduce the loads as far as possible. We left meat at each depot, to provide for the march back to the coast, but always took on as much as possible of the prepared foods. The reader will understand that the loss of Socks, which represented so many pounds of meat, was a very severe blow to us, for we had after that to use sledging stores at the depots to make up for the lost meat. If we had been able to use Socks for food, I have no doubt that we would have been able to get further south, perhaps even to the Pole itself, though in that case we could hardly have got back in time to catch the ship before she was forced to leave by the approach of winter. When we were living on meat our desire for cereals and farinacious foods became stronger; indeed any particular sort of food of which we were deprived seemed to us to be the food for which nature craved. Wlien we were short of sugar we would dream of sweet-stuffs, and when biscuits were in short supply our thoughts were concerned with crisp loaves and all the other good things displayed in the windows of the bakers' shops. During the last weeks of the journey outwards, and the long march back, when our allowance of fotfd 4 INTENSE HUNGER had been reduced to twenty ounces per man a day, we really thought of little but food. The glory of the great mountains that towered high on either side, the majesty of the enormous glacier up which we travelled so pain- fully, did not appeal to our emotions to any great extent. JNIan becomes very primitive when he is hungry and short of food, and we learned to know what it is to be desperately hungry. I used to wonder sometimes whether the people who suffer from hunger in the big cities of civilisation felt as we were feeling, and I arrived at the conclusion that they did not, for no barrier of law and order would have been allowed to stand between us and any food that had been available. The man who starves in a city is weakened, hopeless, spiritless, and we were vigorous and keen. Until January 9 the desire for food was made the more intense by our knowledge of the fact that we were steadily marching away from the stores of plenty. We could not joke about food, in the way that is possible for the man who is hungry in the ordinary sense. We thought about it most of the time, and on the way back we used to talk about it, but always in the most serious manner possible. We used to plan out the enormous meals that we proposed to have when we got back to the ship and, later, to civilisation. On the outward march we did not experience really severe hunger until we got on the great glacier, and then we were too much occupied %vith the heavy and dangerous climbing over the rough ice and crevasses to be able to talk much. We had to keep some distance apart in case one man fell into a crevasse. Then on the plateau our faces were generally coated with ice, and the blizzard wind blowing from the south made unnecessary conversation out of the question. Those were silent days, and our remarks to one another were 6 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC brief and infrequent. It was on the march back that we talked freely of food, after we had got down the glacier and were marching over the barrier surface. The wind was beliind us, so that the pulling Avas not very heavy, and as there were no crevasses to fear we were able to keep close together. We would get up at 5 A.M. in order to make a start at 7 a.m., and after we had eaten our scanty breakfast, that seemed only to accentuate hunger, and had begun the day's march, we could take turns in describing the things we would eat in the good days to come. We were each going to give a dinner to the others in turn, and there was to be an anniversary dinner eveiy year, at which we would be able to eat and eat and eat. Xo French chef ever devoted more thought to the inventioji of new dishes than we did. It is M'ith strange feelings that I look back over our notes, and see the M^onderful meals that we w^re going to have. We used to tell each other, with perfect seriousness, about the new dishes that we had thought of, and if the dish met with general approval there would be a chorus of, "All! That's good." Sometimes there would be an argument as to whether a suggested dish was really an oiiginal invention, or whether it did not too nearly resemble something that we had already tasted in happier days. The " Wild roll " was admitted to be the high-w^ater mark of gastronomic luxury. Wild proposed that the cook should take a supply of well-seasoned minced meat, wrap it in rashej's of fat bacon, and place around the whole an outer covering of rich pastry, so that it would take the form of a big sausage-roll. Then this roll Avould be fried with plenty of fat. ]\Iy best dish, which I must admit I put forward Avith a good deal of pride as we marched over the snow, was a sardine pasty, made by placing well-fried sardmes i'~ rifianaa THOUGHTS OF FOOD inside pastry. At least ten tins of sardines were to be emptied on to a bed of pastry, and the whole then rolled up and cooked, preparatory to its division into four equal portions. I remember one day Marshall came forward with a proposal for a thick roll of suet pudding with plent}' of jam all over it, and there arose quite a heated argument as to whether he could fairly claim tliis dish to be an invention, or whether it was not the jam roll alreadj^ known to the housewives of civilisation. There was one point on which we were all agreed, and that was that we did not want any jelhes or things of that sort at our future meals. The idea of eating such elusive stuff as jelly had no appeal to us at all. On a typical day during this backward march we would leave camp at about 6.40 a.m., and half an hour later Avould have recovered our frost-bitten fingers, while the moisture on our clothes, melted in the sleeping- bags, would have begun to ablate, after having first frozen hard. We would be beginning to march with some degree of comfort, and one of us would remark, " Well, boys, what are we going to have for breakfast to-day? " We had just finished our breakfast as a matter of fact, consisting of half a pannikin of semi-raw horse-meat, one biscuit and a half and a pannikin of tea, but the meal had not taken the keeimess from our appetites. We used to try to persuade ourselves that our half-biscuit was not quite a half, and sometimes we managed to get a httle bit more that way. The question would receive our most serious and careful consideration at once, and we would proceed to weave from our hungry imaginations a tale of a day spent in eating. " Now we are on board ship," one man would say. " We wake up in a bunk, and the first thing we do is to stretch out our hands to the side of the bunk and get some chocolate, some Garibaldi biscuits and 1 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC some apples. We eat those in the bunk, and then we get up for breakfast. Breakfast will be at eight o'clock, and we will have porridge, fish, bacon and eggs, cold ham, plum pudding, sweets, fresh roll and butter, marmalade and coffee. At eleven o'clock we will have hot cocoa, open jam tarts, fried cods' roe and slices of hea\'y plum cake. That will be all until lunch at one o'clock. For lunch we will have Wild roll, shepherd's pie, fresh soda-bread, hot mUk, treacle pudding, nuts, raisins and cake. After that we will turn in for a sleep, and we will be called at 3.45, when we will reach out again from the bmiks and have dough-nuts and sweets. We will get up then and have big cups of hot tea and fresh cake and chocolate creams. Dinner will be at six, and we will have thick soup, roast beef and York- shire pudding, cauhflower, peas, asparagus, plum pud- ing, fruit, apple-pie with tliick cream, scones and butter, port wine, nuts, and almonds and raisins. Then at midnight we will have a really big meal, just before w^e go to bed. There will be melon, grilled trout and butter-sauce, roast chicken with plenty of livers, a proper salad with eggs and very thick dressing, green peas and new- potatoes, a saddle of mutton, fried suet pudding, peaclies a la Melha, egg curry, plum pudding and sauce, Welsh rarebit, Queen's pudding, angels on horseback, cream cheese and celery, fruit, nuts, port wine, milk and cocoa. Then w^e will go to bed and sleep till breakfast time. We will have chocolate and biscuits under our pillows, and if we want anything to eat in the night we will just have to get it." Three of us would listen to this programme and perhaps suggest amendments and improvements, generally in the direc- tion of additional dishes, and then another one of us would take up the running and sketch another glorious day of feeding and sleeping. CAUSE OF DYSENTERY I daresay that all tliis sounds very greedy and uncivilised to the reader who has never been on the verge of starvation, but as I have said before, hunger makes a man primitive. We did not smile at our- selves or at each other as we planned wonderful feats of over-eating. We were perfectly serious about the matter, and we noted do^vTi in the back pages of our diaries details of the meals that we had decided to have as soon as we got back to the places where food was plentiful. All the morning we would allow our imagi- nations to run riot in this fashion. Then would come one o'clock, and I would look at my watch and say, "Camp!" We would drop the harness from our tired bodies and pitch the tent on the smoothest place avail- able, and three of us would get inside to wait for the thin and scanty meal, while the other man filled the cooker with snow and fragments of frozen meat. An hour later we would be on the march again, once more thinking and talking of food, and this would go on until the camp in the evening. We would have another scanty meal, and turn into the sleeping-bags, to dream wildly of food that somehow we could never manage to eat. The dysentery from which we suffered during the latter part of the journey back to the coast was certainly due to the meat from the pony Grisi. This animal was shot one night when in a greatly exhausted condition, and I believe that his flesh was made poisonous by the presence of the toxin of exhaustion, as is the case with animals that have been hunted. Wild was the first to suffer, at the time when we started to use Grisi meat M'ith the other meat, and he must have been unfortunate enough to get the greater part of the bad meat on that occasion. The other meat we were using then came from Chinaman, and seemed to be quite wholesome. 9 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC A few days later we were aU eating Grisi meat, and we all got dj'sentery. The meat could not have become affected m any way after the death of the pony, because it froze hard within a very short time. The manner in which we managed to keep on marching when suffer- ing, and the speed with which we recovered when we got projier food, were rather remarkable, and the reason, no doubt, was that the dysentery was simplj^ the result of the poison, and was not produced by organic trouble of any sort. We had a strong wind behind us day after day during tliis period, and this contributed in a very large measure to our safety, for in the weakened con- dition we had then reached we could not have made long marches against a head-wind, and without long marches Ave would have starved between the depots. We had a sail on the sledge, formed of the floorcloth of a tent, and often the sledge would overrun us, though at other times it would catch in a drift and throw us heavily. When Ave were travelhng along during the early part of the journey over the level Barrier surface, we felt the heat of the sun severely, though as a matter of fact the temperature was generally very low, sometimes as low as zero Fahr. though the season was the height of summer. It was quite usual to feel one side of the face getting frozen while the other side was being sun- burned. The ponies would have frozen perspiration on their coats on the sheltered side, while the sun would keep the other side hot and dry, and as the day wore on and the sun moved roinid the sky the frosted area on the animals would change its position in sympathy. I remember that on December 4 we were marching stripped to our shirts, and we got very much sunburned, though at noon that day the air temperature showed ten degrees of frost. When we started to climb tlie 10 FROST-BITE glacier and mai'ched close to the rocks, we felt the heat much more, for the rocks acted as radiators, and this experience weighed with me in deciding to leave all the spare clotliing and equipment at the Upper Glacier Depot, about seven thousand feet up. We did not exjDect to have to climb much higher, but, as the reader knows, we did not reach the plateau until we had climbed over ten thousand feet above sea-level, and so we felt the cold extremely. Our wind-proof Burberry clotliing had become tliin by this time, and had been patched in many places in consequence of having been torn on the sharp ice. The wind got in through a tear in my Burberry trousers one day and I was frost-bitten on the under part of the knee. This frost-bite developed into an open wound, into which the wool from my underclotliing worked, and I had finally to perform a rather jiainful operation with a knife before the wound would heal. We were continually being frost-bitten up on the plateau, and when our boots had begun to give out and we were practically marcliing on the senne- grass inside the finnesko, our heels got frost-bitten. ^ly heels burst when we got on to hard stuff, and for some time my socks were caked mth blood at the end of every day's march. Finally Marshall put some " New- skin " on a pad, and that stuck on well until the cracks had healed. The scars are likely to remain with me. In the very cold days, when our strength had begun to decrease, we found great difficulty in hoisting the sail on our sledge, for when we lifted our arms above our heads in order to adjust the sail, the blood ran from our fingers and they promptly froze. Ten minutes or a quarter of an hour sometimes elapsed before we could get the sledge properly rigged. Our troubles with frost- bite were no doubt due in a measure to the lightness of our clothing, but there was compensation in the 11 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC speed with which we were able to travel. I have no doubt at all that men engaged in polar exploration should be clothed as lightly as is possible, even if there is a danger of frost-bite when they halt on the march. The surface over which we travelled during the southern journey changed continually. Durhig the fii'st few days we found a layer of soft snow on top of a hard crust, with more soft snow underneath that again. Our weight was sufficient to break through the soft snow on top, and if we were pulling the increased pressure would cause the crust to break also, letting us through into the second layer of soft snow. This surface made the travelling very heavy. Until we had got beyond JNlinna Bluff we often passed over high, sharp sastrugi, and beyond that we met with ridges four to six feet high. The snow generally was dry and powdery, but some of the crystals were large, and showed in reflected hght all the million colours of diamonds. After we had passed latitude 80° South the snow got softer day by day, and the ponies would often break through the upper crust and sink in right up to their bellies. When the sun was hot the travelling would be much better, for the surface snow got near the melting-point and formed a slippery layer not easily broken. Then again a fall in the temjierature would produce a thin crust, through wluch one broke very easily. Between latitude 80° South and 83° South there were hard sastrugi under the soft snow, and the hoofs of the horses suffered in consequence. The surface near the land was broken up by the pressure from the glaciers, but right alongside the mountains there was a smooth plain of glassy ice, caused by the freezing of water that had nm off the rocky slopes when they were warm under the rays of the sun. This process had been proceeding on the snow slopes that we had 12 GLACIER SURFACES to climb in order to reach the glacier. Here at the foot of the glacier there were pools of clear water round the rocks, and we were able to drink as much as we wanted, though the contact of the cold water with our cracked lips was painful. The glacier itself presented every variety of surface, from soft snow to cracked and riven blue ice, by-and-by the only constant feature were the crevasses, from which we were never free. Some were entirely covered with a crust of soft snow, and we discovered them only when one of us broke through, and hung by his harness from the sledge. Others occurred in mazes of rotten ice, and were even more difficult to negotiate than the other sort. The least unpleasant of the crevasses were those that were wide open and easily seen, with firm ice on either side. If these crevasses were not too wide, we would pull the sledges up to the side, then jump over, and pull them after us. This was more difficult than it sounds from the fact that the ice gave only a very uncertain footing, but we always had the harness as a safeguard in case of a fall. If the crevasses were wide we had to make a detour. The sledges, owing to their length, were not liable to slip down a crevasse, and we felt fairly safe when we were securely attached to them by the harness. When the surface was so bad that relay work became necessary we used to miss the support of a sledge on the back journeys. We would advance one sledge half a mile or a mile, put up a bamboo pole to mark the spot, and then go back for the other. We were roped together for the walk back to the second sledge, but even then we felt a great deal less secure than when harnessed to one of the long, heavy sledges. On some days we had to travel up steep slopes of smooth ice, and often it became necessary to cut steps with our ice-axes, 13 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC and haul the sledges after us with the Alpine rope. When we had gone up about sixty feet, the length of the rope, we would haul up the sledge to which we had attached the lower end, and jamb it so that it could not slide back. Then one of us would slide down in order to fix the rope to the other sledge. One of the curious features of the glacier was a yellow line, evidently an old moraine, extending for thirtj' or forty miles. The rocks of the moraine had gradually sunk in out of sight, the radiation of the sun's heat from them causing the ice to melt and let them through, and there had remained enough silt and dust to give the ice a dirty yellow ajipea ranee. The travelling along this old moraine was not so bad, but on either side of it there was a mass of pressure ice, caused bj^ the constriction of the glacier between the mountains to the east and west. Unfortunately we brought back no photographs of this portion of the glacier. The number of plates at our disposal >vas limited, and on the outward march we decided not to take many photograjihs in case we found interesting land or mountains in the far south nearer the Pole. We thought that we would be able to secure as many photographs of the glacier as we wanted on the way back if we had the plates to spare, but as a matter of fact when we did get on to the glacier a second time we were so short of food that we could not afford the time to unpack the camera, which had to be stowed away carefully on the sledge in order to avoid damage to it. JNIany nights on the glacier there was no snow on which to pitch the tents, and we had to spend perhaps an hour smoothing out a space on a rippled, sharp- pointed sea of ice. The pro\'ision bags and sledges had to be packed on the snow cloths round the tents, 14 II J ii DIFFICULT TRAVELLING and it was indeed fortunate for us that we did not meet with any bad weather while we were marching up the glacier. Had a blizzard come on while we were asleep, it would have scattered our goods far and wide, and we would have been faced with a very serious position. All the time that we were climbing the glacier we had a northerly wind behind us, although the direction of the sastrugi showed clearly that the prevailing wind was from the south; when we were coming back later in the season the wind was behind us all the time. We encountered a strong wind on the outward journey when near the top of the glacier, and as the ice slopes were covered with snow it was difficult to pull the sledges up them. When we reached the same slopes on the way back, the summer sun had cleared the snow from them, leaving clear ice, and we simply glissaded down all but the steepest slopes, although one of the sledge runners was very badly torn. We had to travel carefully on the steep slopes, for if we had let the sledge get out of hand it would have run away altogether, and would probably have been smashed up hundreds of feet below. The Upper Glacier Depot was overhung by great cliffs of rock, shattered by the frosts and storms of countless centuries, and many fragments were jioised in such a fashion that scarcely more than a touch seemed needed to bring them hurtling down. All around us on the ice lay rocks that had recently fallen from the heights, and we wondered whether some boulder would come down upon us while we were in camj). We had no choice of a camping-ground, as all around was rough ice. The cliffs were composed largelj^ of weathered sandstone, and it was on the same moun- tains, higher up the glacier, that the coal was found, at a point where the slope was comparatively gentle. 15 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Looking down from this height, we could see the glacier stretching aAvay to the point of junction with the Barrier, the mountains rising to east and west. ^lany of the mountains to the west of the glacier were more or less dome-shaped, but there were some sharp conical peaks to the westward of the particular mountain under which the Upper Glacier Depot had been placed. There were three distinct peaks, as the photographs show, and the plateau ice sweeping down made a long moraine on the west side of the glacier. To the eastward there was a long ridge of high mountains, fairly uniform in shape and without any sharp peaks, but with ridges, apparently of granite, projecting towards the west and so constricting the glacier. The mountains were distant about twenty-five miles, but well-defined stratification lines could plainly be seen. Below us, as we looked from the depot, could be seen the cumulus clouds that always hung above the " Cloud-JMaker." When we looked to the south from this depot w^e saw no clouds; there was notliing but hard clear sky. The sky gave no indication of the blizzard winds that were to assail us when we reached the plateau, and after w^e had gone as far south as we could and retraced our footsteps to the depot, we looked back and saw the same clear sky, with a few A\isps of fleecy cloud in it. We had no doubt that below those clouds the pitiless gale was still raging across the great frozen plain, and that the ^\nnd which followed us during our march back to the coast was coming from the \'icinity of the Pole. As we advanced from the Upper Glacier Depot we came upon great ice falls. The surface looked smooth from a distance, and we thought that we were actuall}'^ on the plateau, but as we advanced we saw that before us lay enormous ridges rising abruptly. We had to relay our gear over these ridges, and often 16 RIDGES AND CREVASSES at the tops there would be a great crevasse, from which would radiate smaller crevasses fringed with crystals and sho^nng ghastly dej^ths below. We would creep forward to see what lay on the other side, and perhaps would find a fall of fifty feet, with a grade of about 1 in 3. JNIany times we risked our sledge on very severe slopes, allowing it to glissade down, but other times the danger of a smash was too great, and we had to lower the sledge slowly and carefully with the rope. The ice was safe enough to walk upon at tliis time except at the ridges, where the crevasses were severe, for the smaller crevasses in the hollows and slopes could be passed without difficulty. The ice falls delayed us a good deal, and then we got into soft snow, over which the sledge dragged heavily. We thought that we were finally on the plateau level, but within a few days we came to fresh ridges and waves of pressure ice. The ice between the waves was very rotten, and many times we fell through when we put our weight on it. We fastened the Alpine rope to the sledge harness, and the first man pulled at a distance of about eighteen feet from the sledge, while the whole party was so scattered that no two men could fall into a crevasse together. We got on to better ground by steering to the westward, but this step was rather dangerous, for b\' taking this course we travelled parallel with the crevasses and were not able to meet them at right angles. IMany times we nearly lost the sledge and ourselves when the ice started to break away into an unseen crevasse running parallel with our course. We felt very grateful to Pro\'idence that the weather remained clear, for we could not have moved a yard over this rotten ice in thick weather without courting disaster. I do not know whether the good weather we experienced in that neighbourhood was normal. We generally Vol. II.— 2 17 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC had about seven miles of easy going after we had passed one ridge in this area, and then another ridge would rise up ahead of us, and we would start to climb again. There were always crevasses at the top of the ridges, suggesting that the ice was moving over land at no great depth. We passed the last ridge at last, and reached the actual plateau, but instead of hard neve, such as the Discovery expedition had encountered in the journey to the plateau beyond the mountains west of INIcMurdo Sound, we found soft snow and hard sastrugi. All the sastrugi pointed to the south, and the wind blew strongly nearly all the time from the south or south- east, with an occasional change to the south-west. Sometimes we marched on hard sastrugi, and at other times we had soft snow under our feet, but could feel the sastrugi on which the snow was h'ing. I formed the opinion that during the winter on the plateau the wind must blow with terrible violence from the south, and that the hard sastrugi are produced then. Still further south we kept breaking through a hard crust that underlay the soft surface snow, and we then sank in about eight inches. This surface, which made the marching heaAy, continued to the point at which we planted the flag. After the long blizzard, from the night of January 6 until tlie morning of January 9, we had a better surface over which to make our final march soutliwards, for the wind had swept the soft snow away and produced a fairly hard surface, over which, unencumbered wth a sledge as we were, we could advance easily. We found the surface generally to be improved on the march back. The blizzard ^\^nds had removed the soft surface snow, and incidentally uncovered many of the crevasses. We were following our outward 18 PAINFUL FALLS tracks, and often I noticed the tracks lead us to the edge of a crevasse wliich had been covered previously and over wliich we had passed in ignorance of our danger on the march southwards. When we got to the head of the glacier we tried to take a short cut to the point where yse had left the Upper Glacier Depot, but we got enmeshed in a maze of crevasses and pressure ridges to the eastward, and so had to steer in a westerly direc- tion agam in order to get clear. The dangers that we did know were preferable to those that we did not know. On the way down the glacier we found all the snow stripped away by the wind and sun for nearly one hundred miles, and we travelled over sKppery blue ice, with innumerable cracks and sharp edges. We had many painful falls during this part of the journey. Then when about forty miles from the foot of the glacier we got into deep soft snow again, over which rapid progress was impossible. There had CA-idently been a heavy snowfall in tliis area ■\\hile we were further south, and for days, while our food was running short, we could see ahead of us the rocks under which the depot had been placed. We toiled with painful sloA\Tiess towards the rocks, and as the reader has already- learned, we were without any food at all for the last tliirty hours of that march. We found the Barrier surface to be very soft when we got off the Glacier, but after we had passed Grisi Depot there was an improvement. The surface remained fairly good until we reached the winter quarters, and in view of our weakened condition it was fortunate for us that it did so. In reviewing the experience gained on the southern journey, I do not think that I could suggest any improve- ment in equipment for any future expedition. The Barrier surface e^^idently varies in a remarkable fasliion, and its condition cannot be anticipated with any degree 19 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC of certainty. The traveller must be prepared for either a hard surface or a very soft one, and he may get both surfaces in the course of one days march. The eleven-foot sledge is thoroughly suitable for the work, and our method of packing the stores and hauling the sledges did not develop anji" weak points. We would have been glad to have had crampons for use on the glacier; what would be better still would be heavy Alpine boots with nails all round, for very often the surface would give little grip to crampons, which would only touch the rough ice at one or two points. The temperature is too cold to permit of the explorer wearing ordinary leather boots, and some boot would have to be designed capable of keeping the feet warm and carrying the nails all round. A mast consisting of a bamboo lashed to the forward oil-box proved as efficient as could be required for use in connection with a sail on the sledges. It was easily rigged and had no elaborate stays. I would suggest no change in the clothing, for the light woollen underclothing, with tliin windproof material outside, proved most satis- factory in everj' way. We could certainly not have travelled so fast had we been wearing the regidation pilot cloth garment generally used in polar exploration. Our experience made it obvious that a party which hojies to reacli the Pole must take more food per man than we did, but how the additional weight is to be provided for is a matter for individual consideration. I would not take cheese again, for although it is a good food, we did not find it as palatable as chocolate, which is practically as sustaining. Our other foods were all entirely satisfactory. Each member of the Southern Party had his own particular duties to perform. Adams had charge of the meteorology, and Iiis work involved the taking of 20 SOUTHERN PARTY DUTIES temperatures at regular intervals, and the boiling of the hypsometer, sometimes several times in a day. He took notes during the day, and wrote up the observa- tions at night in the sleeping-bag. JNIarshall was the cosmographer and took the angles and bearings of all the new land; he also took the meridian altitudes and the compass variation as we went south. When a meridian altitude was taken, I generally had it checked by each member of the party, so that the mean could be taken. Marshall's work was about the most uncomfortable possible, for at the end of a day's march, and often at lunch-time, he would have to stand in the biting wind handling the screws of the theodolite. The map of the journey was prepared by Marshall, who also took most of the photographs. Wild attended to the repair of the sledges and equipment, and also assisted me in the geological observ^ations and the collection of specimens. It was he who found the coal close to the Upper Glacier Depot. I kept the courses and distances, worked out observations and laid down our directions. We all kept diaries. I had two, one my observation book, and the other the narrative diary, reproduced in the first volume. SUMMER AT THE WINTER QUARTERS X^TE were distant about thirty-two miles from Hut ' ' Point when 1 decided to send the supporting-party back. The men watched us move off across the white plain until we became mere dots on the wide expanse, and then loaded up their gear and started north. Joyce was left in charge of the party, and he decided to make one forced march to Hut Point. They had to cross a good deal of crevassed ice, but a special effort would enable them to make their next camp under shelter. They got under way at 7 a.m. and marched till noon, making good progress in spite of the surface. In the afternoon they marched from two till five o'clock, and then a final march, from 7 r.M. till 1.30 a.m., took them to the old Discuverij hut. The only incident of the day had been the succumbing of Brocklehurst's feet to another attack of frost-bite, he having worn ski-boots when the other men had put on finnesko. The damage was not serious, although the sufferer himself had trouble Avith his feet for some time after. The party had covered thirtj'-two miles in fourteen hours and a half, very good marching in view of the soft and broken character of the surface. The party left Hut Point on the morning of November 12, and had a hard pull to Glacier Tongue. They at first thought of camping on the southern side of the Tongue, but, fortunately, kept on, for on the other side they met Day, ^lurray and Roberts, who had brought out stores with the motor-car. I had left orders that 22 WORK AT THE HUT about 1800 lb. of provisions and gear should be taken to the depot there, as a provision for the sledging-parties, in case they should be cut off from Cape Royds bj^ open water on their return. Day had succeeded in running the car right up to the Tongue, about twelve miles from winter quarters. After a good meal of biscuits, jam, lobscouse, tongue and cods' roe, the two parties joined in getting the stores up to the depot. Then they all went back to the winter quarters on the car and the light sledges it had in tow, leaving the hea\y sledge that had been used by the support- ing-party to be brought in at some later opportunity. They reached the hut in the small hours of the morning, and after another meal turned hi for a good sleep. Routine work occupied the men at the hut for some time after the return of the supporting-party. The scientific members were more than a little grieved to find that during the days when the hut had been un- tenanted, for j\Iurraj% Day and Roberts had been away too on a small expedition, some of the dogs had managed to get loose, and had killed thirty or forty jienguins. We had from the fii'st tried very hard to avoid any accidents of tliis sort, for we did not want to cause any unnecessary destruction of animal hfe. The penguins were now laying, and the men found that the eggs were very good to eat. The egg of the penguin is about the same size as that of a duck, and it has a transparent, jelly-like white and a small yolk. It takes about eight minutes' boiling to cook the egg nicely, and ten minutes if it is required set hard to the centre. The shell is the most beautiful dark-green inside, while the outer shell is chalky and white, though generally stained prettily by guano. Murray set aside a certain portion of the rookery for the supply of eggs for " domestic purposes," 23 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC partly in order to ensure freshness and partly in order to ascertain how many eggs the penguins would lay. The other portion of the rookery was left untouched in order that the development and education of the young penguins might be studied. The scientific work in its various branches was carried on by the men at the winter quarters, and they made a series of small expeditions to points of interest in the surrounding country. " To-day we motored to Tent Island via Inaccessible Island," wrote Priestley on November 14. " The main object of the expedition was to enable Joyce to kill and skin some young seals, but we did geological work as well. Day, Joyce, Murray and myself were the party, and when the motor was pulled up opposite Inaccessible Island three of us strolled over to look at its western slopes. We did not have time to climb, but the island from that side consists entirely of a flow of massive basalt, with small porphyritic felspars, which show out best in the ■weathered specimens. The sheet of basalt appeared to be dipping to the south. Day endeavoured to join us, but he chose a bad place, and got so deep in the drift that his axle was aground, so he was obliged to reverse engines and back out. From there we pro- ceeded to Tent Island, and after Joyce had picked out a young seal and started operations, IMurray, Day and I climbed up a water-worn gully on the island and had a cursory look at the rocks, which are an agglomerate with very coarse fragments; capping the agglomerate there is a massive flow of kenyte. . . . Day photographed the lower slopes of the gully while IVIurray and I climbed the rock-slopes till they ended, and then cut steps up a snow slope, at the top of which I came across a snow cornice and nearly got into trouble getting through it. On reaching the top we walked along the ridge, and 24 A 6kai, destinkd fok thk Lardeb *=•>■ , * ^K^^ X^LTcuiNti Snow you Cookinl; I'ukposes Tkanspoutusg a Sledge over bxrb Rocks for the Summer Journey to the Slopes of Mount Erebus W^ \hA.>lllL LuNE OX THE SlOPES OF MoLM i>hLBLa ON TENT ISLAND photographed a splendid weathered ken}i;e boulder, hollowed out like a summer-house, and studded with felspars as an old-fasliioned church door is studded with nails. After taking these photographs we cHmbed down the other side of the island, and walked round to join the others. The rock-climbing here, on any slopes at all steep, is very difficult because of the weathered fragments, which, owing to lack of powerful natural agents of transportation and to the fact that the wind carries all the lightest soil away, are left Ipng just at their angle of rejjose; a false step may send mountaineer and mountain surface hurtlmg down fifty or a hundred feet — no agreeable sensation, as I know from frequent experience. The sun was very hot to-day, and the gully was occuijied by a little stream which was carrying quite a quantity of light soil down with it. Day had an exciting experience with the car during this journey. He encountered a big crack in the ice near Cape Barne, and steering at right angles to its course, put on speed in order to " fly " it in the usual way. When only a few yards from it and traveUing at a speed of about fifteen miles an hour, he found that the crack made a sudden turn, so as to follow the line he was taking, and an instant later liis right-hand front wheel dropped in. Any weak points in the car would have been discovered by the sudden strain, but happily nothing broke, and the crack making another turn, the wheel bounded out at the elbow, and the car was on sound ice again. On November 16 Priestley made an interesting trip up the slopes of Erebus. Beyond the lower moraines and separated from them by a snow-field of considerable size, he found a series of ken\i:e ridges and cones, covered by verj' little debris. The ridges continued for 25 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC some distance to the edge of the main glacier, where they terminated in several well-marked nunataks. " One which I visited, and wliich was the nearest to the large parasitic cone, was eighty feet high, of massive kenyte of brown colour and close texture, jointed into very large cubical joints by a very complete series of master- joints. From this nunatak I obtained nine kinds of lichen, including four or five new species, and one j)iece of moss. One of the lichens was so much larger than the others and branched so much that it might -well be called a forest-lichen, and ^Murray considers it to be very closelj' allied to the reindeer-moss, or ice-moss." Joyce was engaged at this time in making zoological collections, and with the aid of the motor-car he was able to cover a great deal of ground. The motor-car, driven bj^ Day, would take Iiim fifteen or sixteen miles over the sea-ice to some suitable locality, generally near the Cathedral Rocks on the north side of Glacier Tongue, and leave him there to kill seals and penguins. In order to kill young seals, some specimens of which were required, he had first to drive the mothers away, and this often took a long time, as the female seal becomes aggressive when interfered wth in this manner. The work was not at all pleasant, but Joyce killed and prepared for preservation five young Weddell seals and four adult specimens. He had taken lessons in taxi- dermy before leaving England in order to be ready for this duty. Joyce and Day also killed and skinned twenty Emperor penguins, twelve Adelie penguins and twelve skua gulls, and all the men at the winter quarters assisted in collecting eggs. IMurray was looking after the scientific work, paying special attention to his own particular domain, that of biology, and INIarston was devoting as much time as he could to sketching and jiainting. He had taken oils, 26 'J'HE RETURNING SUN t 3 ^ o 2 ANTARCTIC COLOURING water-colours and pastels to the south with him. He found that the water-colours could not be used in the open at all, for they froze at once. Oils could be used fairly comfortably in the summer, though it was always chilly work to sit stiU for any length of time; during the spring the oils froze after they had been m the open air for about an hour, so that steady work was not possible. The pastels could always be used for making " colour notes," and they were also used for some of the colour-sketches that are reiJroduced in tliis book. JNlits had to be worn for all outside work, and this made sketching difficult. Marston found, as other artists have found, that Nature's color-schemes in the Antarctic are remarkably crude, though often wondrously beautiful. Bright blues and greens are seen in violent contrast with brilliant reds, and an accurate record of the colours displayed in a sunset, as seen over broken ice, would suggest to many people an impressionistic jioster of the kind seen in the London streets. Words fail one in an attempt to describe the wildly bizarre effects observed on days when the sky was fiery red and pale green, merging into a deep blue overhead, and the snow-fields and rocks showed violet, gi*een and white under the light of the moon. Marston used to delight in the " grey days," wlien there was no direct sunlight and the snow all around showed the most subtle tones of grey; there would be no shadows anjrvvhere, perhaps light drifts of snow would be blowing about, and the whole scene became like a frozen fairyland. The snow-bergs and snow-fields were white under direct light, but any hollows showed a vivid blue, deepening almost to black in the depths. There was an unlimited amount of interesting work for an artist, and INIarston suffered to some extent, as did the other specialists on the expedition, from the fact 27 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC that the number of men available was so small that every one, in addition to his own work, had to take a share in the routine duties. Joyce devoted what spare time he could find to the completion of the volumes of the " Aurora Australis." Practice had made him more skilful in the handling of type, and he was able to make a good deal of progress, Day assisting with the preparation of the Venesta boards in which the volumes were to be bound. Some of the contributions towards the literary part of the work had come in late, so that there was plenty of work left to do. ^Marston went on with the lithographing for the illustrations. Instructions had been left for a geological recon- naisance to be made towards the northern slopes of Mount Erebus, to examine, if possible, some parasitic cones and the oldest main crater of the mountain. Threatening weather prevented the carrying out of this plan for some time, yet for nearly a fortnight after the return of the southern supporting-party the expected blizzard did not come, while the weather was not pro- pitious for the journey. At length no further delay was possible if the trip was to be made, as Priestly, the geol- ogist, had to leave for the western mountains, so on November 23 the trip was begun, though with misgivings as to the long overdue blizzard. The party consisted of Priestle}% Marston, Joyce, Murray and Brocklehurst, and they took seventy pounds of food — a week's supply on the ordinary basis of thirty- two ounces per day for each man — but carried only one tent, intended to hold three men, their idea being that one or two men could sleep in the bags outside the tent. The weather was fine when they left the hut, but in the afternoon a strong southerly wind sprang up, and they had to march through low drift. They camped for the 28 A BLIZZARD ON EREBUS night close to a steep nunatak about five miles from the hut and nearly two thousand feet above sea-level. There was difficulty in getting a good snowy camping- ground, and they had to put up the tent on smooth blue glacier ice, having a thin coating of snow, and sloping gently down till it terminated in an ice-clifF overlooking the sea not many hundreds of yards below. After dinner Priestley, ^Murray and Joyce climbed over the nunataks, and found several new lichens, but the specimens collected were lost in the blizzard later on. Priestley also found a number of very perfect felspar crystals weathered out of the kenyte, and collected a couple of handfuls of the best. The members of the party retired to their sleeping-bags at eight o'clock on Monday night, and before midnight a bhzzard swept down upon them, and proved to be an exceptionally severe one, with dense drift. Priestley had volunteered to sleep outside that night, and had taken his sleeping- bag to a nook in the rocks some distance away. When the other men heard the roaring of the blizzard they looked out, and were reassured to find that he had come down wliile there was time and had lain down close by the tent. The first night the light snow round the tent was blown away leaving one side open to the wind, but the occupants were able to find a few bits of rock close by, and secured it Avith those. " Inside the tent for the next three days we were warm enough in our sleeping-bags," wrote JNIurray iii his report. " Though we could not cook anything we ate the dry biscuit and pemmican. The little snow under the floorcloth was squeezed in the hand till it became ice, and we sucked this for drink. We were anxious about Priestley, and occasionally opened the door-flap and hailed him, when he always replied that he was all right. Joyce had managed to pass him some 29 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC food early in the storm, so there was no fear of starving, but as we learned afterwards he could get nothing to drink and so could not eat. No one could offer to change places with him, as in doing so the sleeping-bag would have filled with snow, and might have blown away. On ^Vednesday INIarston dressed in his Burberries and crawled down to Priestley, who reported " All well," but he had had no food for twenty-four hours. ISIarston gave him some biscuits and chocolate. On Thursdaj^ mornuig he replied to the hail, but he was getting further and further from the tent, as every time he moved he slipped a little bit do^vn the smooth glacier. At mid- day there was no reply to our hail, and we thought of the j^recipitious ice-foot and imagined things. Joyce and I dressed and went out to seek him. The drift was so thick that nothing whatever could be seen, and when the head was lifted to try and look the whole face and eyes were instant!)' covered by a sheet of ice. We crept about on hands and knees looking for the lost man. The only chance of getting back to the tent again was to steer by the wind, down the wind looking for Priestley, up the wind home again. At one side the sledge lay, forming a landmark, and Priestley had been not very far from the far-away end. Creeping along the sledge to where he had lain, I found that he was not there. Joyce went a little further to the right and came upon him, all alive." Priestley's experiences during this period are related in his diary. " I had volunteered to sleep in the bag outside the tent," he wrote, " and by the time I was i-eady to turn in the drift had started again pretty badly, and the only sheltered spot I could find was at the top of the hill, so I told Joyce where he would find me in the morning and camped do^\Ti, first luckily taking the precaution to put a few cubic feet of kenyte 30 PRIESTLEY'S EXPERIENCE on my Burberry trousers and jacket outside the bag. A few hours later I woke up to find that the wind had in- creased to the dimensions of a bhzzard, and that the drift was sweeping in a steady cloud over my head. I realised that those in the tent would have trouble in reaching me in the morning, so I got out of the bag and dressed, get- ting both the bag and my clothes full of snow in the process. Then, after some trouble, I got the bag down the steep slope of the nunatak to the sledge, where I wrapped myself up in the tent-cloth and lay athwart the wind. In about two hours I got drifted up so close that I was forced to get my shoulders out of the bag and lever myself out of the drift, and I then tried the experiment of tying head to wind on the opening of the sleeping-bag. This answered very well, and it was in this position that I spent the next seventy-two hours, getting shifted down a yard or two at a time at every change in the direction of the wind, and being gradually pushed along the wind-SAvept surface of the glacier until I was some twenty or thirty yards from the tent, and in some danger of getting swept, as the wind increased in violence, either on to some rocks a quarter of a mile below or else straight down the glacier and over a hundred-foot drop into Horseshoe Bay. " Three times the people in the tent managed to pass me over some biscuits and raw pemmican, and Marston got my chocolate from the rucksack and brought it to me. jNIy chief difficulty, however, was want of water. I had had a little tea before I turned in, but from that time for nearly eighty hours I had nothing to drink but some fragments of ice that I could prise up with the point of a small safetj^-pin. The second time Joyce came down, I believe abovit the beginning of the third day, he reported that the lashings at the top of the tent-poles had given way and that a 31 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC rent had been torn in the material by the corner of a biscuit-tin. He added that it was impossible to keep any snow on the skirt of the tent, and that, as the snow- cloth was kept down only by a few rocks, the occupants of the tent were in constant expectation of seeing the tent leave them altogether, \^'^hen Joyce left me on this occasion the drift was so thick that he could see nothing, and had to find his way back by shouting and listening for the return shouts of his tent-mates. He had gone only a quarter of the distance when both his eyes were filled with drift and immediately choked with ice, and when he reached the tent his face was a mask of ice and both feet were frost-bitten. He was helped inside and his feet brought round with rubbing, but no further attempt could be made to reach me. He had brought me some biscuit and raw pemmican. Cooking was not possible in the tent OAnng to the impossibility of reaching the sledge to get the oil-filler. It may sound like an exaggeration to say that we could not reach the sledge, which was four yards or less from the tent, but it must be remembered that we were lying on the slopes of a clean-swept glacier, on which finnesko could get no hold. The snow that had covered the ice when we pitched camp had all disappeared before the fury of the blizzard. Our spiked ski-boots were on the ice- axes round the sledge, where they had been hung to dry, but in any case it would have been impossible to wear them in a blizzard when feet were getting badly frost-bitten even in finnesko. A slip on the ice meant very serious danger of destruction. " A slight decrease in the wind at the close of the third day gave me hope of getting up to the tent, and I prepared to move by putting on my outdoor clothing, no easy task in a sleeping-bag; then, rolling over on my side, I tried to get out. I found that there was 32 AN UNPLEASANT SITUATION less wind and less drift, and that I was able for the fii'st time to see where I was with regard to surrounding objects. I was unable, however, to get out of the bag without being blown further do\\Ti the slippery glacier, and I could see that it would be impossible to crawl up the slopes with the cumbrous bag. If I lost the bag I might as well have let myself slide." About two hours after tliis IMarston ventured forth from the tent in one of the remarkable intervals of calm occasionally experienced in the course of an Antarctic blizzard. On either side of the spot on which the camp had been pitched he could see the drift flj'ing along with the full force of the wind, but he was able to make his way down to Priestley before the blizzard swept down on them again. They dragged the bag up the glacier by kneeling on it and jerking it along, and both got into the tent. " Four men in a three- men tent is a big squeeze," continued Priestley, " but five was fearful, and it was some time before I managed to get even sitting room. The first thing to do was to examine and attend frost-bitten feet, and the examina- tion showed as big a crop as could be expected, for Marston and I each had both feet frost-bitten. A course of massage brought them round, and I got into INIarston's bag while he made tea. . . . After tea I got into my own bag and lay down on top of Murray and ]\Iarston, and by dint of much wriggling we managed to get fairly settled, though our positions were so cramped that sleep was impossible. " At about half -past four in the morning we cooked some pemmican in the tent and had a proper breakfast, as for the first time the wind had really begun to die away. Owing to the cold, the long period of semi- starvation in our cramped quarters, and the fact that Vol. u.—a 33 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC oil had got mixed uj) with the food, we were unable to do justice either to the hoosh or to the cocoa which followed it, and were still fairly empty when the drift ceased and we turned out to face the blizzard, pack the sledge and start for home. The ascent of the mountain had, of course, to be abandoned. I put on my damp finnesko and went out to help, but in less than five minutes, though the temperature was plus 22° Fahr., I was back in the tent with the front portions of both feet frozen, and we took half an hour to bring them round by beating, massaging and rubbing with snow. This latter remedy, Marston's favourite, is a very drastic one, and as painful as any I know, for the Antarctic snow is invariably in small sharp crystals, very brittle and hard. We all chafed very much at the unavoidable delay, as there was every sign of a renewal of the blizzard and the drift, but fortunately we got under way before anj^ drift rose, and the wind was rather in our favour. We left all the provisions there, and unanimously named the nunatak ' Misery Nunatak,' and we were about as glad to leave the place as a soul would be to leave purgatory. We also left a tin of biscuits and some oil with a view to a future attempt at an ascent, to be made by Murray, Day, Marston and Joyce. " There w^as a remarkable contrast between the wind-swept surface of the glacier and the surface over which we had toilsomely dragged the sledges during our day's journey outward. Instead of a uniform carpet, six inches deep, of soft snow, varied with drifts up to one's knees, we found patches of glacier ice, larger stretches of neve, and hard drifts of snow, on wliich neither our weight nor the weight of the sledge made the slightest impression; these drifts were deeply 34 I l'»-. !.r-;rj:r^ The -MoToit nkah thi: V^'intek Qr.vitTtiis A Hail of Fish EREBUS IN ERUPTION undercut on the south-east side, and were frequently a foot to eighteen inches in height. It was no easy matter to direct the sledge across the strong wind then blowing, although we had two men jjulling and two others guiding the sledge, and we ascended about half a mile to the north of Horseshoe Bay in what was, for a long time, totally unfamiliar country, and through a series of moraines which had not yet been explored. I was, un- fortunately, of no use in the pulling, being only just able to get along myself, and we were all ex- tremely glad to get the sledge to the Back Door Bay end of Blue Lake, where it was left till the next day. We reached the hut and started on a course of feeding and recuperating, having been five days out." JNIount Erebus was noticed to be in eruption when the party was maching back to the hut on November 27. Huge diverging columns of steam were rising from the crater, and beliind could be seen curious clouds of feathery cirrus. The temperature during the blizzard had not fallen below 12° Fahr., and been above 20° Fahr. during most of the time, so that the frost-bites sustained by the men must have been due mainly to lowered vitality, caused by the cramped situation and the lack of hot food. The experience had been rather a severe one, but the men were none the worse for it after a day or two at the winter quarters, and they commenced at once to make preparations for the western journey. I had left instructions that on December 1 Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst should start for Butter Point ^^^th 600 lb. of stores in order to lay a depot for the Northern Party which might be expected to reach that point on its journey back from the Magnetic Pole. Then the three men were to secure what stores they required 35 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC for their own purposes, and proceed up the Ferrar Glacier as far as tlie Depot Nunatak in order that Priestley might search for fossils in the sandstones of the western mountains. They were to get back to Butter Point early in January in order to meet Pro- fessor David, INIawson and INIackay, and if a junction was effected, JNIaw^son, Priestley and Brocklehurst wei-e to carry on geological work in Dry Valley and the surrounding country, while Professor David, AiTnytage and Mackay were to return to the winter quarters. The fact that the Northern Party did not arrive upset this arrangement to some extent, but the other three men did some very useful work. The mountains to the west of MclNIurdo Sound had been explored by Lieutenant ALrmytage and Captain Scott during the Discovery expedition, Armitage having climbed the mountains and penetrated west to an altitude of 9000 ft. on the ice-cap, while Scott had reached longitude 146° 33' East, on the western plateaux. Further information was required, however, in regard to the geology of the mountains. Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst accordingly left the winter quarters on December 1, taking with them about 1200 lb. of gear and stores. The motor-car carried them fbr the first sixteen miles, although the sea ice was by this time in a very bad condition. The season was well advanced, the sun was above the horizon all the time, and there were cracks and pools in all directions. Day and IVIarston took the car out, and when they were coming back after leaving the Western Party the car got stuck firmly in a crack that ran across the course. They spent two hours cutting away the ice sufficiently to get the car out, and then had to make a detour of five miles in order to get round 36 JOURNEY TO BUTTER POINT the crack. This was the last journey of the car in the Antarctic, for it was laid up when it got back to the hut. The Western Party, after some heavy sledging, camped on December 4 at the foot of the Ferrar Glacier. Armytagewas, at this time, suffering from an attack of snow-blindness. Priestley found moss and a species of fungus at the stranded moraines and also some kenyte. The men had been looking forward with pleasurable anticipation to securing skuas' eggs, wloich would have been a welcome change from pemmican and biscuit, but the birds had apj^arently not begun to lay and no eggs were secured. " A good deal of water denudation and transportation is takmg place along the sea-cliffs of these moraines," wrote Priestley m his diary. " Quite a thick alluvial deposit, bearing a strong resemblance to a series of miniature deltas, is to. be seen along the ice- foot awaiting the breaking up of the ice and its removal to the sea. The dust from the moraines had made a remarkable surface for two miles tliis side of them. Some winds had evidently been strong enough to remove a considerable quantity of the gravel with the snow, and the drifts which had contained this gravel had melted away, undercutting the edges of the cleaner snow- drifts, and thus giving a surface of bare ice with patchy snowdrifts undercut on all sides." The party reached Butter Point, about tliirty-five miles as the crow flies from the winter quarters, on December 5, and found a small depot left there by the Northern Party on its way to the Magnetic Pole. Pro- fessor David and liis companions had placed some final letters in a milk-tin. The stores brought for the pur- pose were placed at the depot, and then Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst proceeded back to the winter quarters, arri^dng there on December 7 at 11.30 P.M. On December 9 they started for Butter Point 37 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC again, taking five weeks' provisions for three men, in order to proceed up the Ferrar Glacier, and later to try to effect a junction with the Northern Party. Only five men — JNlurray, Joyce, Day, ^larston and Roberts — were now at the winter quarters. The heat of the Antarctic summer being at its height, the snow- drifts were melting rapidly, and the trickhng of running water was everywhere to be heard. A large drift remained on the hill behind the hut, leading up to Mawson's anemometer. On December 1 it was melting in several little trickles, and next day it was found that one of these had got under the hut and made a pool about a foot in depth at the lower end. JNIany valuable things were stored under the hut, and the only opening was occupied by the pool of water. A hole had to be made at one side of the house, where the ground was higher, and into this Joyce crawled and spent some hours wriggling about in a space hardly more than one foot in height, rescuing valuable boxes of printing material and printed matter. In the succeeding days the men at the hut had an illustration of the contrasts wliich the Antarctic climate presents. The heat of the sun melted the snow, and indeed made the weather oppressively warm, yet the water which ran below the house where the sunsliine could not penetrate and the air temperature never rose above 32° Fahr., froze at night and never thawed again, so that the water each day added a layer to the accu- mulation beneath the hut, till it reached nearly up to the floor. After the final departure of the Western Party on December 9, life at the winter quarters was uneventful until the arrival of the Nimrod. The members of the expedition remaining at Cape Royds were busy collecting 38 SUMMER AT THE HUT skua eggs, preparing skins, carrying on the routine scientific observations, and watching the doings of the Adelie penguins. JMany photographs were taken, es- pecially by Day, of penguins in eveiy variety of attitude, and of other subjects of interest. Experiments were made in photographing microscopic animals, and many pictures of them from hfe were obtained. RETURN OF THE MMROD AFTER leaving us on February 22, the Nimrod had an ■^*- uneventful voyage back to New Zealand. Fair winds were encountered all the way, and the ice gave no difficulty, the coast of New Zealand being sighted twelve days after the departure from Cape Royds. During the winter the Nimrod had been laid up in Port Lyttelton waiting till the time arrived to bring us back to civilisation. The little ship had been docked and thoroughly overhauled, so that all effects of the severe treatment she received during the first voyage down to the ice had been removed, and she was once more ready to battle with the floes. Towards the end of the year stores were taken on board, for there was a possi- bility that a party might have to spend a second winter at Cape Royds, if the men comprising one of the sledging expeditions had not returned, and, of course, there was always the possibility of the Nimrod herself being caught in the ice and frozen in for the winter. Sufficient stores were taken on board to provide for any such eventualities, and as much coal as could be stowed away was also carried. Captain P. F. Evans, who had commanded the Kooni/a at the time she towed the Nimrod down to the Antarctic Circle, was ap- pointed master of the Nimrod under my power of attorney. Captain England having resigned on account of ill-health after reaching New Zealand earher in the year. The Nimrod left Lyttelton on December 1, 1908, 40 NIMROD GOES SOUTH AGAIN and encountered fine weather for the voyage south- wards. On the evening of the 3rd, the wind being favourable, the propeller was disconnected, and the vessel proceeded under sail alone until the 20th, when she was in latitude 66° 30' South, longitude 178° 28' West. The " blink " of ice was seen ahead and the ship was hove to until steam had been raised and the propeller connected. Then Captain Evans set sail again, and proceeded towards the pack. The vessel was soon in brash ice, and after pushing through tliis for a couple of hours reached the pack, and made her way slowly through the lanes. Numerous seals were basking on the floes, regarding the shijj with their usual air of mild astonisliment. On the following day the pack was more congested, and the progress southward was slow, so much so that the crew found time to kill and skin several crabeater seals. Open water was reached again that evening, and at noon on the 22nd the Nimrod was in latitude 68° 20' South, longitude 175° 23' East, and proceeding under sail through the open water of Ross Sea. The belt of pack-ice had been about sixty miles wide. On December 26 the Nimrod reached latitude 70° 42' South, longitude 173° 4' West, the position, in which, in 1843, Sir James Ross sighted " compact, hummocky ice," but found only drift ice, with plenty of open water. A sounding gave no bottom Mith 1575 fathoms of wire, so that the theory that the ice seen by Ross was resting on land was completely disproved. At noon on the 27th the Nimrod, which was proceeding in a south- east direction, was brought up by thick floes in latitude 72° 8' South, longitude 173° 1' West. Progress be- came possible again later in the day, and at four o'clock on the following morning the Nimrod was in open water, with the blink of pack to the eastward. 41 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Captain Evans had kept east with the hope of sighting King Edward VII Land, but the pack seemed to be continuous in that direction, and on the 30tli he there- fore shaped a course for Cape Bird, and on January 1, 1909, JNIount Erebus was sighted. The experience of Captain Evans on this voyage confirms my own impression that, under normal conditions, the pack that stretches out from the Barrier to the eastward of the Ross Sea is not penetrable, and that the Discovery was able to push to within sight of King Edward VII Land in 1902 for the reason that the ice was unusually open that season. The progress of the Nimrod towards the wnter quarters was blocked by ice off Beaufort Island, and after manoeuvring about for three hours Captain Evans made the vessel fast to a floe with ice anchors. The next morning he cast off from the floe, and with the help of the current, which seems to set constantly to the west between Cape Bird and Beaufort Island, and by taking advantage of lanes of open water, gradually proceeded in two days to a point only twenty-eight miles from Cape Royds. Some heavy bumps against the floes tested the strength of the vessel, and finally what appeared to be fast ice was encounterd, so that no further progress towards the south was possible for the time. There seemed to be no immediate possibility of the Nimrod reaching Cape Royds, and Captain Evans therefore decided to send INIackintosh wth three men to convey a mail-bag and the news of the ship's arrival to the winter quarters. The party M^as to travel over the sea ice with a sledge, and it did not seem that there would be any great difficulties to be encountered. A start was made at 10.15 a.m. on January'' 3, the party consisting of Mackintosh, ISIcGillan, Riches and Paton, 42 ON DRIFT ICE with one sledge, a tent, sleejjing-bags, cooking equip- ment and a supply of provisions. The distance to be covered was about twenty-five niiles. In the afternoon Mackintosh sent Riches and Paton back to the shif), and he reduced the load on the sledge by leaving fifty pounds of iDrovisions in a depot. The travelling became very rough, the two men encomitering both bad ice and soft snow. They camped at 7.50 p.m., and started for Cape Royds again at 1.55 a.m. on the following day. They soon got on to a better surface, and made good progress until 5.30 a.m., when thej^ met with open water, with pressure ice floating past. This blocked the way. They walked for two hours in a westerly direction to see how far the open water extended, but did not reach the end of it. The whole of the ice to the southward seemed to be moving, and the stream at the spot at which they were then standing was travelling at the rate of about three miles an hour. They breakfasted at 7.30 A.M., and then started back for the ship, as there seemed to be no chance of reaching Cape Royds in con- sequence of the open water. Presently ^Mackintosh found that there was open water ahead, blocking the way to the sliip, and a survey of the position from a hummock revealed the unpleasant fact that the floe-ice was breaking up altogether, and that they were in most serious danger of drifting out into the sound. Safety lay in a hurried dash for the shore to the east, and they proceeded to drag their sledge across rough ice and deep snow with all possible speed. At places they had to lift the sledge bodily over the ice-faces, and when, after an hour's very hea\'y work, they arrived off the first point of land, they found an open lane of water barring their way. " We dragged on to the next point, which appeared to be safe," ^\Tote ]Mackintosh in liis diary. " The floes were small and 43 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC square in shape. Every two hundred yards we had to drag our sledge to the edge of a floe, jump over a lane of water, and then with a big eff'ort jjull the sledge after us. After an hour of this kind of work our hands were cut and bleeding, and our clothes, which, of course, froze as stiff as boards, had been wet through to the waist, for we had frequently slipped and fallen when crossing from floe to floe. At 2.30 p.ji. we were near to the land, and came to a piece of glacier ice that formed a bridge. The floe that we were on was moving rapidly, so we had to make a great efi^ort and drag our sledge over a six-foot breach. Our luck was in, and we pulled our sledge a little way up the face of the fast ice, and unpacked it. We were in a safe position again, and none too soon, for fifteen minutes later there was open water where we had gained the land." ]Mackintosh decided to go into camp near the spot where they had landed, as a journej^ across the rocks and the glaciers of the coast was not a thing to be undertaken lightly, and would probably be impossible unless the mail- bag was left behind. ^NIcGillan, moreover, had developed snow-blindness, and both men were very tired. I will quote from Mackintosh's report on the subsequent ex- perience of this little party. " Early the next morning I found iSIcGillan in great pain," wrote JNIackintosh. " His eyes were closed up completely, and his face was terribly swollen. The only remed}^ I could apply w^as to bathe them, and this seemed to give him some relief. From an elevated position I had a good look round for the ship, and could not see a trace of her. As the day wore on my own eyes became painful. I fervently hoped I was not going to be as bad as my companion, for we would then be in a very difficult position. The morning of January 6 found us both blind. ^McGillan's face was frightfully 44 SNOW-BLINDNESS swollen, and liis eyes completely and tightly shut, so that he did not know that I was attacked too. At first I refrained from telhng him, but the pain was very severe, and I had to tell him. By the j)ainful process of forcing my eyehds apart with my lingers I could see a little, but I was not able to do this for long. I continued to bathe McGillan's eyes, and then suffered six hours' agonj^ endmg in a good long sleep, from wliich I awoke re- freshed and much better. I was able to see without effort. McGillan was also much better, and our relief, after the anxiety we had felt, was very great. By midnight we had improved so much that we walked to the penguin rookery, where we had great fun with the birds and found several eggs." The men stayed in camp for several days, seeing no sign of the ship, and after their eyes were better spent a good deal of time studying the neighbourhood and especially the bird-life. They cut down theu- food to two meals a day, as their supply of food was not large. Finally, ISIackintosh decided that he would leave the mail-bag in the tent, it being too heavy to carry for any distance, and march into Cape Roj'ds. They made a start on the morning of January 11, carry- ing forty pounds each, including food for three meals, and expected to be able to reach the winter quarters within twenty-four hours. The first portion of the journey lay over liills of basaltic rock, at the base of ]Mount Bird, and they thought it best to get as high as possible in order to avoid the valleys and glaciers. They went up about five thousand feet, and had fairly easy travel- ling over slopes until they got well on to the glaciers. Then their troubles commenced. They were wearing ski-boots without spikes, and had many hea%y falls on the slippery ice. " We w-ere walldng along, each picking his own tracks, and were about fifty yards apart, 45 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC foolishly not roped, when I happened to look round to speak to my companion, and found that he had disappeared," wrote ^lackintosh. " Suddenly I heard my name called faintly from the bowels of the glacier, and immediately rushed towards the place from which the sound proceeded. I found McGillan in a yawning chasm, many feet beneath me, and held up on a projection of ice. I took oft' my straps from my pack and to them tied my waist lashing, and lowered this extemporised rope down to him. It just reached his hand, and with much pulling on my part and knee- chmbing on liis, he got safely to the surface of the glacier again. The Primus stove and our supply of food had gone further down the crevasse. We tried to hook them up, and in doing so I lost my straps and line which I had attached to a ski-stick, so we were left almost without equipment. As soon as INIcGillan had recovered from the shock he had received we started off" again, ^nth the spare strap tying the two of us together. We crossed over many snow-bridges that covered the dangers undei-neath, but soon we were in a perfect hot-bed of crevasses. They were impassable and lay right across our path, so that we could look down into awful depths. We turned and climbed liigher in order to get a clear passage round the top. We were roped together and I was in the lead, with McGillan behind, so that when I fell, as I often did, up to my waist in a crevasse, he could pull me out again. We found a better surface higher up, but when we began to descend we again got into crevassed regions. At first the crevasses were ice-covered gaps, but later we came to huge open ones, whose yawning depths made us shudder. It was not possible to cross them. We started to ascend again, and soon came to a bridge of 46 A DANGEROUS SITUATION ice across a huge crevasse about twenty feet ^vide. We lashed up tighter, and I went off in the lead, straddle- legged across the narrow bridge. We both reached the other side in safety, but one slip, or the breaking of the bridge would have precij)itated us into those black depths below." The two men found their way blocked by crevasses in whichever direction they turned, and at last reached a point from which ascent was out of the question, while below lay a steej) sloj^e running down for about tlu-ee thousand feet. They could not tell what lay at the bottom of the slope, but their case was desperate, and they decided to glissade down. Theu" knives, which they attempted to use as brakes, were torn from their grasp, but they managed to keep their heels in the snow, and although they passed crevasses, none lay directly in their path. They reached the bottom in safety at 4 p.m. on the 11th. They were very hungry and had practically no food, but they could get forward now, and at 6 p.m. they could see Cape Royds and were travelling over a smooth surface. They ate a few biscuit crumbs and half a tin of condensed milk, the only other food they had being a little chocolate. Soon snow commenced to fall, and the weather became thick, obscuring their view of the Cape. They could not see two yards ahead, and for two hours they stumbled along in bhnding snow. They rested for a few minutes, but their clothes were covered with ice, icicles hung from their faces, and the temperature was very low. In a temporary clearing of the blizzard Mackintosh thought that he could make out the Cape and they dashed off, but at lunch-time on the 12th they were still wandering over the rocks and snow, hea\y snow cutting off all view of the surrounding countrj-. Soon 47 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC after this the snow ceased to fall, thougli the drift-snow, borne along by the blizzard wind, still made the weather tliick. Several times they thought that they saw Cape Royds, but found that they had been mistaken. As a matter of fact they were quite close to the winter quarters when, at about 7 p.m., they were found by Day. They were m a state of complete exhaus- tion, and were just managing to stagger along because they knew that to stop meant death. Within a few minutes thej' were in the hut, where Avarm food, dry clothes and a good rest soon restored them. They had a narrow escape from death, and would prob- ably have never reached the hut had not Day happened to be outside watching for the return of the ship. INIackintosh and ]\IcGillan reached the hut on January 12, but in the meantime the Nimrod had arrived at Cape Royds and had gone north again in search of the misshig men. INIurray had sailed in the Nimrod, and as events turned out, he was not able to get back to the hut for about ten days. " We were having tea on the afternoon of January 5, and JMarston happening to open the door, there was the Nimrod already moored to the edge of the fast ice, not more than a mile away," wrote Murray in a report on the summer w^ork. " We ran towards the sliip, over the rotten sea ice, in boots or slippers as chanced, witli the one idea that is ujipermost in these circumstances — to get ' letters from home.' We were doomed to disappointment. Before we had finished greeting our old friends, the officers asked us, ' Has JNIackintosh arrived ? ' and we learned to our horror that he and a companion had left the ship two days before and tliirty miles north of Cape Royds, to trj'^ to bring the letters sooner to us over the sea ice, over the bay where only a few days ago we saw a broad 48 i^BS, NIMROD IN THE ICE sheet of open water to the horizon, and which was even now only filled with loose pack! So we got no home letters, and had good reason to believe that our friends had lost their hves in the endeavour to bring them. We knew that they must have embarked on a large floe, and httle expected to see them again. On Januar}' 7 the Niinrod left Cape Royds to seek for the lost men, on the chance that they might have got ashore near Cape Bird. Within a few hours she was caught by the pack which was diifting rapidly southward along the shore of Ross Island. Driven almost on shore near Horseshoe Bay, the ship, by dint of hard steaming, got a little way ofi^ the land, and was there beset by the ice and so remained from the 7th to the 15th, with only a few hours' ineffectual steaming during the fu'st daj' or two. At length she was rigidly jammed and was carried helplessly by a great eddj" of the pack away towards the western side of the sound, and gradually northward. " On January 12 she was as tight as though frozen in for the winter. In the afternoon sudden pressure aflPected all the ice from the Nimrod as far as we could see. Great blocks of ice, six or eight feet in thickness, were tossed and piled on the surface of the floes. These pressure heaps were formed on each side of the sliip's bow, but she took no harm, and in about an hour the pressure ceased. On the morning of January 15 there was not the slightest sign of slacking of the pack, but in the early afternoon Harbord, from the crow's-nest, saw lanes of water at no great distance to the east. Steam was got up and in a few hours we had left our prison and got into a broad lane, ^vith only thin ice which the ship could charge, and the open water was in sight. Shortly after midnight we got clear of the Vol. n.^ 49 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC ice. AVhen released we were not very far from the Nordenskjold Ice-Barrier. " The deceptive appearance of loose pack was im- pressed upon us. For many hours there was blue water apparently only a mile or two ahead, but it never appeared to get anj' nearer for hours, and we could not be sure it was really near till we were within a few hundred yards of the edge. All this tune in the pack we were in doubt as to the fate of ^lackintosh, or rather, we had not much doubt about it, for we had given him up for lost, but we were helpless to do anytliing. On the afternoon of the 16th, on which day we cleared the ice, we had passed Reauford Island and were approaching through verj' loose pack the only piece of shore on which there was any chance of finding the lost men. Near the end of this stretch of beach, where it is suc- ceeded by hopeless chffs, a small patch of greenish colour was seen, and the telescope showed the details of a deserted camji, a tent torn to ribbons and all the camp gear lying around. A boat was sent ashore in charge of Davis, who found the bag of letters, and a note from ^Mackintosh pinned to the tent, telling of his risky attempt to cross the mountains nearly a week before. Knowing the frightfully crevassed character of the valley between ^Mount Bird and INIount Erebus, there seemed to us little hope that they would get through. The crevassed slope extends right to the top of ]\Iount Bird, and is very steep towards the Erebus side. When we reached Cape Royds about midnight, only two men came out to meet the ship. One of the men was Mackintosh's com- rade in all his adventures, and we soon learned that all had ended well." In the meantime the Bluff Depot party had started off to place a supply of provisions off Minna Bluff in readiness for the return of the Southern Party. The 50 ANXIOUS DAYS crew of the Nimrod proceeded to take on board the geological and zoological specimens collected by the exjjedition and stored at the hut, so that all might be in readiness for the final departure when the parties had been picked up. Then followed weeks of uncertainty as to the fate of the men who were away. Cl^apter ^our THE BLUFF DEPOT JOURNEY T HAD left instructions at the winter quarters that ■'■ a party should proceed to Minna Eluff' at the beginning of the new j'ear, and place at a jjoint opposite the Bluff a depot of stores for the use of the Southern Party on its return journey. Joyce was to take charge of tliis work, and it was of very considerable importance, since we four of the Southern Party would be depending on the depot to supply us with the pro- visions necessary for the last hundred miles or so of the journey back to the winter (juarters. Joyce was accompanied by JNIackintosh, Day and ^larston, and he found that as the snow surface was very soft it would be necessary to make two journeys to the Bluff, one witli ordinary sledging provisions, and the other with special luxuries from the ship. The party left the winter quarters at Ca])e Royds on January 15, with one sledge and 500 lb. of provisions, drawn bj' eight dogs. Early in the afternoon they encountered soft ice, sticky wth salt, and the travelling became very lieavy. Thej' kept well away from the land, but Joyce, ^Mackintosh and JNIarston all fell through at different times, the soft surface giving away under them, and they got wet up to their waists. Their clothing froze stiff at once. They camped for the night at Glacier Tongue, and the next morning found the weather so bad that they were unable to march. There was a strong southerly wind, with drift, and this soon turned into a howling blizzard. A calm succeeded at mid- 52 A Doo Team with Loaded Sledge going South to lay a Depot for the Return of the Southern' Party Dki'i.t 1*\kty pitching a Tent fc^ .— ^-fl 1 Hi, I'.i.i 1 I Dkpot A DEPOT PARTY night, and on the morning of the 18th they got under way agam. The dogs had been buried under the drift by the bhzzard, only their noses showing at the sur- face, and it was necessary to dig them out before they could be harnessed up. A seven-foot sledge was loaded with 300 lb. of store from the depot at the Tongue, and the four men took on the two sledges, with a total weight of 800 lb. They had a heavy day's work, over soft ice and snow-drift, but reached the old Discovery winter quarters at Hut Point at midnight. The dogs pulled very well, and seemed to be enjoying their work after the long spell of semi-idleness at Cape Royds. On the morning of the 19th the party proceeded on to the Barrier. The surface was fairly good, and the dogs ran practically all the time, Joyce finding it neces- sary to put two men on the sledge in order to reduce the speed, for the men would not travel at the pace set by the dogs. The weight per dog was well over 100 lb., though only one sledge had been taken on from Hut Point. The temperature was low during the days that followed, and the men's beards were constantly coated with ice, but their progress w^as rapid. On January 23, when they were travelling over a deep snow surface covering sastrugi, they sighted a depot about tliree miles to the west of their course. Tliis was the depot at which some pony fodder had been left in the spring. Soon after this the party came upon crevasses running at right angles to their course, and the travelling became difficult. Joyce had the members of the party roped together, as the crevasses w^re hidden by treacherous snow lids and were therefore dangerous. The crevasses became worse in the following two days. Some of the pressure ridges were over thirty feet in height, running in an east-south-east and west-north-west direction, 53 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC with enormous ci-evasses between them, and they all had the experience of falling through, to be hauled out again by means of the rojie, after they had dropped to the length of their liarness with a heavy jerk. On one occasion the four centre dogs fell through a snow- hd into a crevasse, and were got out with great difficulty. Day and Joyce, with two leaders, were on one side of the crevasse, and INIackintosh and ^larston, with the two rear dogs, were on the other side. Day and Joyce had to unharness and ease the dogs, while the other two men pulled them back to the sledge. The dogs meanwhile were hanging over the abj^ss, and evidently did not like their jiosition. Joyce had to keep altering his course in order to avoid these crevasses, but after steering in a south-west direction for about six hours he reached a better surface. The crevasses were getting smaller, although the surface of neve caused many falls. An attempt to steer south, straight for the spot at which the depot was to be laid, resulted in the party getting into the badly crevassed area again, and once more Joyce had to steer east-south-east. Finally they got clear of the crevasses, and at midnight on January 2.5, reached the spot at which it had been decided to place the depot, about fourteen miles off JSIinna Bluff. An early start was made on the 2Gth, and for seven hours the party laboured erecting a mound of snow ten feet high. On top of the mound they put two eleven-foot bamboos, lashed together and carrying three black flags. The total height of the depot was twentj^-two feet, and it could be seen at a distance of eight miles. The bearing of this depot I had arranged with Joyce during the spring depot journey, before my departure for the southern journey. It was on a line drawn through a sharp peak on the Bluff, well- known to Joyce, and the top of IMount Discovery, with 64 A DISCOVERY DEPOT a cross bearing secured by getting the centre peak of White Island in hne with a peak of Mount Erebus. The party started north again on the morning of the 27th, and after they had travelled a short distance Day sighted a pole projecting from the snow, some distance to the west of their course. Joyce was able to identify this as the depot laid out for the Discovery's Southern Party in the spring of 1902. There was a bamboo pole about eight feet liigh projecting from the snow, with a tattered flag attached to it, and a food tin on top. The guys to which the pole was attached were completely buried under the snow. The men dug down for about five feet with the idea of ascertain- ing how deejjly the depot had been covered by snow, but as the bottom had not been reached and time was limited, they put fresh flags on the pole and proceeded on their way, intending to visit the depot on the second journey. A fresh southerly wind was blowing, and rapid progress was made to the north towards Cape Crozier. A sail was hoisted on the sledge, and this assisted the dogs so much that three men were able to sit on the sledge, while a pace of about four miles an hour was maintained. Soon the area of crevasses, caused by the impinging of the Barrier ice on the land to the west, was reached again, and for thirty-seven miles the party twisted and turned in making a course past the obstacles; Joyce counted the crevasses that were passed, and he rej^orted that he had seen one hundred and twenty-seven, ranging from two feet to thirty feet in width. The larger ones were open, and therefore easily detected, but the smaller ones had the usual snow-lids. On the 30th the men were held up by another blizzard, which completely buried the dogs and sledge, but they reached Hut Point at 11 p.m. on January 31. 55 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC A second load of stores was secured from tlie depot, including some luxuries, such as apples and fresh mutton, brought by a party from the ship, and on February 2 tlie party started south again. Joyce decided to take a new course in order to avoid the crevasses. He kept a course towards Cape Crozier for two days, and then marched south on the 5th and reached the depot without having seen any crevasses at aU. I think that the crevasses run right across to Cape Crozier from the district around ^Vhite Island, but they are evidently more snow covered along the outer course. When tlie party was close to the depot a blizzard came up from the south, and there was just time to get the tents up before the drift became thick. The tents were completely snowed up before the weather cleared, and the men had some difficulty in getting out again. The dogs were covered, but they seemed to be quite happy in their " nests " deep in the drift. When dogs and sledge had been dug out the party started again, and at 2 a.:m. on the 8th they reached the Bluff depot for the second time. " We expected to find the Southern Party camped there, and to surprise them with the luxuries we had brought out for them," wrote Joyce in his report, " but they were not there. As our orders were to return on the 10th if the Southern Party did not turn up, we began to feel rather uneasy. It came on to blow again from the south, and presently the wnd turned into a howling blizzard, and did not ease dowTi until the 11th. During every lull we climbed the depot and looked round the horizon witli the glasses, expecting every minute to see the Southern Party loom up out of the whiteness, but they did not appear. On the 11th, after a consultation, we decided to lay depot flags in towards the Bluff, so that there would be no chance of 56 'I'lIK DEPOT TAUTY AMONGST CKKV ASSES ^ SOUTHERN PARTY OVERDUE the other party missing the food depot. We knew that they would be run out of provisions, as they were then eleven days overdue, and the position caused us great anxiety. After we had laid the flags, three miles and a half apart, with directions where to find the depot, we decided to march due south to look for the Southern Party. At every rest we would get on the sledge with the glasses, and look around, thinking that each snow hummock was a man or a tent. On the 13th Day sighted some marks in the snow that looked unusual, and on examination we found them to be the hoof-pi'ints of the ponies, evidently made on the outward march of the Southern Party three months before. The tracks of the four sledges showed distinctly. We followed these tracks for seven hours, and then we lost them. We camped that night at 10 v.m., and early the next morning proceeded south again, thinking all the time that we would see something appear out of the loneliness. It is curious what things one can see in circumstances like these, especially with a bad light. We started back to the depot with all sorts of fears for the Southern Party." They reached the depot again at noon on the 16th, and Joj'ce states that as they approached the mound they were all sure that they could see a tent up and men walking about. ^Vhen they got close, however, they found that everji;hing was just as they had left it. They put all the pro\'isions on top of the mound, lashed everytliing securely, and examined the flags to the eastward, and started on the march back to the coast, full of gloomy thoughts as to the fate of the Southern Party, which was now eighteen days overdue. They proceeded first to the old Discovery depot found on the first journey, Joyce wishing to take some measurements in order to ascertain the movement of 57 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC the Barrier ice, and the amount of the snowfall. The depot had been laid six years previously on bearings ofl" the ElufF, and after its original position had been ascertained as exactly as possible, the distance to the bamboo pole was measured off by Day and Marston with a forty-foot length of rope, which had been measured off with a tape-measure. The distance was found to be 9G00 ft., and the direction of the movement was about east-north-east. The Barrier ice at tliis point must therefore be moving forward at the rate of about 1500 ft. a year. The party then worked till 1 A.M. digging down in order to find what depth of snow had been deposited on top of the depot during the six years. It was found that the level at which the stays of the depot pole had been made fast was eight feet tliree inches down in hard compressed snow. A measured quantity of this snow was melted in order to ascertain the actual amount of the snowfall. The interesting points involved in these investigations will be dealt with in the reports on the scientific work of the expedition. The party started north again on the following day, and covered a distance of thirty-three miles. The dogs pulled splendidly, and three men were able to ride on the sledge. On the second day crevasses were en- countered again, and several times men fell through to the length of their harness. The general direction of the crevasses was east-south-east and west-south- west. The party had a narrow escape from complete disaster at this stage. " We were going at a good trot over a ver\' hard surface," -HTote Joyce, " when I felt my foot go through. I called out * Crack ! ' and rushed the dogs over, and as the sledge touched the other side of the hard ridge, the whole snow-bridge over which we had passed fell in. Marston, who was running 58 * Digging to ascertain the depth of snow covering a depot left by the " Discovery" Expedition GOOD WORK BY DOGS astern of the sledge, felt himself falling through space, but the pace of the dogs brought him over the crevasse, at the length of liis harness. We found ourselves stand- ing on the edge of a ya^\Tiing gap that would easily have swallowed up sledge, dogs, and the whole party, and on the far side we could see our sledge tracks leading right up to the edge. It seemed almost a miracle how we had managed to esca23e. Day took a photograph, and we altered the course for Cape Crozier, getting out of the crevasses about 5 p.m. Then we camped for the night, having all had a good shaking up." A long march the next day over a good surface brought the party to Cape Armitage at midnight. Joj'ce found that the ice in the sound had gone out, and it was therefore necessary to climb through the gap at Observation Hill. A blizzard came up, and with great difficult}^ the party reached the old Discovery hut at Hut Point at 2 a.m. The distance covered during the day had been forty-five miles, an unusually good performance. The surface had been good, and the wnd favourable, and the dogs had pulled splendidly. Joj'ce speaks verj- highly of the work of the dogs on this journej". They were pulling over 100 lb. per dog, and yet ran most of the time. They suffered a good deal from snow-blindness, and then they used to dig a hole in the snow and bury their faces right in; this method of treatment seemed to ease their eyes and they recovered from the attacks very quickly. " One day I released Tripp, because he had a chafed leg," wrote Joyce, " and for the whole day he ran in his place in the team, as if he had been harnessed up. He slept about half a mile from camp that night, and when I tried to coax him over in the morning he would not come, but as soon as we got under way he came nimiing up to his old place. I fed the dogs on one pound of biscuit a 59 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC day each, and this seemed to satisfy them; as they went on their condition improved. The dog harness was gen- erally satisfactory, but could have been improved with a few more swivels, in order to avoid tangling when the dogs jumped over their traces. I think that all dog teams should be taught to be driven, as a man cannot keep pace with dogs, and holding them back in order that a man may go ahead catises them to get fagged out. If they were let go at their best pace, one could, with a light load, say 80 lb. per dog, get forty miles a day out of them over a good surface." THE WESTERN JOURNEY ]V/rEANWHILE the Western Party, which had left ■^ -'■ the winter quarters for the second time on December 9, had been working in the western moun- tains. The three men ( Army tage, Priestley and Brockle- hurst) reached the stranded moraines on December 13, and on this occasion succeeded in securing a large supply of skuas' eggs. The anticipated feast was not enjoyed, however, for only about a dozen of the eggs were " good enough for eating," to quote the words of a member of the party. The other eggs were thrown on to the snow near the tent, and the result was an invasion of skuas, which not only ate the eggs, but also made themselves a general nuisance by puUing about the sledge harness and stores. At tliis time the men were troubled by patches of thin ice, about an eighth to a quarter of an inch tliick, forming a lenticle, the top of the middle being sometimes as much as five or six inches from the actual surface. When these patches of ice were trodden on they broke dowTi, and not infrequently dis- closed a puddle of salt water an inch or two deep. Priestley thought that they were the final product of the thawing of snowdrifts, and owed their character to the fact that the salt water worked faster from below than did the sun from above. On December 15 the party started to ascend the Ferrar Glacier, Priestley examining the rocks carefully on the way with a view to securing fossils if any were to be found. The surface was bad for the most part, soft 61 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC snow being encountered where ice had been expected. On December 19 they were held up by a bhzzard, and then they got on to very sUppery crevassed ice. On Ueceniber 20 they camped near the Sohtary Rocks, at the spot at wliich Captain Scott had camped after leaving Dry Valley. The idea of getting to Depot Nunatak had to be abandoned, for a heavy snowfall made the travelling difficult, and the time at the dis- posal of the expedition was short. Priestley worked under the Bluff between Dry Valley and the east fork of the glacier without success, and then they moved over to Obelisk JMount. " I have examined block after block of unfossiliferous-looking sandstone without any success," ^\Tote Priestley in his dian,- on the evening of the 21st. " The only thing I can find different from the ordinary quartz grains are a few seams of conglom- erate with quartz pebbles, and a few lenticles of a soft clayey substance. The other rock I have collected here is a junction between granite and porph}'Tj% which is common. The sandstone is very weathered, dropping to pieces in many cases at a single blow. I am faced with tlie necessity of examining for fossils rocks which I should carefully avoid if I were at home or anywhere else. I have never seen a sedimentary rock that looked more unfossiliferous. Many of the boulders are coated with a hard crust of white, opaque salt ( probably calcium carbonate), and if there was ever any lime in the sand- stone it has probably been dissolved out long ago. There are numerous interesting rocks about here, but I am debarred from collecting much by the difficulty of transport. . . . There are evidently serious defects in the map near this point. The whole of the bluff opposite is marked as Beacon sandstone, and from the face of the cliff here it is easily seen, for at least 3000 feet, to be granite; the very grain in the stones can 62 Camp on Ut:t-EMBER 17 on THt: Feku.a.r Glaciek ullow Sentinll Rock. lluM.Il 1, * Ti. H\S';i\(i (iLA(IIIt> ON TlIK liltl> IN SEARCH OF FOSSILS be seen. Tlais granite is capped by the beacon sand- stone on the tops of the lulls, but the dolerite seems to have died out, with the exception of the upper flow. This formation is as it should be, taking into considera- tion the horizontal structure of the rocks, and it was the fact that I doubted the existence of Beacon sandstone so low down the series that brought me here, as much as the expectation of findmg fossils if the mapping should be correct." At tliis time thawing was proceeding rapidly on the glacier. The j^arty made for the north wall of the glacier, but was stopped by a precipice of ice, 200 to 300 feet in height, with a stream of water flowing at its foot. The deeper ripple-cracks and potholes were filled with water, and water was streaming down the convex face of the glacier to the stream which was roaring beneath the ice- face. The scene was a magnif- icent one, but the conditions were unjileasant from the point of view of the party. The ice was separated from the rock at the sides of the glacier by a thaw-gully about fifty feet deep, with a stream of water flow- ing at the bottom. Then came the lateral moraine, wliich was still within the region in which the rock-heat was felt, and formed a depression some three to six feet below the main surface of the glacier, commencing as an abrupt rise, almost perpendicular, but somewhat convex. After this came the ordinary billowy surface, and the next stones met with formed a sub-medial moraine not sufficiently thick to effect any lowering in the general level of the surface, although each stone was surrounded by its own hollow, filled with thaw water. Along the middle meandered a small stream, a few feet vnde, with the bottom of its channel filled with morainic gravel matter. In the evening freezing commenced in the potholes that were sheltered from the rays of the sun. 63 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Long needles of ice formed from the small grains of gravel, and crossed and recrossed in the most beautiful pattern. In some holes hexagonal plates of ice were being formed on the surface. An examination of the Solitary Rocks proved that the map was incorrect at tliis point. The previous expedition had thought that the rocks formed an island, with the glacier flowing down on either side, but a close examination showed that the rocks were in reality a peninsula, joined to the main north wall by an isthmus of granite at least one thousand feet high. The glacier surged round the peninsvda on its way down Drj' Valley, and just below the isthmus was a lake of some size, fed by streams from a glacier opposite. These streams were yellow with silt, and another stream, also much discoloured, was running from the lake down to Dry Valley. The Solitary Rocks are at an altitude of about two thousand feet above sea-level. Priestley proceeded with geological and survey w-ork in the neighbourhood of the east fork, and made an extensive examination of the spots known as Kurki Kills, Knob Head ^Mount and AVindy (iuUy. On December 24, close to the camp, they found the bleached skeleton of a crabeater seal. It is rather curious that one of these animals should proceed so far uj) the glacier. A new camp Avas ])itched at the foot of Knob Head ^Mountain, just below the second gully east of Windy Gully, and here Armji:age and Priestley climbed up the slope behind to an altitude of 4200 ft., finding a yellow lichen at 3100 ft., a black lichen at 3800 ft. and a green lichen or moss at 4200 ft. The altitude of the camp was 2470 ft. Christmas Day was spent at this camp, and, as was the case with the other sledging expeditions that were out at the time, a special feast was proA-ided. For 64 CHRISTMAS ON A GLACIER breakfast they had hoosh, sardines in tomato sauce and raisins; for lunch Garibaldi biscuits and jelly; and for dinner potted boneless chicken and a small plum pudding. Armytage picked up a piece of sandstone Avith fernlike markings, but Priestley was not hopeful of finding fossils in the greatly altered sandstone. The day was spent in geological work. " We lose the sun here about 9.30 p.m.," noted Priestley in liis diarj^ " and it is curious to observe the sudden change from bright light to darkness in the tent, while outside the thin surface of ice covering the thaw-water round the rocks immediately contracts with reports like a succession of pistol-shots, and sometimes breaks up and flies about in all directions, making a noise like broken glass. This is the effect of the quick cooling of the ice by the cold plateau wind immediately the sun's influence is withdrawn. The plum pudding was ' top hole.' Must remember to give one of the pot-holed sandstones to Wild for the New Zealand girl who gave him the plum pudding." On December 27 the men proceeded down the glacier again in order to see whether the Northern Party had arrived at Butter Point. Priestley studied the moraines on the way down, and made an extensive collection of specimens, and on January 1 they arrived at the depot. They had constant trouble with crevasses and " pot- holes " on the way dowTi the glacier, but met with no serious accident. The snow-bridges many times let them through up to their knees or waists, but never broke away entirely. The weather was unpleasantly warm for the sort of work they were undertaking, since the snow was thawing, and they were constantly wet. They found no sign of the Northern Party at Butter Point, and after waiting there until the 6th they pro- ceeded to the " stranded moraines," a day's trek to the Vol. n.-6 65 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC south, in order that geological specimens might be secured. The moraines, which were found by the Discovery expedition, and are relics of the days of more extensive glaciation, present a most varied collection of rocks, representative of the geological conditions to be found in the mountains to the west, and are of very great interest on that account. After spending two days at this spot, the party went back to Butter Point with about 250 lb. of specimens, and camped again till the 11th. Still there was no sign of the Northern Party, and on the 12th they went north to Dry Vallej'. There Priestley found a raised beach, about sixty feet above sea-level, and Brocklehurst climbed the mountain known as the Harbour Heights. Numerous fragments of Pecten Colbecki, the shell at present common at Cape Royds, were found imbedded in the sand as far up as sixty feet, and Priestley thought that they would probably be found higher still. Writing of the moraines at this point, he said: "In their chief characteristics they are very similar to the stranded moraines. Large patches of gravel are mixed with boulders of every description and size, a chaos of sedimentary, volcanic, plutonic, hypabyssal and meta- morphic rocks, segmented by watercourses, which are bordered by flats of gravel and spread out before reach- ing the sea over large, alluvial, fan-shaped mudflats. They differ from the stranded moraines in the j^resence of numerous specimens of now existing shells, imbedded in the gravel and sand of the moraines, but found in most cases under any steep declivity in a stream's bed where it has cut back through a gravel terrace. The remarkable part of the preservation of these shells is their extreme fragility. Of Pecten Colbecki I have seen thousands of specimens, and have secured many whole single valves. Of the Anatana so common at 66 Westers Party in Camp ox December 20 / ■.i Looking down the Eastern Arm of the Febrah GLAriER towards Dry ^'ALI.EY from Solitary Rocks Dry Valley ADRIFT ON A FLOE Cape Royds I came across several patches. At the head of one of the aluvial mudflats, about two feet above the present level of the sea-water, I secured many dried bodies of a small amphipod and a dried fish an inch long. The whole of the moraines so far as I have been are covered with seal bones, and I have seen two Avhole dried bodies, with the skin stiU on. One was a crabeater. Among several rock specimens secured was one of Beacon sandstone with the same curious markings as were found on two specimens secured by Armytage at Knob Head. The impression in the original stone was exactly as if the body of a wasp-like wingless insect several inches long had been pressed into clay." They went back to the depot on the 14th, and in accordance with the orders I had left, pitched camp in order to wait for the Northern Party until the 25th, when they were to make their way back to winter quarters, or signal for the ship by means of the helio- graph. On January 24-25 this party had a very narrow escape from disaster. They were camped on the sea-ice at the foot of Butter Point, intending to move off on the return journey early on the morning of the 25th. Their position was apparently one of safety. Armytage had examined the tide-crack along the shore, and had found no sign of more than ordinary movement, and the ice in the neighborhood seemed to be quite fast. At 7 A.M. on the 24th Priestley was first out of the tent, and a few minutes later he came mnning back to his companions to tell them that the ice they were on had broken away and was drifting away north to the open sea. The other two men turned out promptly, and found that his statement was only too true. There were two miles of open water between the floe and the shore, and they were apparently moving steadily out to 67 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC sea. " When we found that the ice had gone out," wrote Armytage m his report to me, " we struck camp, loaded up the sledge, and started away with the object of seeing whether we could get off the floe to the north. The position seemed to be rather serious, for we could not hope to cross any stx'etch of open water, there was no reasonable expectation of assistance from the ship, and most of our food was at Butter Point. We had not gone very far to the north before we came to an impassible lane of open water, and we decided to return to our original position. We went into camp, and had break- fast at 11 A.M. Then we held a consultation and agreed that it would be best to stop where we then were for a time, at any rate, on the off-chance of the ship coming along one of the lanes to pick us uj) on the following day, or of the current changing and the ice once more touching the shore. We waited till three o'clock in the afternoon, but there did not seem to be any im])rovement in the position. The Killer whales were spouting in the chamiels, and occasionally l)umping the ice under us. Then we marched north again, but met wth open water in every direction, and after we had marched right round the floe we got into camp at the old j)osition at 10 p.ji. We had a small meal of hoosh and biscuit. We had only four days' provisions on the floe with us, and I decided that we would have to go on short rations. We were encouraged by the fact that Ave had apparently ceased to move north, and were perhaps getting nearer the fast ice again. We got into our sleeping-bags in order to keep warm. At 11.30 P.M. Brocklehurst turned out to see whether the position had changed, and reported that we seemed to be within a few hundred yards of the fast ice, and still moAing towards the land. I got out of my bag and put on my finnesko, and at midnight saw that we were 68 WESTERN PARTY PICKED UP very close to the fast ice, probably not more than two hundred yards away. I ran back as fast as I could, deciding that there was a prospect of an attempt to get ashore proving successful, and gave the other two men a shout. They struck the camp and loaded up within a very few minutes, whUe I went back to the edge of the floe at the spot towards which chance had first directed my steps. Just as the sledge got up to me, I felt the floe bump the fast ice. Not more than six feet of the edge touched, but we were just at that spot, and we rushed over the bridge thus formed. We had only just got over when the floe moved away again, and this time it went north to the open sea. The only place at wliich it touched the fast ice was that to which I had gone when I left the tent, and had I happened to go to any other spot we would not have escaped. We made our way to Butter Point, and at about three o'clock in the morning camped and had a good meal. Then we turned in and slept. When we got up for breakfast, there was open water where we had been drifting on the floe, and I sighted the Nimrod under sail, ten or twelve miles out. We laid the heliograph on to the vessel, and after flasliing for about an hour got a reply. The Nimrod came alongside the fast ice at three o'clock in the afternoon of Januarj' 26, and we went on board with our equipment and specimens. We left a depot of provisions and oil at Butter Point in case the Northern Party should reach that point after our departure." On January 22 and 23 a fresh wind blew from the south and commenced to break up the ice-sheet in the neighbourhood of Cape Royds, compelling the sliip to re- fasten further to the southward. From this point Davis took a sledge-party to Hut Point with despatches that 69 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC the supporting-party was to convey to me at the Bluff Depot. On the 25th the ice had broken up to such an extent that Captain Evans thought there would be a chance of getting far enough across McMurdo Sound to search the western coast-line for the party that liad been exploring the western mountains, and also for the North- ern Party, which might by that time have returned from the journey to the ^lagnetic Pole and reached liutter Point. The Nimrod stood out into the sound, and from a distance of ten or twelve miles a heliograph was seen twinkling near Butter Point. The ship was able to get right alongside the fast ice, and picked up Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst. After this date fine weather was experienced only at short intervals, the season bemg advanced, and as a consequence the fast ice that remained in the sound conmienced to break up rapidly, and took the form of pack trending northwards. When blizzards blew, as they did frequently, the Nimrod moored on the lee-side of a stranded iceberg in the neighbourhood of Cape Barne, with the object of preserving her position wthout the consumption of more coal than was absolutely necessary. After the ice had broken up sufficiently, shelter was found under Glacier Tongue. The waiting was rather unpleasant for the remaining members of the shore-party and for those on board the ship, for the time was approaching when it would be necessary to leave for the north unless the Nimrod Mas to be frozen in for the winter, and two of the parties were still out. I had left instructions that if the Northern Party had not returned by February 1 a search was to be made along the western coast in a northerly direction. The party was three weeks overdue, and on February- 1, therefore, the Nimrod went north, and 70 SEARCH FOR NORTHERN PARTY Captain Evans proceeded to make a close examination of the coast. The ship did not get back to the hut untU February 11. During this time ^Murray and Priestley found work of scientific interest. Priestley tramped the country, and now that the snow had in great measure disappeared, was enabled to see various interesting geological deposits previously covered up. Beds of sponge spicules, enclosing various other fossils, were evidence of recent elevation of the sea bottom. A thick deposit of salts was found on a mound between two lakes, and some curious volcanic formations were dis- covered. The smaller ponds were entirely melted, and gave a chance to find some forms of life not evident in winter. The penguins continued to afford [Murray material for study. The Nimrod's search for the Northern Party was both difficult and dangerous. Captain Evans had to keep close to the coast, in order to guard against the possibility of overlooking a signal, which might consist only of a small flag, and the sea was obstructed by pack-ice. He was to go north as far as a sandy beach on the northern side of the Drygalski Barrier, and he performed his duty most thoroughly in the face of what he afterwards modestly described as " small navi- gational difficulties." The beach, which had been marked on the chart, was found to have no existence in fact, but the Nimrod reached the neighbourhood indi- cated, and then proceeded south again, still searching ever\' yard of the coast. On the 4th a tent was sighted on the edge of the Barrier, and when a double detonator was fired the three men who had been to the [Magnetic Pole came tumbling out and ran down towards the edge of the ice. Mawson was in such a hurrj' that he fell down a crevasse, and did not get out again until a 71 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC party from the ship went to his assistance. " They were the happiest men I have ever seen," said Davis in describ- ing the finding of the party. Their sledge, equipment and specimens were taken on the Nimrod, which was able to moor right alongside the fast ice, and then Captain Evans proceeded back to the winter quarters. In the chapters that follow Professor David tells the story of the Northern Party's journey. chapter ^i% PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE ON September 19, 1908, Lieutenant Shackleton gave me his final instructions for the journey of the Northern Party to the ]\Iagnetic Pole. These he read over to me in the presence of ]Mawson and Dr. Mackay. The instructions were as follows : " British Antarctic Expedition, 1907. " Cape Royds, September 19, 1908. Instructions for Northern Sledge-pakty under Command of Professor E. David. " Dear Sir, — The sledge-party which j'ou have charge of consists of yourself, Douglas ISIawson and Ahstair Mackay. " You will leave winter quarters on or about October 1, 1908. The main objects of your journey are to be as follows : " ( 1 ) To take magnetic observations at every suitable point with a \'iew of determming the dip and the position of the ^lagnetic Pole. If time permits, and j'our equip- ment and supplies are sufficient, you will try and reach the Magnetic Pole. " (2) To make a general geological survey of the coast of Victoria Land. In connection with this work you wall not sacrifice the time that might be used to carry out the work noted in paragraph (1). It is un- 73 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC necessary for me to describe or instruct you as to details re this work, as you know so much better than I do what is requisite. "(3) I particularly wish you to be able to work at the geology of the Western ;^Iountains, and for ^lawson to spend at least one fortnight at Dry Vallej' to prospect for minerals of economic value on your return from the north, and for this work to be carried out satisfactorily you should return to Dry Valley not later than the first week of January. I do not Avish to limit you to an exact date for return to Dry Valley if you think that by lengthening your stay up north you can reach the IVIagnetic Pole, but you must not delay, if time is short, on your way south again to do geological work. I consider that the thorough investigation of Dry Valley is of supreme importance. "(i) The Nimrod is expected in the Sound about January 15, 1909. It is quite possible you may see her from the west. If so, you should try to attract at- tention by heliograph to winter quarters. You should choose the hours noon to 1 r.:M. to flash your signal, and if seen at winter quarters the return signal will be flashed to you, and the Nimrod will steam across as far as possible to meet you and wait at the ice-edge. If the ship is not in, and if she is and your signals are not seen, you will take into account your supply of provisions and proceed either to Glacier Tongue or Hut Point to re- plenish if there is not a sufficient amount of provision at Butter Point for you. "(5) He Butter Point. I will have a depot of at least fourteen days' food and oil cached there for you. If there is not enough in that supply you ought to return as mentioned in paragraph (4). "(6) I shall leave instructions for the master of the Nimrod to proceed to the most accessible point at the 74 PLAN OF JOURNEY west coast and there ship all your specimens. But before doing this, he must ship all the stores that are lying at winter quarters, and also keep in touch with the fast ice to the south on the look-out for the Southern Sledge-party. The Southern Party will not be expected before Febniary 1, so if the ship arrives in good time you may have all your work done before our arrival from the south. " (7) If by February 1 after the arrival of the Xiinrod, there is no evidence that your jiarty has returned, the Nimrod auU proceed north along the coast, keeping as close to the land as possible, on the look-out for a signal from you flashed by heliograph. The vessel will proceed very slowly. The ship will not go north of Cape Wash- ington. This is a safeguard in event of any accident occurring to your party. "(8) I have acquainted both Mawson and Mackay with the main facts of the proposed journey. In the event of any accident happening to you, INIawson is to be in charge of the partj-. " (9) Trusting that you will hav^e a successful journey and a safe return. " I am yours faithfully, "(Sgd.) Erxest H. Shackletox, " Commander." " Professor David, " Cape Royds, " Antarctic." " Cape Royds, " British Antarctic Expedition, 1907. " Professor David. " Dear Sir, — If you reach the [Magnetic Pole, you will hoist the Union Jack on the spot, and take possession of it on behalf of the above expedition for the British nation. 75 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC " When you are in the Western IVIountains, please do the same at one place, taking possession of Victoria Land as part of the British Empire. " If economic minerals are found, take possession of the area in the same way on my behalf as Commander of this expedition. " Yours faithfully, "(Sgd.) EuxKST H. Shackleton, " Commander." We had a farewell dinner that night, given in honour of the Southern Depot Party who were about to start to lay out a depot one hundred miles southerly from our winter quarters. The following day, September 20, a strong south- easterly blizzard was blo\\ing. In the afternoon the wind somewhat moderated, and there was less drift. Mackay had been making a sail for our journey to the INIagnetic Pole, and we now tried the sail on two sledges lashed together on the ice at Backdoor Bay. We used the tent poles of one of the sledging-tents as a mast. The A^^nd was blo^ving very strongly and carried off the two sledges with a weight on them of 300 lb., in addition to the weights of JNIackay and myself, who were sit- ting on the sledges. We considered this a successful experiment. The weather continued bad till the night of the 2-tth. On September 25 we were up at 5.30 a.m., and found that the blizzard had subsided. Priestley, Day and I started in the motor-car, dragging behind us two sledges over the sea ice. One sledge, weighing alto- gether 606 lb. with its load, contained five of our fort- nightly food-bags, six large tins of biscuits, and 60 lb, of oil. The other sledge, which with its load weighed 76 PRELIMINARY WORK about 250 lb., carried personal gear wliich we might have to use on the dejiot laj-ing trip in the event of being surprised by a blizzard. At first Day travelled on his first gear; he then found that the engine became heated, and we had to stop for it to cool down. He discovered while we were waiting that one of the cylinders was not firing. This he soon fixed up all right. He then remounted the car and he put her on to the second gear. With the increased power given by the repaired cylinder we now sped over the floe-ice at fourteen miles an hour, much to the admiration of the seals and penguins. When, however, we had travelled about ten miles from winter quarters, and were some five miles westerly from Tent Island, we encountered numerous sastrugi of softish snow, the car continually sticking fast in the ridges. A little low drift was flying over the ice surface, brought up by a gentle blizzard. We left the heavy sledge ten miles out, and then wth only the light sledge to draw behind us, Day found that he was able to travel on Iiis third gear at eighteen miles an hour. At this speed the sledge, whenever it took one of the snow sastrugi at right angles, leapt into the air like a flying fish and came down \vith a bmnp on the surface of the ice. As we had occasionally to make sharp turns in order to avoid sastrugi and lumps of ice, our sledge had one or two capsizes. JMean- while, the blizzard was freshening, and we tore along in hopes of reaching our %\inter quarters before it became verj^ violent. We had just reached Flagstaff Point, and were taking a turn in towards the shore opposite the penguin rookery when the blizzard wind caught the side of the sledge nearly broadside on, and capsized it heavily. So violent was the shock that the aluminium cooking apparatus was knocked out of 77 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC its straps, and the blizzard wind immediately started trundling this metal cylinder over the smooth ice. Day stopped his car as soon as possible, Priestley and I jumped off, and immediately gave chase to the runaway cooker. IMeanwhile, the cooker had fallen to pieces so to speak; the tray part came away from the big circular cover; the melter and the supports for the cooking-pot and for the main outer covering also came adrift as well as the cooking-pot itself. The lid of the last-mentioned fell off, and immediately dumped on to the ice the three pannikins and our three spoons. These articles raced one another over the smooth ice-surface in the direction of the open water of Ross Sea. The spoons were easily captured, as also were the pannikins, which, being conical in shape, could not be bowled by the wnd in a straight line, but described arcs of circles. Priestley and I recovered also the cooking-pot, and with Brockle- hurst's help (for he had run down to meet us) the aluminium supports, but the large snow melter, the main outer casing, and the tray kept revolving in front of us at a speed which was just sufficient to outclass our own most desperate efforts. Finally, when we were nearly upon them, they took a joyous leap over the low cliff of floe-ice and disappeared one after another most exasperatingly in the black waters of the Ross Sea. This was a shrewd loss, as aluminium cookers were, of course, very scarce. Priestley and I returned dis- consolate, and very much winded after our mile's run in vain. The following day we had intended laying out our second depot, but as some of the piston rings of the motor-car needed repair, we decided to postpone the departure until the day after. That afternoon, after 78 ACCIDENT TO DAY the repaii's had been completed, Day and Armytage went out for a httle tobogganing before dhiner. Late in the evening Armytage returned dragging slowly and painfully a sledge bearing the recumbent, though not inanimate form of Day. We crowded round to inquire what was the matter, and found that just when Armytage and Day were urging their wild career down a steep snow slope Day's foot had stinick an unyielding block of kenyte lava, and the consequence had been very awkward for the foot. It was severely staved, so that he was quite unable to walk without assistance. As no one but Day could be trusted to drive the motor-car, this accident necessitated a further postponement of the laying of our second depot. On September 28 it was blowing. On the 29th the day was fairly fine, but Day's foot was not well enough for him to start in the motor-car. On September 30 a mild blizzard commenced blowing, and on October 1, the day on which Lieutenant Shackle- ton had intended that we should start, it was still raging with increased force. That day was spent chiefly in nailing strips of tin, painted blue, on all the geological specimen boxes, and double-labelling them. On October 2 the weather was still bad, so that we were unable to start. On October 3, the weather having cleared. Day, Priestley, Mackay and I started with two sledges to lay our second depot. All went well for about eight miles out, then the carburetter played up. Possibly there was some dirt in the nozzle. Day took it all to pieces in the cold wind, and spent three-quarters of an hour in fixing it up. We then started off again gaily in good style. We crossed a large crack in the sea ice where there were numbers of seals and Emperor 79 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC penguins. On the other side of this crack our wheels stuck fast in snow sastrugi. All hands got on to the spokes and started swinging the car backwards and forwards; when we got a good swing on, Day would suddenly snatch on the power and over we would go — ■ that is, over one of the sastnigi — only to find, often, that we had just floundered into another one ahead. In performing one of these evolutions Priestley, who as usual, was working like a Trojan, got his hand rather badly damaged tlu-ough its being jammed between the spokes of the car wheel and the framework. Almost immediately afterwards one of my fingers was nearly broken, through the same cause, the flesh being torn off one of my knuckles; and then Mackay seriously damaged his wrist in manipulating what Joyce called the " thumb-breaking " starter. Still we went flounder- ing along over the sastinjgi and ice cracks, Day every now and then getting out to lighten the car and limping alongside. At last we succeeded in reaching a spot amongst tlie snow sastrugi on the sea ice, fifteen miles distant from our winter quarters. Here we dumped the load intended for the Northern Party, and then Day had a hard struggle to extricate the car from the tangle of sastrugi and ice-cracks. At last, after two capsizes of the sledges, we got back into camp at 10 p.m., all thoroughly exhausted, all wounded and bandaged. Brocklehurst carried Day on his back for about a quarter of a mile from where we left the car up to our winter quarters. So thoroughly exhausted were we, that we had to take a day's rest on October 4, before making our final start. The following are the details respectivel)' of our permanent load and equipment and of our consumable load (food and oil) when we did eventually start: 80 TiiK Ptaut of .V Blizzard from tiik Sol rii; Drift cu.mixl; rui nd Mount Kuebcj NORTHERN PARTY'S EQUIPMENT 1 ^ Northern Party's Permanent Load 2 11 -ft. sledges Tent, poles and floorcloth Shovel Primus and cooker Three-man sleeping bag 3 dozen plates . I4"plate camera and case Legs of camera Lloyd Creak dip circle Legs for dip circle Spirit for Primus stove 1 ready bottle for spirit Sail and yard Venesta board for table Centimetre rule Horn protractor Pencils " Hints to Travellers " and Nautical Almanac 3-inch, theodolite and case Legs of theodolite Field-glasses .... 3 ice axes, 3 lb. each Riicksack and 60 ft. Alpine rope Haversack, hammer and chisel Aneroid ) 2 prismatic compasses j 2 pairs of sledge thermometers in cases 2 low-temperature thermometers 1 hypsometer in case Labels and small bags for specimens Repair kit ..... Copper wire ..... Cod-line ...... Leather for repairs 1 pair shooting-boots for depot at Butter Point 1 pair ski-boots (Mawson) 1 pair ski-boots (David) Vol. n.-6 8X Wei ght. Lb. Oz. 120 30 6 20 26 3 4 13 1 U 23 7 9 8 11 1 10 9 5 4 1 13 9 6 3 12 1 1 2 4 1 2 3 8 2 8 2 8 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 3 pairs ski-boots 9 pairs finnesko, 2^/4 lb. each Charts and tin case . Dram case of paper . 30 lb. of personal gear ) 6 lb. of bags. j " Prickers, nipples, and washers for Pr 3 hanks sennegrass 3 bags for drying sennegrass Medical bag .... Depot flags, jack, and poles Sledge harness. Sledge ropes and toggles. Small set of tools. Books : Field note-books. " Magnetic Memoir of Discovery Expedition." Sketch-book. Northern Party's Consumable Load Wei gilt. Lb. Oz. 12 20 4 1 1 36 8 i 8 8 5 4 Lb. Oz. Plasmon biscuit : 1 lb. per man per day ^= 3 lb. per day. 93 days X 3 = 279 lb. Substitute for oatmeal, 1 lb. 3 oz. for 3 men per week X 13 = 14 lb. 10 oz Pemmican: 7.5 oz. per man per day X 3 X 93 = 2092 oz. ......... . Emergency rations (checked by Marshall): li/o oz. per man per day X 3 X 93 = 4181^ oz. . . . ^ Sugar (lumps) : 3.8 oz. per man per day X 3 X 93 . = Tea (twice a daj-) : a little less than half a tin per week == Rowntree's Sweet Chocolate: 8 oz. per man per week = normal allowance. 4I4 " do. :^ substitute for honey. =: 294 = 131 26 70 9 121/2 oz. do. 121/2 X 3 X 13 = 487 oz Cocoa: 14I/2 oz. for three men per week (once a day for dinner). 141/2 X IS = 188 oz Out of this plasmon cocoa available for 6 weeks. 82 32 12 A BLIZZARD ON THE HARRIER ■ ^^^^B^R^ffll^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^l ^M r 1 1 ^^S^^H ^ 0- : THE START Weight. Lb. Oz. Cheese: 2 oz. per man per day, 3 days per week = 18 oz. per week. 18 oz. X 13 = 239 oz. . .= 150 Plasmon and dried milk . . . . . . ^ 17 7 Salt: 2 oz. per week for 2 men = 4 oz. per week X 13 = 52 oz = 3 .t Paraffin oil in 10-lb. tins = 100 709 lb. October 4 was a Sunday, and after the morning service we took the ponies out for exercise. In tlie evening the gramoj^hone discoursed apjiroj^riate music, such as " We parted on the Shore," " I and my true love will never meet again by the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond," concluding with the universal favourite, " Lead, Kindly Light." IMeanwhile, JSIackay had liis damaged wrist attended to, and I put the question to him as to whether or not he was i^repared to undertake the long journey to the Magnetic Pole under the circumstances. He said that he was quite ready, provided INIawson and I did not object to his going with his wrist damaged and in a sling. We raised no objection, and so the matter was settled. All that night JMawson and I were occupied in AVTiting final letters, and i^acking little odds and ends. The following morning, October 5, after an early breakfast, we prepared for the final start. It was quite wonderful what a lot of things had been forgotten until this last moment. The sledges were dragged down, from our hut to the edge of the sea ice at the Penguin Rookery, a distance of a little over a quarter of a mile. Day was there with the motor-car, ready for the start. Every now and then some one of the pilgrims Avould remember that he had left something very important behind at the hut, and would go running 83 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC back for it. These odd belongings had to be tied with bits of string on to the second sledge which we were going to take with us on our northern jomney, con- sequently, by degrees, this sledge became hung over with boots, crampons, and all sorts of what Day called " gagdets." ^Murray, Brocklehurst and Amiytage came down on the ice to bid us a final farewell. Brocklehurst took a photograph of us just before we started, then Day, Priestley, Roberts, Mackay, Mawson and I got aboard, some on the motor-car, some on the sledges. Those remaining behind gave us three cheers, Day turned on the power and away we went. A light wind was blowing from the south-east at the time of our start, bringing a little snow with it and another blizzard seemed impending. After travelling a little over two miles, just beyond Cape Bame, the snow had become so thick that the coast-line was almost entirely hidden from our view. Under these circumstances I did not tliink it prudent to take the motor-car further, so [Mackay, I\Iawson and I bid adieu to our good friends. Strapping on our harness we toggled on to the sledge rope, and with a one, two, three, and away, pulled off into the thick falling snow, which in a few minutes blotted out all view of the motor-car in our rear. As we slowly trudged along the signs of an approaching blizzard became more pronounced and we bore somewhat to our left so as to have Inaccessible Island as a lee under which to run for shelter, but after a time, as the threat- ened blizzard did not come up, we slewed our sledge more to the right, away from Inaccessible Island, heading up for our ten-mile depot. At last, towards evening ^lackay sighted the black flag over the depot about a mile distant. We reached the depot about 7 p.m. and got up our 84 RELAY WORK tent. A fairly strong wind was still blowing from the south-east, raising low drift. We slept that night on the floe-ice, with about three hundred fathoms of water under our pillow. The following morning, October 6, we started our relay work. We dragged the Cliristmas Tree sledge on first, as we were specially liable to lose parcels off it, for a distance of from one-third to half a mile. Then we returned and fetched up what we called the Plum Duff sledge, chiefly laden with our provisions. The light was dull, and a certain amount of soft, newly-fallen snow made the sledging heavy. The weather may be described as thick, with snow falhng at intervals. During the afternoon it cleai'ed somewhat and the Western jNIountains came into view at about 2 p.m. This was fortunate for us, as it enabled us later on to sight the flag over our fifteen-mile depot. We camped that night amongst screw pack-ice within less than a mile of this depot. The following day, October 7, was beautifully fine and cakn. We started about 9 a.m. and sledged over pressure ice ridges and snow sastrugi, reaching our fifteen-mile dejiot in three-quarters of an hour. Here we camped and repacked our sledges. We took the whole- meal plasmon biscuits out of two of the biscuit tins and packed them into canvas bags. This saved us a weight of about 8 lb. We started again in the afternoon, relaying with the two sledges. The sledging again was heavy on account of the fresh, soft snow, and small sastrugi. We had a glorious view of the AVestern IMountains, crimsoned in the light of the setting sun. We camped that night close to a seal hole wliich belonged to a fine specimen of Weddell seal. We were somewhat disturbed that night by the snorting and wliisthng of the seals as they came 85 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC up for their blows. Evidently this seal hole was a syndicate ali'air. The sounds at times seemed right under our tent. October 8 was a fine, clear day, with a beautiful sunset, and a magniiicent mirage, in the direction of Beaufort Island. To the north of us, the curious hills, called by Captain Scott the " Stranded IMoraiiies," were now beginning to show out very plainly in the direction in which we were travelling. On the morning of October 9 we got under way soon after eight o'clock. It was a lovely, calm day but cold, tlie thermometer registering 30 Fahr. at 8 p.m. The surface was fairly good for sledging, but in places we came on patches of soft snow, and a small, lumpy structure of the ice-surface, resembling a newly raked garden bed, evidently due to the thawirig down and refreezing of " ice flowers." This made travelling very heavy. The " Stranded jMoraines " now showed up very clearly, and Butter I'oint itself became visible. The following day, Saturday, October 10, we were awakened by the chatter of some Emperor penguins who had marched down on our tent during the night to investigate us. The sounds may be described as something between the cackle of a goose and the chortle of a kookaburra. On peeping out of the Burberry spout of our tent I saw four standing by the sledges. They were much interested at the sight of me, and the conversation between them became lively. They evidently took us for jjenguins of an inferior type, and the tent for our nest. They watched, and took careful note of all our doings, and gave us a good send- off when we started about 8.30 a.m. On our journey that morning we passed close by a large bull seal of the Weddell species. A little further on we noticed a curious dark object on the ice in the 86 MaRSTOX ANI' MtrhVY at THi: DOOH OI THE JiUT Daisy's Third Litter at the Winter tiuARTERS A BLIZZARD distance, and on coming up to it found that it was a dead Weddell seal with its head, neck, and shoulders firmly frozen into the ice. Evidently it had stuck fast in a seal hole in the ice in trying to get do'vvTi to the sea-water. The sky was overcast, and light snow began to fall in the afternoon. A httle later a mild blizzard sprang up from the south-east; we thought this a favourable opportunity for testing the sailing qualities of our sledges, and so made sail on the Plum Duff sledge. As Mackay put it, we " brought her to try with main course." As the strength of the blizzard increased, we found that we could draw both sledges simultaneously, which was, of course, a great saving in labour. We were tempted to carry on in the increasing strength of the blizzard rather longer than was wise, and con- sequently, when at last we decided that we must camp, had great difficulty in getting the tent up. We slipped the tent over the poles placed close to the ground in the lee of a sledge. While two of us raised the poles, the third shovelled snow on to the skirt of the tent, which we pulled out little by little, until it was finally spread to its full dimensions. We were glad to turn in and escape from the biting blast and drifting snow. The following day, Sunday, October 11, a violent blizzard was still blowing, and we lay in our sleeping- bag until past noon, by Avhich time the snow had drifted high upon the door side of our tent. As this drift was pressing heavily on our feet and cramping us, I got up and dug it away. The cooker and Primus were then brought in and Ave all got up and had some hoosh and tea. The temperature, as usually happens in a blizzard, had now risen considerably, being 8.5° Fahr. at 1.30 p.m. The copper wire on our sledges was polished and burnished by the prolonged blast against it of tiny ice crystals, and the surface of the sea ice was also 87 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC brightly polished in places. As it was still blowing we remained in our sleeping-bag for the rest of that day as well as the succeeding night. When we rose at about 2 a.m. on ^Monday, October 12, the blizzard was over. We found very heavy snow- drifts on the lee side of our sledges, and it took us a considerable time to dig these away and get the hard snow raked out of all the chinks and crannies among the packages on the sledges. We made a start about 4 A.M., and all that day meandered amongst broken pack-ice. It was evident that the south-east blizzards drive large belts of broken tioe-ice in this direction across McjNlurdo Sound to the western shore. The fractured masses of sea ice, inclined at all angles to the horizontal, are frozen in later, as the cold of winter becomes more intense, and of course, constitute a very difficult surface for sledging. In order to make up for the time we had lost in our sleeping-bags during the bhzzard, we travelled altogether fourteen hours, and succeeded in doing about six statute miles, that is, eighteen miles of relay work, and all felt much exhausted when we turned in that evening. As a result of this we did not wake until after 8 a.m next morning. ^Ve were now only about two miles from Butter Point. We got under way at 10 a.m., and a few hours later camped at the foot of a low ice cliff, about 600 yards south-south-east of Butter Point. Butter Point is merely an angle in this low ice cliff near the junction of the Ferrar Glacier valley with the main shore of ^'ictoria Land. This cliff was from fifteen to twenty feet in height, and formed of crevassed glacier ice. It was covered by a hard snow crust, which everj' now and then gave away and let one down for a foot or so. This glacier ice was not part of the main Ferrar Glacier, but 88 DEPOT AT BUTTER POINT appeared to be simply a local piedmont glacier stretcliing along for some considerable distance between the base of the coast range and the sea ice, past the " Stranded JNIoraines," until still further south it became confluent with that ]Mr. H. G. Ferrar has described as the " pin- nacled ice." It was evident that this piedmont ice was firmly attached to the land, as it was separated from the sea ice, by a well-marked tide-crack. With the help of our ice axes we crossed over this crack and got up the httle ice cliff on to the glacier ice, and selected there a suitable spot for our depot. According to arrangements with Lieutenant Shackle- ton we were to leave a depot flag at Butter Point with a letter giving an account of our doings, and stating approximately by what date we hojjed to return there. But the progress of our journey had been so much slower than we had originally anticipated that we decided before reaching Butter Point that it would be imperatively necessary, m order to make the INIagnetic Pole in the time available, to lighten the load on our sledges by leaving a portion of our equipment and food. During the latter part of this day Mawson and Mackay were busy making a mast and boom for the second sledge, it being our intention to use the tent floorcloth as a sail. JNIeanwhile I sorted out the material to be left at the depot. The following day, Wednesday, October 14, we spent the morning in resorting the loads on our sledges. We depoted two tins of wholemeal plasmon biscuits, each weighing about 27 lb., also !Mackay's mountaineer- ing nail boots, and my spare head-gear material and mits. Altogether we lightened the load by about 70 lb. We sunk the two full tins of biscuits and a tin containing boots, &c., a short distance in the glacier ice to prevent 89 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC the blizzards blowing them away. We then lashed to the tins a short bamboo Hag-pole, carrying one of our black depot flags, and securely fastened to its base one of our empty air-tight milk tins, in which we ])laced our letters. In these letters for Lieutenant Shacklcton and R. E. Priestley, respectively, I stated that in consequence of our late start from Cape Royds, and also on account of the comj^arative slowness of our progress tlience to Butter Point, it was obvious that we could not return to Butter Point until January 12, at the earliest, instead of the fii-st week of January, as was originally anticipated. We ascertained months later that this little depot survived the blizzards, and that Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurt had no difficulty in finding it, and that they read our letters. Leaving the depot about 9 a.m. on October 14, we started sledging across New Harbour in the direction of Cape Bernacchi. In the afternoon a light southerly wind sprang up bringing a little snow with it, the fall lasting from about 12.30 to 2.30 p.m. We steered in the direction of what appeared to us to be an uncharted island. On arri\ing at it, however, we discovered that it was a time iceberg, formed of hard blue glacier ice with a conspicuous black band near its summit formed of fine dark gravel. The iceberg was about a quarter of a mile in length, and thirty to forty feet high. In addi- tion to the coarser bands of gravel there was a great quantity of dust, and fine dust bands, near the surface of the berg. Tliis dust absorbing the heat of the sun had thawed its way deep down into the berg, thus forming numerous dust wells and dust grooves. There were several large cracks in the sea ice in the neighbour- hood of this iceberg, and having taken the bearing of 90 A MIRAGE the trend of these by a compass they helped us to keep direction when the air was thick 'with falhng snow. The following day, October 15, was beautifully fine and cahn; the sky was slightly cloudy with long belts of cirrus-stratus and alto-stratus. Erebus, now over fifty niiles distant, was cloud capped. We had a glorious view up the magnificent valley of the Ferrar Glacier; the spurless hills on either side of the valley, strongl)' faceted in a direction parallel to each side of the valley, spoke eloquently of intense abrasive glacial action in the immediate geological past. The hills in the foreground, formed of gneissic granite, were of a rich chocolate brown to warm sepia hue, fading in the distance to exquisite tints of reddish purple and violet. Towards evening we had a wonderful vision of several large icebergs close ahead of us; it seemed as though they were only a mile or so distant, as one could see clearly the re-entering angles and bright reflected sides of the bergs lit up in the rays of the setting sun. Suddenly, as if by magic, they all vanished. They had been momentarily conjured up to our view by a wonderful mirage. In the departing rays of the setting sun Blount Erebus and ]Mount Bird glowed with a glorious golden light. This was one of the most beautiful days we exj^erienced during the whole of our journey. The cold was now less severe than it had been, the temperature being 9.5° Fahr. at 8 p.m. PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE {Continued) /^X October 16 we were up at 3.30 a.m., and got under ^^ waj' at 5.30. A cold wind was blowing from the south, and after some trouble we set sail on both sledges, using the green floorcloth on the Christmas Tree sledge, and ^Nlackay's sail on the Plum UufF sledge. A short time after we set sail it fell nearly calm; thick clouds gathered; a light wind sprang up from the south-east, veering to east-north-cast, then back again to south-east in the afternoon. Fine snow fell for about three hours, forming a layer nearly a quarter of an inch in tliickness. Towards evening we reached one of the bergs that had been miraged up the night before. It M'as four hundred yards long, and eighty yards wide, and was a true iceberg formed of glacier ice; ]\Iackay, Mawson and I explored this. Like the previous ice- berg its surface was pitted with numerous deep dust wells. It was wonderful to see what a very small amount of dust sufficed to dig these wells to a depth of several feet. The cliif of the berg which faced towards the north-west was deeply grooved, the appear- ance in the distance reminding one of a number of large parallel stalactites. Climbing up one of these deep grooves I found numbers of small angular rock pebbles, up to one and a half inches in diameter, adher- ing to the bottom of the groove, and it seemed as though these grooves, like the dust wells, were formed by the warmth of these small fragments of rock which, as the process of thawing of the ice cliff progressed, gradually PANCAKE ICE settled down into long rows or strings as they crept gradually downwards under the influence of gravitation to the level of the sea ice below. As the shore was high and rocky, and seemed not more than half a mile dis- tant, I went over towards it after our evening meal. It proved to be somewhat further than it appeared. On the way, for the first time, I met with a structure in the sea ice known as pancake ice. The surface of the ice showed a rounded polygonal structure something hke the tops of a number of large weathered basaltic colimms. The edges of these polygons were shghtly raised, but sufficiently rounded off by thawing or ablation to afford an easy surface for the runners of our sledge. Later on, in the autumn of the following year, we noticed this pancake ice in process of formation. If, as was often the case, there was any wind when the sea began to freeze over, the water at first commenced to look soupy; little by little the small ice particles which caused this api^earance aggregated and formed mjTiads of small structures which may be likened to small open jam tarts. These would then coalesce in groups at their edges and form pancake ice. These pancakes were from one foot up to about three feet in diameter. Later, the pancakes would cohere and so a continuous hard ice crust would be formed over the sea surface; later freezing simply had the effect of strengthening and tWckening this ice-sheet from below. Close in shore the pancake ice was traversed by deep tidal cracks. After climbing over these I reached the shore, which was composed of a well-marked terrace of coarse gravel and large and small erratic boulders. The smaller rock fragments were from three to six inches in diameter, the boulders being as much as five feet in diameter. The lower terrace was about twenty yards wide and as many feet in height above the sea; 93 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC then followed a belt of coarsely crystalline white marble traversed by bands of grey gneiss and blackish rock. Capping this belt of ancient crj'stalline rocks was a terrace of angular gravel, from eighty to one hundred feet above sea-level, formed of small rock fragments from one to two inches in diameter. The belts of coarse marble, gneiss, &c., were stained green and reddish to ochreous brown in places, and appeared to have been much mineralised. The whole area seemed to promise well for economic minerals. One curious boulder specially attracted my attention; its large pinkish crystals were peppered over with small black crystals, the whole being enclosed in a greenish black base. A specimen of this boulder which we brought back with us will be described in detail in the geological notes. On Saturday, October 17, Mawson, Mackay and I landed at Cape Bernacchi, a little over a mile north of our previous camp. Here we hoisted the Union Jack just before 10 a.m. and took possession of Victoria Land for the British Empire. Cape Bernacchi is a low rocky promontory, the geology of which is extremely interesting. The dominant type of rock is a pure white coarsely crj-stalline marble; this has been broken through by granite rocks, the latter in places containing small red garnets. The marble or talc schist contains graphite disseminated through it in small scales. A great deal of tourmaline and epidote are developed in the granite at its point of contact with the calcareous schists. It appeared that the granite had intruded the black tourmaline rocks. After taking possession we resumed our sledging, finding the surface of pancake ice very good. The day being calm and clear and free from either falhng or drifting snow, we were able, for the first time, to turn 94 Moraine Cone with raised Beach material. Mt. Larsen on the right. "Backstairs Passage" is behind the Cone r r A "I HkK^m^ '■ ' ^ One of the Sledges taken by the Northern Partt A BABY SEAL our sleeping-bag inside out and air it in the sun. Pre- vious to this the reindeer fur inside the bag had become much encrusted with ice, chiefly the result of the freez- ing of our breath. Although the heat of the sun was insufficient to actually thaw the ice it evaporated it to a considerable extent, and we found the bag that night much more comfortable to sleep in than it had been for many nights previous. The following day, one and a quarter miles north of our preceding camp, we reached an interesting rocky headland. Here we found a mother seal \\ith a newly born baby seal, the latter about three and a half feet in length. The mother seal at short intervals made a somid like " Wa-a-a." After a close inspection the mother and baby were left undisturbed, and we turned our attention to the rocks. These were most interesting, bearing a general resemblance to those at Cape Bernacchi. Some of the quartz veins traversing this point JNlawson thought very favourable for gold. When we left this point the wind had considerably freshened. We had previously hoisted sail on both sledges, and the wind was now sufFciently strong to admit of our pulling both sledges together. The total distance travelled was seven statute miles. This was the most favourable wind we exjierienced during the whole of our journey to and from the Magnetic Pole. Shortly after leaving Baby Seal Point we encoun- tered heavy belts of screw pack-ice with liigh sastrugi between. The Christmas Tree sledge capsized badly when being dragged over one of these high snow ridges. We were much exhausted when we camped that night and had suffered somewhat from the cold wind, the temperature being about 10° Fahr. That night I exi^erienced a rather bad attack of 95 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC snow-blindiiess, through neglecting to wear my snow goggles regularly. Finding that my eyes were no better next morning, and my sight being dim, 1 asked JVIawson to take my place at the end of the long rope, the foremost position in the team. Mawson proved himself on this occasion and afterwards so remarkably efficient at picking out the best track for our sledges, and steering a good course that by my request he occupied tliis position throughout the rest of the journey. The next two days were uneventful, except for the fact that we occasionally had extremely hea\'y sledging over screw pack-ice and high and long sastrugi. The latter were from two to three feet high, bounded fre- quently by almost perpendicular sides, and as they trended from west to east and our course was from south to north they proved formidable obstacles to our progress, and capsizes of the sledges were frequent. On the night of October 20, we camped on the sea ice about three-quarters of a mile off shore. To the north-east of us was an outward curve of the shore- line, shown as a promontory on the existing chart. Early the next morning I walked over to the shore to geologise, and found the rocky headland composed of curious gneissic granite veined with quartz. On ascending this headland I noticed to my surprise that what had been previously supposed to be a promontory was really an island separated by a narrow strait from the mainland. It was clear that by going through tliis strait we would save several miles. xVccordingh% after breakfast we sledged into the strait. The western side of the strait was formed of glacier ice terminating eastward in an almost precipitous slope. Here and there masses of gneissic granite showed from beneath the ice. The eastern side of the strait was formed of terraced moraine gravels with large erratics embedded 96 INTERESTING FOSSILS in the gravel of the top terrace, eighty feet above sea- level. While JNIawson determined the position of this island by taking a round of angles with the theodohte, Mackay and I crossed the strait and explored the island, pacing and taldng levels. The rocks of which the erratics and boulder-bearing gravels were formed were almost without exception of igneous origin. One very interesting exception was a block of weathered clayey limestone. This was soft and yellowish grey externally but hard and blue on the freshly fractured surfaces inside. It contained traces of small fossils which ajipeared to be seeds of plants. Specimens of these were taken by us and were depoted later at another small island, which we called Depot Island. It is much to be regretted that we were unable later to reach this depot on account of dense belts of pack-ice, and so these very interesting specimens were lost. Two cliips, however, of this rock were fortunately preserved, sufficient for chemical analysis and microscopic examina- tion. There could be little doubt that this clayey limestone has been derived from the great sedimentary formation, named by H. T. Ferrar, the Beacon Sand- stone. The island which we had been exploring we named pro\isionally Terrace Island. It was approximately triangular in shape, and the side facing the strait, down which we travelled, measured one mile 1200 yards in length. The following day, October 22, we sighted the first skua gull we had seen that season. Snow fell in the afternoon between 2.30 and 5 p.:m., forming a layer tliree-quarters of an inch deep. The temperatin*e rose to plus 6.5° Fahr. at 7 p.m., and a bhzzard seemed impending. Vol. II.— 7 97 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC The following da}% October 23, we held a serious council as to the future of our journej' towards the JMagnetic Pole, It was quite ob\'ious that at our present rate of travelling, about four statute miles daily by the relay method, we could not get to the Pole and return to Butter Point early in January. I suggested that the most likely means of getting to the Pole and back in the time specified by Lieutenant Shackleton would be to travel on half rations, depoting the remainder of our provisions at an early opportunity. They both agreed, after some discussion, to try tliis expedient, and we decided to think the matter over for a few days and then make our depot. We found, as the result of the fall of snow on the preceding day, that the runners of our sledge clogged, maldng it difHcult to start the sledge after each halt. The temperature at 5 v.m. was now as high as plus 5° Fahr. There were numerous seals, mostly mother seals with young ones, on the ice near the course of our sledge, as many as seventeen seals being sometimes visible simultaneously. The previous day we had observed a mother seal with twin baby seals. jNIackay took up one of these in his arms and stroked it while it was nuzzling round. It somewhat resembled a large lizard. The mother snorted at him indignantly, meanwhile, but made no attempt to attack him. We encountered some large cracks in the sea ice. The sea water between the opposite walls had been only recently frozen over so that the ice was not more than a few inches in thickness. One of these was eighteen feet wide, and we found that the ice bent under our weight when we tested it primarily. Mackay called it " The Bridge of the Beresina." We rushed the sledges over at a good speed, and although the ice bent 98 SEALS AT PLAY under their weight it fortunately held. At about 3 p.m. the weather grew very thick and it began to snow; a mild blizzard developing later, we hoisted sail on both sledges. The next day, October 24, we found it very warm in the sleeping-bag, the sky being thickly overcast Avith dense stratus cloud. A strong water sky showed up to the east of us, while over the mountains to the west it was moderately clear. The presence of this water sky, indicating ojjen sea, warned us that it was unsafe to stand out far from the land. We reached that evening a long rocky point of gneissic granite, which we called Gneiss Point. After our evening hoosh we walked across to the point and collected a number of interesting geological specimens, including blocks of kenyte lava. The following day, October 25, proved a very heavy day for sledging, as we had to drag the sledges over new snow from three to four inches deep. In places it had a tough top crust wliich we would break through up to our ankles. We met also several obstacles in the way of wide cracks in the sea ice, from six to ten feet in width, and several miles in length. The sea water between the walls of the cracks had only recently been frozen over, so that the ice was only just thick enough to bear the sledges. The vicinity of these great ice- cracks were perfect baby farms for young seals. It was a pretty sight to see one of these baby seals plajdng with its mother, whom it ke2)t gently flicking over the nose with its small flippers, the mother every now and then gently boxing the baby's ear with one of her large flippers. One of these mothers charged down on Mackay, who was making an inspection of her baby at too close quarters to suit her fancy. Another mother was moaning in great distress over her baby, which had 99 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC just died. Evidently the mother seal's affection for her young is very strong. In pursuing our north-westerly course we were now crossing a magnificent bay which trended westwards some five or six miles away from the course we were steering. On either side of this bay were majestic ranges of rocky mountains parted from one another at the head of the bay by an immense glacier with steep ice falls. On examining these mountains with a field-glass it was evident that in their lower portions they were formed of granites and gneiss, producing reddish brown soils. At the higher levels, further inland, there Avere distinct traces of rocks showing horizontal strati- fication. The highest rock of all was black in colour, and evidently ver\' hard, apj)arently some three hundred feet in thickness. Below this was some softer stratified formation, approximately one thou- sand feet in tliickness. We concluded that the hard toj) layer was composed of igneous rock, possibly a lava, while the horizontal stratified formation be- longed in all probability to the Reacon Sandstone formation. Some fine nunataks of dark rock rose from the south-east side of the great glacier. On either side of this glacier were high terraces of rock reacliing back for several miles from a modern valley edge to the foot of still higher ranges. It was obvious that these terraces marked the position of the floor of the old valley at a time when the glacier ice was several thousand feet higher than it is now, and some ten miles wider than at present. The glacier trended inland in a general south-westerly direction. We longed to turn our sledges shorewards and explore these inland rocks, but this would have involved a delay of several days — probably a week at least — and we could not afford the time. Mawson took a series 100 A CHART INACCURACY of horizontal and vertical angles with the theodolite to aU the upper peaks in these ranges. We were much puzzled to determine on what part of the charted coast tlais wide bay and great glacier valley was situated. We speculated as to whether it was Granite Harbour, but decided that it could not be in view of the distance recorded by our sledge meter, for, according to this, we must still be some twenty miles south of Granite Harbour proper. We were to find out much later that the point opposite which we had now arrived was in reality Granite Harbour, and that its position was not shown correctly on the chart. Of course in pioneering work occasional mistakes such as these are inevitable. The following day the sledge still proved very heavy on account of the soft snow — two to four inches deep — which was continually clogging the runners of our sledges. It was also difficult to steer a good course amongst the hummocky pack-ice on account of the day being dull and overcast. There was much low stratus cloud, and a light south-easterly wind. The weather of October 27 was beautifully clear and sunshiny, and we had a glorious view of the great mountain ranges on either side of Granite Harbour. The rich colouring of warm sepia brown and terra cotta in these rocky hills was quite a relief to the eye. Wind springing up in the south-east we made sail on both sledges, and this helped us a good deal over the soft snow and occasional patches of sharp-edged brash ice. Occasionally the loinners of our sledge would catch on one of these sharp fragments, and there would be a harsh rasping sound as a shaving was peeled off the runner. We feared that the wind would develop into a true blizzard, but it proved to be only what Joyce used to call a " carpet sweeper," driving along the newly fallen snow in white gossamer-like films over the sea ice. 101 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Towards evening we fetched up against some high ice-pressure cracks witli the ice ridged up six to eight feet high in huge tunil)le(l blocks. We seemed to have got hito a labyrinth of these pressure ridges from which there was no outlet. At last, after several cajjsizes of the sledges and some chopping through the ice ridges by Mackay, we got the sledges through, and camped on a level jiiece of ice. We were much helped in crossing the ridges by the long steep sastrugi of hardened snow. In places these ran like ramps up to the top of the pressure ridges, and were just wide enough and strong enough to bear our sledges. JVlawson and I at this time were still wearing finnesko, while INIackay had taken to ski boots. The following day, October 28, the sledging Avas again very heaA'^' over stick5% soft snow alternating with hard sastrugi and patches of consolidated brash ice. Shavings of wood were being constantly rasped off the runners of our sledges. Mackay lost one of his finnesko off the sledge, but walked back a couple of miles in the evening and recovered it. Our course had taken us past a number of snowbergs; these were mostly about forty feet in height and from a quarter to half a mile in length. They were rigidly embedded in the sea ice. Occasionally we met with a true iceberg of blue ice amongst the snowbergs. After our evening hoosh, INIawson and I went over to the shore, rather more than half a mile distant, in order to study the rocks. These we found were com- posed of coarse red granite; the top of the granite was much smoothed by glacier ice, and strewn with large erratic blocks. In places the granite was inter- sected by black dykes of basic rocks. One could see that the glacier ice, about a quarter of a mile inland from this rocky shore, had only recently retreated and laid bare 102 HEAVY RELAY WORK the glaciated rocky surface. We found a little moss here amongst the crevices in the granite rock. October 29 was beautifully fine, though a keen and fresh wind, rather unpleasantly cold, was blo^\ing from off the liigh momitain plateau to our west. It blew from a direction west by south and caused a little low drift in the loose snow on the surface of the sea ice. There was still a great deal of deep, soft snow alternating with hard sastrugi and small patches of consolidated brash ice, so that the sledging was very heavy. We were all thoroughly done up at night after com- pleting our four miles of relay work. That evening we discussed the important question of whether it would be possible to eke out our food-sujiplies with seal meat so as to avoid putting ourselves on half rations, and we all agreed that tliis should be done. We made up our minds that at the fii-st convenient spot we would make a depot of any articles of equipment, geological specimens, &c., in order to lighten our sledges, and would at the same time, if the spot was suitable, make some ex- periments with seal meat. The chief problem in connection with the latter was how to cook it without the aid of paraiiin oil. We could not afford more paraffin for tliis purpose, as we estimated that even with the utmost care the supply for our Primus, which we used for bre\\'ing tea, cocoa and hoosh, ,.ould become exliausted before we could hope to reach the ^Magnetic Pole, unless somo kind of substitute for paraffin could be found. The following day, October 30, was full of interest for us, as well as hard work. In the early morning, between 2.30 a.m. and 6.30 a.m., a mild blizzard was blowing. We got under way a little later and camped at about 10.30 a.m. for lunch alongside a very inter- esting rockj' point. ^lawson got a good set of theodolite 103 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC angles from the top of this point. Tlie point was formed of coarse porphyritic grey gneiss, traversed by black dykes of rock, apparently tinguaite, and another variety containing an abundance of sparkling black crystals of hornblende, which may be termed provisionally a horn- blende lamprophyre. After lunch we passed close by a mother seal and her babj\ The mother charged us and we had to skid along quick and lively past her with the sledges. That daj- was the first occasion that we tried the experiment of strength- ening the brew of the tea by using the old tea-leaves of a previous meal mixed with the new ones. Tliis was JNIackay's idea, and 3Iawson and I at the time did not appreciate the experiment. Later on, however, we were very glad to adopt it. The sledging that afternoon was about the heaviest we had experienced up to date. The weather was now daily becoming warmer and the saline snow on the sea ice became sticky in consequence. It gripped the runners of the sledges like glue, and we were only able M'ith our greatest efforts to drag the sledges over this at a snail's pace. We were all thoroughly exhausted that evening when we camped at the base of a rocky promon- tory about 180 ft. high. This cliff was formed of coarse gneiss, with numerous dark streaks, and enclosures of huge masses of greenish-grey quartzite. After our evening hoosh we walked over to a very interesting small island about three-quarters of a mile distant. It was truly a most wonderful place geologi- cally, and was a perfect elysium for tlie mineralogist. The island, which we afterwards called Depot Island, was accessible on the shorcAvard side, but rose per- pendicularly to a height of 200 ft. above sea-level on the other three sides. There was very little snow or ice upon it, the surface being almost entirely formed of 104 T^-'f-- '■*:*»,■ D.UtK ENCLOSrRE:^ OF IIORNEBLEXDE-RoCK IN GnEISS, DePOT IsLAND J L'ljA^t ui \"Il1u..ia La:.1j MINERAL DISCOVERIES gneissic granite. This granite, as shown in the photo- graj^h, was full of dark enclosures of basic rocks, rich in black mica and huge crystals of hornblende. It was in these enclosures that JSIawson discovered a translucent brown mineral, which he believed to be monazite, but which has since proved to be titanium mineral. Patches of a crystalline, milkj'-white mineral were to be seen amongst the large platy crystals of dark green horn- blende. These white crystals we thought might be scapolite. We returned to camp and slept soundly after the severe work of the day. We were up at 6 a.m. next morning, and after breakfast ISIackay and Mawson went in pursuit of some seals which we had sighted further back on the previous day, while I climbed up an adjacent granite slope with the field-glasses, watching for a signal from them, if they were successful in their hunting, to bring up an empty sledge. They were, however, unsuccessful in their quest, and after some time returned to camp. We packed up and made for the island at 9.30 a.m. The sledging was extremely heav\% and we fell into a tide-crack on the way, but the sledge was got over safely. IVIackay sighted a seal about six hundred j'ards distant from the site of our new camp near the island, and just then we noticed that another seal had bobbed up in the tide-crack close to our old camp. ]\Iackay and JNIawson at once started off in the direction where the first seal had been sighted. It proved to be a bull seal in very good condition, and they killed it by knocking it on the head with an ice-axe. Meanwhile, I unpacked the Duff sledge and took it out to them. Returning to the site of our camp I put up the tent, and on going back to Mawson and INIackay found that they had finished fletching the seal. We loaded up the empty sledge with seal blubber, resembling bars of soap in its now frozen 105 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC condition, steak and liver, and returned to camp for lunch. After lunch we took some blubber and seal meat on to the island, intending to try the experiment of making a blubber fire in order to cook the meat. We worked our way a short distance up a steep, rocky gulley, and there built a firej)lace out of magnificent specimens of hornblende rock. It seemed a base use for such magnificent mineralogical specimens, but necessity knows no laws. We had brouglit with us our Primus lamp in order to start the fire. We put blubber on our iron shovel, warmed tliis underneath by means of the heat of the Primus lamp so as to render down the oil from it, and then lit the oil. The experiment was not altogether successful. IMawson cooked for about three hours, closely and anxiously watched by Mackay and myself. Occasionally he allowed us to taste small snacks of the partly cooked seal meat, which Mere pro- nounced to be delicious. While the experiment was at its most critical stage, at about 6 p.m., we observed sudden swirls of snowdrift high up on the w'estern mountains, coming rapidly down to lower levels. For a few minutes we did not think seriously of the phenome- non, but as the drift came nearer we saw that some- thing serious was in the air. Mackay and I rushed down to our tent, the skirt of which was only temporarily secured with light blocks of snow. We reached it just as it was struck by the sudden blizzard which had descended from the western mountains. There was no time to dig further blocks of snow, all we could do was to seize the heavy food-bags on our sledges, weighing sixty pounds each, and nish them on to the skirt of the tent. The blizzard struck our kitchen on the island sinmltaneously with our tent, and temporarily IMawson lost liis mits and 106 RATIONS REDUCED most of the tit-bits of seal meat, but these were quickly recovered, and he came rusliing down to join us in securing the tent. Wliile Mawson in frantic haste chopi^ed out blocks of snow and dumped them on to the skirt of the tent, IMackay, no less frantically, struggled with our sleeping-bag, which had been turned inside- out to air, and which by tliis time was covered with drift snow. He quickly had it turned right side in again, and dashed it inside the tent. At last every- thing was secured, and we found ourselves safe and sound inside the tent. The Primus was quickly got going, and soon we had some hot cocoa and hot seal pottage, together with some small pieces of charred but delicious seal blubber. The blizzard continued until past our bedtime. We turned in with a determination of making further experiments on the cooking of seal meat on the following morning. The following day, November 1, we breakfasted off a mixture of our ordinary hoosh and seal meat. After some discussion we decided that our only hope of reaching the JNIagnetic Pole lay in our travelling on half rations from our present camp to the point on the coast at the Drygalski Glacier, where we might for the first time hope to be able to turn inland with reason- able prospect of reaching the ]Magnetic Pole. JNIawson was emphatic that we must conserve six weeks of full rations for our inland journey to and from the Pole. This necessitated our going on half rations from this island to the far side of the Drygalski Glacier, a distance of about one hundred statute miles. In order to sup- plement the regular half rations we intended to take seal meat. While I was busy in calculating the times and distances for the remainder of our journey, and pro- portioning the food rations to suit our new programme, 107 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Mawson and ^lackay conducted further experiments on the cooking of seal meat mth blubber. While at our whiter quarters, Mackay had made some ex- periments on the use of blubber as a fuel. He had con- structed a blubber lamp, the wick of wliich kept alight for several hours at a time, feeding itself on the seal oil. lie had tried the expermient of heating up water over this blubber lamp, and was partly successful at the time when we left winter quarters for our present sledging journey. But his experiments at the time were not taken very seriously, and the blubber lamp was left behind, a fact which we now much regretted. An effective cooking-stove was, however, evolved, as the result of a series of exi)eriments this day, out of one of our large empty biscuit tins. The lid of this was perforated with a number of circular holes for the reception of wicks. Its edges were bent down, so as to form supports to keep the wick -holder about half an inch above the bottom of the biscuit tin. The wick- holder was put in place; wicks were made of pieces of old cahco food-bags rolled in seal blubber, or with thin slices of seal blubber enfolded in them, the calico being done up in little rolls for the purpose of making wicks, as one rolls a cigarette, the seal blubber taking the place of the tobacco in this case. Lumps of blubber were laid round the wick-holder. Then, after some difficulty, the wicks were lighted. They burned feebly at first, as seal blubber has a good deal of water in it. After some minutes of fitful spluttering, the wicks got fairly alight, and as soon as the lower part of the biscuit tin was raised to a high temperature, the big lumps of blubber at the side commenced to have the water boiled out of them and the oil rendered down. This oil ran under the wick-holder and supplied the 108 COOKING WITH BLUBBER wicks at theii" base. The wicks, now fed with warm, pure seal oil, started to burn brightly, and even fiercely, so that it became necessary occasionally to damp them down with cliips of fresh blubber. We tried the ex- periment of using lumps of salt as wicks, and found this fairly successful. We also tried small pieces of our brown rope for the same purpose, using the separated strands of these cut in pieces of about one and a half inches long. These made excellent wicks, but we could not spare much rope. We also tried the lamp- Avick that we had brought with us for binding on our finnesko, but in this case also rigid economy was an absolute necessity. We decided to rely for wicks chiefly on our empty food-bags, and thought possibly that if these ran out we might have recourse to moss. But the empty food-bags supplied sufficient wick for our need. That day, by means of galvanised iron wires, we slung the inner pot from our aluminium cooker over the lighted wicks of our blubber cooker, thawed down snow in it, added cliips of seal meat and made a dehcious bouillon. Tliis had a rich red colom* and seemed veiy nutritious, but to me was indigestible. W^hile INIawson was still engaged on further cooking experiments, Mackay and I ascended to the highest point of the island, selected a spot for a cairn to mark our depot, and Mackay commenced building the cairn. Meanwliile, I returned to camp and A\Tote a number of letters, including one to the commander of the Nivirod. The latter was accompanied by a sketch plan taken from the Admiralty chart to show the proper position of our final depot before we were to turn inland " on the low sloping shore " to the north-Mest of the Drygalski Glacier. The other letters were to Lieutenant Shackleton and to my family. 109 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC The letter to the conmiander of the Ximrod contained the following statement of our plans: " CaiuPj Granite Harbour.* " Drar Sir, — I beg to inform you that we intend leaving here to-morrow in continuation of our journey towards the ^Magnetic Pole. W'e have to work our two sledges by relays, which, of course, means slow pro- gress — only about four miles per day. At this rate we hope to reach the north side of the Drygalski Ice Barrier at the f)onit where ' low sloping shore ' is marked on the Admiralty Chart of the Antarctic Sheet III. (please see sketch on oj)posite page), by about December 1.5. We pi'opose to make a depot there marked by a black flag similar to the one w^e are leaving here at the island at south side of entrance to Granite Harbour. AVe propose to travel inland from the ' low sloping shore,' and if possible reach the ^Magnetic Pole and return to depot. We estimate that this may take six weeks, so that we may not return to the coast at the low sloping shore depot until about January 25. We propose to wait there until the Ximrod calls for us at the beginning of Februar}'." The letter concluded with detailed instructions re- garding the course to be pursued in searching for the party. * At this time we were under the impression that this island was on the south side of Granite Harbour. We did not know that we had already left Granite Harbour about twelve miles to the south of us. PROFESSOR DAVID S NARRATIVE (.Continue^ The old dragon under ground In straiter limits bounds Not half so far casts his usurped sway. And wroth to see his kingdom fail. Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail. Milton. T T had, of course, become clear to us before this letter ■^ was written, in view of our experience of the already cracking sea ice near the true Granite Harbour, as well as in view of our comparativelj' slow progress by relay, that our retreat back to camp from the direction of the IMagnetic Pole would in all probability be entirely cut off through the breaking up of the sea ice. Under these circumstances we determined to take the risk of the Nirarod arriving safely on her return voyage at Cape Royds, where she would receive the instructions to search for us along the western coast, and also the risk of her not being able to find our depot and ourselves at the low sloping shore. ^Ve knew that there was a certain amount of danger in adopting this course, but we felt that we had got on so far with the work en- trusted to us by our Commander, that we could not honourably now turn back. Under these circumstances we each ^\Tote farewell letters to those who were nearest and dearest, and the following morning, Xovember 2, we were up at 4.30 a.m. After putting all the letters into one of our empty dried-milk tins, and fitting on the air-tight lid, I walked \\ith it to the island and climbed 111 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC up to the cairn. Here, after carefullj' depoting several bags of geological specimens at tlie base of the flagstaff, I lashed the httle post office by means of cord and copper- wire securely to the flagstaff, and then carried some large slabs of exfoliated granite to the cairn, and built them up on the leeward side of it in order to strengthen it against the southerly blizzards. A keen wind was blowing, as was usual in the early morning, off the high plateau, and one's hands got frequently frost-l)itten in the work of securing the tin to the flagstaff. The cairn was at the seaward end of a sheer cliflp two hundred feet high. On returning to camp I put some chopped seal meat into the cooking-pot on our blubber stove, which JNIawson had meanwhile lighted, and about three- quarters of an hour later we partook of some nourishing, but no less indigestible seal bouillon. It was later than usual when we started our sledges, and the pulling proved extremely heavy. The sun's heat was thawing the snow surface and making it extremely sticky. Our pro- gress was so painfully slow that we decided, after, with great efforts, doing two miles, to camp, have our hoosh, and then turn in for six hours, having meanwhile started the blubber lamp. At the expiration of that time we intended to get out of our sleeping-bag, breakfast, and start sledging about midnight. We hoped that by adopt- ing nocturnal habits of travelling, we would avoid the sticky ice-surface which by daytime formed such an obstacle to our progress. We carried out this programme on the evening of November 2, and the morning of November 3. We found the experiment fairly successful, as at mid- night and for a few hours afterwards, the temperature remained sufficiently low to keep the surface of the snow on the sea ice moderately crisp. 112 < g A DRINK DEBATED On November 3 and 4 the weather was fine, and we made fair progress. At noon Mawson cleaned out the refuse from our blubber lamp. Amongst this were a few dainty bits; jNlackay was Avhat he called "playing the skua," picking these over, when he accidentally transfen-ed to his mouth and swallowed one of the salt wicks which we had been using in the blubber lamp. Mawson and I were unaware of this episode at the time. Later on, towards evening, he complained much of thirst, and proferred a gentle request, when the snow was being thawed down preparatory to making hoosh, that he might be allowed to drink some of the water before the hoosh was put into it; at the same time he gave us the plausible explanation above mentioned as the cause of his exceeding thirst. After debating the matter at some length, it was decided, in view of the special circumstances surrounding the case, and without creating a precedent — which otherwise might become a dangerous one — that he might be allowed on this occasion to take a drink. JNlackay, however, considered that this water gift was given grudgingly, and of necessity, and accord- ingly he sternly refused to accept it. Just then, the whole discussion was abruptly terminated through the pot being accidentally capsized when being lifted off the blubber lamp, and the whole of the water was lost. On the following day, November 5, we were opposite a very interesting coastal panorama, which we thought belonged to Granite Harbour, but which was really over twenty miles to the north of it. ]Magnificent ranges of mountains, steep slopes free from snow and ice, stretched far to the north and far to the south of us, and finished away inland, towards the heads of long glacier cut valleys, in a vast upland snoAv plateau. The rocks which were exposed to view in the lower part of these ranges were mostly of warm sepia brown to terra- voi. ii.-« 113 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC cotta lint, aiid were evidently built up of a continuation of the gneissic rocks and red granites which we had previously seen. Above these crystalline rocks came a belt of greenish-grey rock, apparently belonging to some stratified formation and possibly many hundreds of feet in thickness; the latter was capped with a black rock that seemed to be either a basic i)lateau lava, or a huge sill. In the direction of the glacier valleys, the plateau was broken up into a vast number of conical hills of various shajies and heights, all showing evidence of intense glacial action in the past. The hills were here separated from the coast-line by a continuous belt of piedmont glacier ice. Tliis last terminated where it joined the sea ice in a steep slojie, or low cliff, and in places was very much crevassed. ^Nlawson at our noon halts for lunch, continued taking the angles of all these ranges and vallej-^s with our theodolite. The temperature was now rising, being as high as 22° Fahr. at noon on November 5. ^Ve had a very heavy sledging surface that day, there being much consolidated brash ice, sastrugi, pie-crust snow, and numerous cracks in the sea ice. As an offset to these troubles we had that night, for the first time, the use of our new frying-pan, constructed by Mawson out of one of our empty paraffin tins. This tin had been cut in half down the middle parallel to its broad surfaces, and loops of iron wire being added, it was possible to sus- pend it inside the empty biscuit tin above the wicks of our blubber lamp. We found that in this frying-pan we could rapidlj' render down the seal blubber into oil, and as soon as the oil boiled we dropped into the pan small slices of seal liver or seal meat. The liver took about ten minutes to cook in the boiling oil, the seal meat about twenty minutes. These facts were ascer- tained by the empirical method. Mawson discovered 114 SEAL BOUILLON by the same method that the nicely browned and crisp residue from the seal blubber, after the oil in it had become rendered down, was good eating, and had a fine nutty flavour. We also found, as the result of later exijeriments, that drojjping a little seal's blood into the boiling oil produced eventually a gravj^ of very fine flavour. If the seal blood was poured in rapidly into the boiling oil, it made a kind of gravy pancake, which we also considered very good as a variety. We had a magnificent view this day of fresh ranges of mountains to the north of De2:)6t Island. At the foot of these was an extensive terrace of glacier ice, a curious type of piedmont glacier. Its surface was strongly convex near where it terminated seawards in a steep slope or low cliff. In places this ice was heavily crevassed. At a distance of several miles inland it reached the spurs of an immense coastal range, while in the wide gaps in this range the ice trended inland as far as the eye could see until it blended in the far dis- tance with the skyline high uji on the great inland plateau. A little before 9 p.m. on November 5 we left our sleeping-bag, and found snow falling, with a fresh and chilly breeze from the south. The blubber lamp, which we had lighted before we had turned in, had got blown out. We built a chubby house for it of snow blocks to keep off the wind, and relighted it, and then turned into the sleeping-bag again while we waited for the snow and chips of seal meat in our cooking-pot to be- come converted into a hot bouillon; the latter was ready after an interval of about one hour and a half. Just before midnight we brought the cooker alight into the tent in order to protect it from the blizzard wliich was no^v blowing and bringing much falling snow w-ith 115 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC it. ^lawson's cooking experiments continued to be higlily successful and entirely satisfactory to the party. We waited for the falling snow to clear sufficiently to enable us to see a short distance ahead, and then started agahi, the blizzard still blowing with a little low drift. After doing a stage of pulling on both sledges to keep ourselves warm in the blizzard we set sail — always a chilly business — and the wind was a distinct assistance to us. ^Ve encountered a good deal of brash ice that day, and noticed that this type of ice surface was most conmion in the vicinity of icebergs, which just here were very numerous. The brash ice is probably formed by the icebergs surging to and fro in heavy weather like a lot of gigantic Yermaks, and crunching up the sea ice in their vicinity. The latter, of course, re-freezes, produchig a surface covered with jagged edges and points. We were now reduced to one plasmon biscuit each for breakfast and one for the evening meal, and we were unanimous in the opinion that we had never before fully realised how very nice these plasmon biscuits were. We became exceedingly careful even over the crumbs. As some biscuits were thicker than others, the cook for the w^eek would select three biscuits, place them on the outer cover of our aluminium cooker, and get one of his mates to look in an opposite direction while the messman pointed to a biscuit and said, " Whose? " The mate with averted face, or shut eyes, would then state the owner, and the biscuit was ear-marked for him, and so with the other two biscuits. Grievous was the disappointment of the man to whose lot the thinnest of the three biscuits had fallen. Originally, on this sledge journey, when biscuits were more plentiful, Ave used to eat them regardless of the loss of crumbs, muncliing them boldly, with the result that 116 PRECIOUS BISCUITS occasional crumbs fell on the floorcloth. Not so now. Each man broke his biscuit over his own pannikin of hoosh, so that any crumbs produced in the process of fracture fell into the pannikin. Then, in order to make sure that there were no loose fragments adhering to the morsel we were about to transfer to our mouths, we tapped the broken chip, as well as the biscuit from which it had been broken, on the sides of the pannikin, so as to shake into it any loose crumbs. Then, and then only, was it safe to devour the precious morsel. JNlackay, who adopted this practice in common with the rest of us, said it re- minded him of the old days when the sailors tapped each piece of broken biscuit before eating it in order to shake out the weevils. Mawson and I now wore our ski-boots instead of finnesko, the weather being warmer, and the ski-boot giving one a better grip on the snow surface of the sea ice. The rough leather took the skin off my right heel, but Mackay fixed it up later in the evening, that is, my heel, with some " Newskin." As we found the sharp iron spikes of the ski-boots made holes in our waterproof floorcloth we made a practice of always changing into our finnesko before entering the tent. We sledged on uneventfully for the remainder of November 6, and during the 7th, and on November 8 it came on to blow again with fresh-falling snow. The blizzard was still blowing when the time came for us to pitch our tent. We had a severe struggle to get the tent up in the high wind and thick falling snow. At last the work was accompUshed, and we were all able to turn into our sleeping-bag, pretty tired, at about 12.30 P.M. The weather was still bad the following day, November 9. After breakfast off seal's liver, and digging 117 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC out the sledges from the snow drift, we started in the bhzzard, the snow still falling. After a little while we made sail on both sledges. The hght was very bad on account of the thick falling snow, and we were constantly falling up to our knees in the cracks in the sea ice. It seemed miraculous that in spite of these veiy numerous accidents we never sprained an ankle. That day we saw a snow petrel, and three skua gulls visited our camp. At last the snow stopped falling and the wind fell light, and we were much cheered by a fine, though distant view of the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier to the north of us. ^Ve were all extremely anxious to ascertain what sort of a surface for sledging we should meet with on this great glacier. According to the Admiralty chart, prepared from observations by the Discovery expedition, this glacier was between twenty-four and thirty miles vide, and projected over twenty miles from the rocky shore into the sea. We hoped that we might be able to cross it without following a circuitous route along its seaward margins. We started off on November 10, amongst very heavy sastrugi and ridges of broken pack-ice. Cracks in the sea ice were extremely numerous. The morning was somewhat cloudy, but as the midnight sun got higher in the heavens, the clouds dispersed and the weather be- come comparatively warm, the temperature being up to plus 3° Fahr. at 8 A.:\r. That day when we pitched camp we were within half a mile of the southern edge of the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier. The following day, November 11, as INIawson wished to get an accurate magnetic determination with the Lloyd-Creak dip circle, we decided to camp, ISIackay and I exploring the glacier surface to select a suitable track for our sledges while INIawson took his observa- tions. After breakfast we removed everj-thing con- 118 NORDENSKJOLD ICE-BARRIERS taining iron several hundred yards away from the tent, leaving Mawson alone inside it in company with the dip circle. We found that the ascent from the sea ice to the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier was a comj)aratively easy one. The surface was formed chiefly of hard snow glazed in places, partly through thawing and re-freezing, partly through the polisliing of tliis wind- ward surface by particles of fresh snow driven over it by the bhzzards. Hummocky masses, apjjarently of the nature of large sastrugi, projected here and there to a height of six feet above the general level. The latter were something like elongated white ants' nests. In places the snow surface showed pie-crust stnicture, a bad surface for sledging. On the whole this Barrier was fairly free from crevasses, although ^Nlackay and I crossed a few in our short pioneering excursion. The surface ascended gradually to a little over one hundred feet above the level of the sea ice, passing into a wide undulating jjlain which stretched away to the north as far as the eye could see. We returned to Mawson with the good news that the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier was quite practicable for sledging, and would probably afford us a much more easy surface than the sea ice over which we had pre- viously been passing. Mawson infonned us, as the result of his observations with the dip circle, that the Magnetic Pole was probablj' about forty miles further inland than the theoretical mean position calculated for it from the magnetic observations of the Discovery expedition seven years ago. Early on the morning of November 12 we packed up, and started to cross the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier. We noticed here that there were two well-marked sets of sastrugi, one set, nearly due north and south, formed by the strong southerly blizzards, the other set, crossing 119 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC nearly at right angles, coming from the west and formed by the cold land winds blowing off the liigh plateau at night on to the sea. We were surprised to observe that this ice barrier was almost completely isolated from the shore by deep inlets, and for a time we speculated as to whether after all it might not be a gigantic tabular iceberg run aground In view, however, of what we observed later there can be little doubt that it is of the nature of a large pied- mont glacier, afloat at its seaward end and central portions. It is now practically inert, having no for- ward movement from the land towards the sea. It is just the vanishing remnant of what at one time was no doubt a large active glacier, vigorously pushed out seaward, the overflow ice from the vast snow-fields of the inland plateau. The supply, however, of ice near the coast has dwindled so enormously that there is no longer sufficient pressure to move this ice barrier. This day, Xovember 12, was an important one in the history of ]Mawson's triangulation of the coast, for he was able in the morning to sight simultaneously JNIount Erebus and Mount Melbourne, as well as Mount Lister. We were foi-tunate in having a very bright and clear day on this occasion, and the round of angles obtained by Mawson wth the theodolite were m every way satisfactory. The following day, Xovember 13, we were still on the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier. The temperature in the early morning, about 3 a.m., was minus 13^ Fahr. Mawson had provided an excellent dish for breakfast consisting of crumbed seal meat and seal's blood, wliich proved delicious. We got under way about 2 a.m. It was a beautiful sunshiny day with a gentle cold breeze off the western plateau. When we had sledged for about one thousand yards Mawson suddenly exclaimed that 120 AN EASY CROSSING he could see the end of the barrier where it terminated in a white cliff only about six hundred yards ahead. We halted the sledge, and while JNIawson took some more theodolite angles jNIackay and I reconnoitred ahead, but could find no way down the cliff. We returned to the sledge and all pulled on for another quarter of a mile. Once more we reconnoitred, and this time both JVIawson and I found some steep slojies formed by drifted snow wliich were just practicable for a hght sledge lowered by an Alpine rope. We chose what seemed to be the best of these; Mackay tied the Alpine rope around his body, and taking liis ice-axe descended the slope cautiously, Mawson and I holding on to the rope meanwhile. The snow slope proved fairly soft, gi\dng good foothold, and he was soon at the bottom without having needed any sujiport from the Alpine rope. He then returned to the top of the slope, and we all set to work unpacking the sledges. We made fast one of the sledges to the Alpine rope, and after loading it lightly lowered it little by little down the slope, one of us guiding the sledge wliile the other two slacked out the Alpine rope above. The man who went down the sledge to the bottom would unload it there on the sea ice and then climb up the slope, the other two mean- while pulling up the empty sledge. This manoeuvre was repeated a number of times until eventually the whole of our food and equipment, including two sledges, were safely down on the sea ice below. We were all much elated at having got across the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier so easily and so quickly. We were also fortunate in securing a seal; Mackay went off and killed this, bringing back seal steak, liver and a considerable quantity of seal blood. From the last iSIackay said he intended to manufacture a black pudding. Usually, I believe, a black pudding is manu- 121 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC factured from the part of the blood \\hich does not contain the fibrm, but on this occasion the black pudding was wholly formed of fibrin, so that it may be described as a negative rather than a positive black pudding. This fibrin was boiled up in seal oil, and though rather tasteless was at all events nourishing, and was certainly filling. W^hile Mackay had been in pursuit of the seal meat Mawson had taken a meridian altitude while I kept the time for him. After our hoosh we packed the sledges, and Mawson took a ])hotograph showing the cliff forming the northern boundary of the Xordenskjold Ice Barrier. This cliff was about forty feet in height. We had some discussion as to whether or not there was a true tidal crack separating the sea ice from this ice barrier. Certainly, on the south side there was no evidence of the presence of any such crack, but on the north side there were small local cracks; yet it could hardh' be said that these were of sufficient importance to be termed true tide-cracks. In one of these cracks most beautiful filagree ice crystals, fully one inch across, lined the sides of the walls of the crack in the sea ice. There can be little doubt, I think, that the greater part of this Nordcnskjold Ice Barrier is afloat. The sun was so warm this day that I was tempted before turning in to the sleeping-bag to take off my ski-boots and socks and give my feet a snow bath, which was very refreshing. The following day, November 14, we were naturally anxious to be sure of our exact position on the chart, in view of the fact that we had come to the end of the ice barrier some eighteen miles quicker than the chart led us to anticipate we should. ^lawson accordingly worked up his meridian altitude, and I plotted out the 122 Cl-IFF [JOWN WHUH THK .Sl.tbOt-ft W>.KK LoWKKKi> i.X THt NoRTH SiDE Ot iHf. NOKDENSKJOLD Ice Barrier Tongce A Pause bt the Wat SKUA GULLS angular distances he had found, respectively, for JNIount Erebus, JNIount Lister and JNIount JNIelbourne. As the result of the application of our calculations to the chart it became evident that we had actually crossed the Xordenskjold Ice Barrier of Captain Scott's survey, and were now opposite what on his chart was termed Charcot Bay. This was good news and cheered us up very much, as it meant that we were nearly twenty miles further north than we previously thought we were. The day was calm and fine, and the surface of the sea ice was covered with patches of soft snow Anth nearly bare ice between, and the sledging was not quite as heavy as usual. In the evening two skua gulls went for our seal meat during the interval that we were returning for the second sledge after jjulling on the first sledge. It was wonderful how quickly these gulls made their appearance from distant parts of the horizon as soon as any fresh meat was available. The 23re\'ious day one of them had actually attempted to eat the seal meat out of our frjnng-jDan when the meat was being cooked in boiling oil. We could see as we came up from a distance that the heat of the savoury dish puzzled him a good deal, as each time he dipped his beak into our hot mince he jerked it out again very suddenly and seemed a very surprised bird. We had a magnificent \-iew of the rocky coast-line, which is here most impressive. The sea ice stretched away to the west of us for several miles up to a low cliff and slope of piedmont glacier ice, with occasional black masses of rock showing at its edge. Several miles further inland the piedmont glacier ice terminated abruptly against a magnificent range of mountains, tabular for the most part but deeply intersected. In the 123 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC wide gaps between this coast range were vast glaciers fairly heavily crevassed, descenduig by steep slopes from an inland plateau to the sea. On November 15, there was a fresh wind from the west-south-west. The weather was overcast, and a few flakes of snow were falling. ^Ve killed two young seals to replenish our food-supply. ]Mackay took over the blubber cooking apparatus so as to set IMawson free for his theodolite observations. The sky was dull and leaden for most of the day, with occasional glimpses of light over the western mountains. On the whole it looked as if a blizzard were approaching. We were still doing our travelling by night and sleeping during the afternoon. When we arose from our sleeping-bag at 8 p.m. on the night of November 15, we found that the signs of the blizzard had more or less passed away. There was a beautifully perfect "Noah's Ark" in the sky; the belts of cirrus-stratus comjjosing the ark stretched from south-south-west to north-north-east, converging towards the horizon in each of these directions. Fleecy sheets of frost smoke arose from over the open water on Ross Sea, and formed dense cumulus clouds. This, of course, was a certain indication to us that open water was not far distant, and impressed upon us the necessity of making every possible speed if we hoped to reach our projected point of departure on the coast for the ^lagnetic Pole before the sea ice entirely broke up. This had been a truly glorious day, bright and sunny, and as this was the end of a food week and the messman for the week had kept a little food up his sleeve, so to speak, we fared sumptuously. The cocoa was extra strong, milky and sweet. Mackay's opinion was that such cocoa much reminded him of better days, and was absolutely uplifting. 124 CAPE IRIZAR The following day, November 17, after a very heavy sledging over loose powdery snow six inches deep we reached a low glacier and ice cUff. We were able to get some really fresh snow from this barrier or glacier, the cliffs of wliich were from tliirty to forty feet high. It was a great treat to get fresh water at last, as since we had left tlie Xordenskjold Ice Barrier the only snow available for cooking purposes had been brackish. The following day was also bright and sunny, but the sledging was terribly heavy. The sun had thawed the surface of the saline snow and our sledge runners had become saturated with soft water. We were so wearied with the great effort necessary to keep the sledges moving that at the end of each halt we feU sound asleep for five minutes or so at a time across the sledges. On such occasions one of the party would wake the others up, and we Avould continue our journey. We were even more utterly exhausted than usual at the end of tliis day. By tills time, however, we were in sight of a rocky headland which we took to be Cape Irizar, and we knew that this cape was not verj' far to the south of the Drygalski Glacier. Indeed, already, a long hne was showing on the horizon which could be no other than the eastward extension of this famous and, as it after- wards proved, formidable glacier. On November 19, we had another hea^y day's sledging, ankle deep in the soft snow with occasional thin patches of sludg\" saline ice from which ice flowers had recently disappeared tlirough thawing, ^Ve only did two miles of relay work this day and yet were quite exhausted at the end of it. The following day, November 20, being short of meat we kiUed a seal calf and cow, and so replenished our larder. At the end of the day's sledging I walked 125 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC over about two miles to a cliff face, about six miles south of Cape Irizar. The rocks all along this part of the shore were formed of coarse giieissic granite, of which I was able to collect some specimens. The cliff was about one hundred feet high where it was formed of the gneiss, and above this rose a capping of from seventy to eighty feet in thickness of heavily crevassed blue glacier ice. There were here wide tide-cracks be- tween the sea ice and the foot of the sea cliff. These were so wide that it was difficult to cross them. The whole shore hne was literally alive with seals and seal calves; there were over fifty of them in a stretch of about three hundred yards. At a distance of two miles our tent was, of course, quite out of sight, and one had to be guided back, on this as on other similiar occasions, chiefly by one's footprints. The following day, November 21, the sledging was painfully heavy over thawing saline snow surface, and sticky sea ice. We were only able to do two and two-thirds miles. On November 22, on rounding the point of the low ice barrier, thirty to forty feet high, we obtained a good view of Cape Irizar, and also of the Drygalski Ice Barrier. On November 23 we found that a mild blizzard was bloAving, but we travelled on through it as Me could not afford to lose any time. The blizzard died down altogether about 3 a.m., and was succeeded by a gentle westerly wind off the plateau. That evening, after our tent had been put up and we had finished the day's meal, I walked over a mile to the shore. The prevailing rock was still gneissic granite with large whitish veins of aplilic granite. A little bright green moss was growing on tiny patches of sand and gravel, and in some of the cracks in the granite. The top 126 WANT OF SLEEP of the cliff was capped by blue glacier ice. With the help of steps cut by my ice-axe I chmbed some distance up this in order to trj' and get some fresh ice for cooking purjjoses, but close to the top of the slope I accidentally shpped and glissaded most unwillingly some distance down before I was able to check myself by means of the chisel edge of the ice-axe. ^ly hands were some- what cut and bruised, but otherwise no damage was done. The whole of this ice was slightly bitter; no doubt sea spray in hea^y weather when the sea was open duiing sunmier time, had dashed over the head- land, and so flavoured the ice with sea salts. At last I obtained some fairly fresh ice in the form of large ice stalactites depending from an overhanging cliff of glacier ice. With these and my geological specimens I trudged back to the camp. On November 24, a strong keen wind was blowing off the plateau from the west-south-west. This died down later on in the morning at about 2 a.m. and the temperature at 9 a.m. rose as high as plus 20° Fahr. We were all suffering somewhat from want of sleep, and although the snow surface was better than it had been for some little time we still found the work of sledging very fatiguing. A three-man sleeping-bag, where you are wedged in more or less tightly against your mates, Avhere all snore and sliin one another and each feels on waking that he is more sinned against than shinning, is not conducive to real rest; and we rued the day that we chose the three-man bag in preference to the one-man bags. That afternoon and evening we slept a little longer than usual, and felt much refreshed on the early morning of November 25. It was interesting to watch at lunch time the anxious face of the messman for the week as he sat mth his nose 127 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC close to the outer cover of the aluminium cooker in order to catch the first whifF of the delicious aroma wliich told that the tea in the water of the inner cooking- pot had been just brought to the boil. With the first sniff of the aroma the messman Avould immediately unscrew the brass valve of the Primus, so as to let the air in and the Primus lamp down, with a view to saving jjaraffin oil. PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE (Continued) /^N the following day, November 26, we saw on look- ^-^ ing back that the rocky headland, where I had collected the specimens of granite and moss, was not part of the mainland, but a small island. This day was rather a memorable one in our journey, as we reached a large rocky promontory, wliich we sup- posed at the time to be Cape Irizar. Subsequent observations, however, proved that we must already have passed Cape Irizar, which was in aU probability the small island just referred to. We had some good sledging here over pancake ice nearly free from snow and travelled fast. While Mackay secured some seal meat JNIawson and I ascended the rocky promontory, climbing at first over rock, then over glacier ice, to a height of about six hundred feet above the sea. The rock was a pretty red granite traversed by large dykes of black rocks, apparently of an alkaline character, belonging to the phonolites or tinguaites. From the top of the headland to the north we had a magnificent view across the level surface of sea ice far below us. We saw that at a few miles from the shore an enormous iceberg, frozen into the floe, lay right across the path which we had intended to travel in our northerly course on the morrow. To the north-west of us was Geikie Inlet and beyond that stretching as far as the eye could follow was the great Drygalski Glacier. Beyond the Drygalski Glacier were a series Vol. II.-9 129 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC of rocky hills. One of these was identified as probably being JNIount Neumaer. Several mountains could be seen further to the north of this, but the far distance was obscured from view by cloud and mist so that we were unable to make out the outline of Mount Nansen. It was evident that the Drygalski Glacier was bounded landwards on the north by a steep cliff of dark, highly jointed rock, and we were not a little concerned to observe with our field-glasses that the surface of the Drygalski Glacier was wholly different to that of the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier. It was clear that the surface of the Dry- galski (ilacier was formed of jagged surfaces of ice very heavily crevassed, and projecting in the form of immense seracs separated from one another by deep undulations or chasms. It at once suggested to my mind some scaly dragon-like monster and recalled the lines of JNIilton quoted at the beginning of this chapter. The " Scaly horror of his folded tail " did not seem enchant- ing even at this distance of ten to fifteen miles. We could see that much of this glacier was absolutely impossible for sledging, but it appeared that further eastward the inequalities of the ice-surface became less pronounced, and at the extreme eastward extension, at a distance of some twenty-five to tliirty miles from where we stood, the surface appeared fairly smooth. After taking these observations from our point of vantage we retraced our steps. INIawson, in his spiked ski-boots, got dovm the sloping ice-sui'face with com- parative ease, but as I had finnesko on I found it necessary to cut steps with my ice-axe all the way down the glacier ice. It was obvious from what we had seen looking out to sea to the east of our camp that there were large bodies of open water trending shorewards in the form of long lanes at no great distance. The lanes of water were 130 DRYGALSKI GLACIER only partly frozen over, and some of these were inter- posed between us and the Drygalski Glacier. Clearly not a moment was to be lost if we were to reach the Drygalski Glacier before the sea ice broke up. A single strong blizzard would now have converted the whole of the sea ice between us and the Drygalski Glacier into a mass of drifting pack. We obtained from this rocky promontory a fine collection of geological specimens, and here, as elsewhere, got abundant evidence of former much greater extension of the inland ice sheet. The folloAvdng day, November 27, we decided to run our sledges to the east of the large berg, which we had observed on the previous day, and tliis course apparently would enable us to avoid a wide and ugly looking tide-crack extending northwards from the rocky point at our previous camp. The temperature was now as high as from plus 26° to plus 28° Fahr. at mid-day, consequently, the saline snow and ice were all day more or less sticky and slushy. We camped near the large berg. On the morning of November 28 a mother seal with a well-grown baby came up to our tent and sniffed and snorted around its skirt. It seemed about to enter the tent when I hunted it off, and mother and baby, meanwhile, made tracks, in every sense of the word, for the open water. Then we packed up and started our sledges, and pulled them over a treacherous slushy tide-crack, and then headed them round an open lead of water in the sea ice. At 3 a.m. we had lunch near the east end of the big berg. Near here INIackay and Mawson succeeded in catching and killing an Emperor penguin, and took the breast and liver. This bird was caught close to a lane of open water in the sea ice. We found that in the direction of the berg this was thinly frozen over, and for some time it seemed as 131 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC though our progress further north was completely blocked. Eventually we found a place where the ice might just bear our sledges. We strengthened this spot by laying down on it slabs of sea ice and shovelfuls of snow, and when the causeway' was completed — not without Mackay breaking through the ice in one place and very nearly getting a ducking — we rushed our sledges over safely, although the ice was so thin that it bent under their weight. We were thankful to get them both safely to the other side. We now found ourselves amongst some very high sastrugi and hard tough snow. AVe had to drag the sledges over a great number of these, which were nearly at right angles to our course. This work proved ex- tremely fatiguing. The sastrugi were from five to six feet in height. As we were having dinner at the end of our day's sledging we heard a loud report which we considered to be due to the opening of a new crack in the sea ice. We thought it was possible that this crack was caused by some movement of the great active Dry- galski Glacier, now only about four miles ahead of us to the north. We got out of our sleejiing-bag soon after 8 p.m. on the evening of the 28th, and started just before mid- night. The ice-surface over which we were sledging this day had a curious aj^pearance resembling rip])ling stalagmites, or what may be termed ice marble. This opacity appeared to be due to a surface enamel of partly thawed snow. This surface kept continually cracking as we passed over it wdth a noise like that of a whip being cracked. It was evidently in a state of tension, being contracted by the cold which attained its maxi- mum soon after midnight, for, although of course we had for many weeks past been having the midnight sun it was still so low in the heavens towards midnight 132 BITING WIND that there was an appreciable difference in the tempera- ture between midnight and the afternoon. This differ- ence in our case was further accentuated by the cold nocturnal wind from the high plateau to our west. Tliis wind was of the nature of a land breeze on a large scale. There were here two sets of sastrugi, the principal set jDarallel to the jilateau wind and trending here from nearly north-west to south-east; the other set, caused by the blizzard winds, trended from south to north. We were now getting very short of biscuits, and as a consequence were seized Avith food obsessions, being unable to talk about an}i:hing but cereal foods, chiefly cakes of various kinds and fruits. Whenever we halted for a short rest we could discuss nothing but the different dishes with A\'hich we had been regaled in our former Ufetime at various famous restaurants and hotels. The plateau wind blew keenly and strongly all day on November 29. As we advanced further to the north the ice-surface became more and more undulatory, rising against us in great waves hke waves of the sea. EAadently these waves were due to the forward move- ment, and consequent pressure of the Drykalski Glacier. We had a fine view from the tojj of one of these ridges over the surface of the Diygalski Glacier to the edge of the inland plateau. Far inland, perhaps forty or fifty miles away, we could see the great neve fields, which fed the Drygalski Glacier, descending in con- spicuous ice falls, and beyond these loomed dim moun- tains. At the end of this day we hardly knew whether we were on the edge of the sea ice or on the thin edge of the Drygalski Glacier. Probably, I think, we were on very old sea ice, perhaps representing the accumulations of several successive seasons. It fell calm at about 9 p.m., but just before midnight, 133 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC November 29-30, the plateau wind returned, blowing stronger than ever. As the sun during the afternoon had now considerable heating power we tried the ex- periment of putting snow into our aluminium cooking- pot, the exterior of which by tliis time was permanently coated with greasy lamp-black from the blubber lamp, and leaving the pot exposed in the evening to the direct rays of the sun. The lamp-black, of course, formed an excellent absorbent of the sun's heat-rays. On getting out of the sleeping-bag at 9 p.m. on November 29 I found that about half the snow I had put into the cooking-pot had been thawed down by the sun's heat. This, of course, saved both paraffin and blubber. It takes, of course, as much energy to thaw ice or snow at a temperature of 32° Fahr. to form a given volume of water as it does to raise that water from 32° Falii-. up to boiling- point. As our snow and ice used for domestic purposes frequently had a temperature of many degrees below zero, the heat energy necessary to thaw it was greater than that required to raise the water from freezing-point to boiling-point. As we advanced with our sledge on the early morning of November 30, the ice ridges fronting us became higher and steeper, and we had much ado straining with all our might on the steep ice slopes to get the sledges to move, and they skidded a good deal as we dragged them obliquely up the slopes. The plateau wind, too, had freshened, and was now blowing on our port bow at from fifteen to twenty miles an hour, bringing with it a good deal of low drift. At last, about 10 a.m., the plateau wind dropped and with it the drift, and the weather became warm and sunny. The glacier now spread before us as a great billowy sea of pale green ice, with here and there high embank- ments of marble-like neve resembling railway em- 134 ON THE GLACIER bankments. Unfortunately for our progress, the trend of the latter was nearly at right angles to our course. As we advanced still further north the undulations became more and more pronounced, the embankments liigher and steeper. These embankments were now bounded by cliffs from forty to fifty feet in height, with overhanging cornices of tough snow. The cliffs faced northwards. The deep chasms which they pro- duced formed a very serious obstacle to our advance, and we had to make some long detours in order to head them off. On studying one of these chasms it seemed to me that their mode of origin was somewhat as follows : In the first place the surface of the ice had become strongly ridged through forward movement of the glacier, with perhaps differential frictional resistance; the latter causing a series of undulations, the top of each ice undulation would then be further raised by an accumulation of snow partly carried by the west-north- west plateau wind, partly by the southerly blizzard wind. These two force components produced these overhanging cliffs facing the north. For some reason the snow would not lie at the bottoms of the troughs between the undulations. Probably they were swept bare by the plateau wind. It was hardly to be wondered at that we were unable to advance our sledges more than about one mile and a half that day. The next day, December 1, the hauling of our sledges became much more laborious. For half a day we struggled over high sastrugi, hummocky ice ridges, steep undulations of bare blue ice with frequent chasms impassible for a sledge, unless it was unloaded and lowered by Alpine rope. After struggling on for a little over half a mile we decided to camp, and while Mawson took magnetic observations and theodolite angles, Mackay and I reconnoitred ahead for between two and 135 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC tliree miles to see if there was any way at all practicable for the sledge out of these mazes of chasms, undula- tions and seracs. JNlackay and I were roped together for this exploratory work, and fell into about a score of crevasses before we returned to camp, though in this case we never actually fell with our head and shoulders below the lids of the crevasses, as thej' were mostly filled at the surface with tough snow. We had left a black signal flag on top of a conspicuous ice mound as a guide to us as to the whereabouts of the camp, and we found this a welcome beacon A\hen we started to return, as it was by no means an easy task finding one's way across this storm-tossed ice sea, even when one was only a mile or two from the camp. On our return we found that Mawson was just completing his observations. He found that the dip of the needle here was 2y2° off the vertical. We brought the tent down from wliere he had been taking magnetic observations, and treading warily, because of crevasses, set it up again close to our sledge, and had lunch. We noticed in the case of the snow lids over crevasses that they were covered by a very pretty moss-hke growth of pointed ice crystals. This growth was apparently due to a slow upward steaming of moist air from the spaces between the walls of the crevasses below. Possibly during the day the air beneath the snow lids may become slightly warmed, and as the temperature falls at night, particularly under the influence of the plateau wind, a slow percolation of the warm air through the snow lid may take place, and the small amount of moisture in it is deposited on the surface of the lid on coming in contact with the colder air outside. This process, continued from day to day, gradually builds up these moss-like crystals. That afternoon we discussed the situation at some 136 A RETREAT NECESSARY length. It appeared that the Drygalski Glacier must be at least twenty miles in width. If we were to cross it along the course wliich we were now following at the rate of half a mile every half day it would obviously take at least twenty days to get to the other side, and this estimate did not allow for those unforseen delays which experience by this time had taught us were sure to occur. The view wliich JNIackay and I had obtained of the glacier ice ahead of us showed that our difficulties, for a considerable distance, would matenall}' increase. Under these circumstances we were reluctantly forced to the conclusion that our only hope of ultimate success lay in retreat. We accordingly determined to drag the sledges back off the glacier on to the sea ice by the way along which we had come. Early on the morning of December 2 the retreat began. Just before midnight it had been clear and sunny, but as midnight apjiroached a tliick fog sud- denly came up and obscured everything. Consequently we had great difficulty in picking up our old sledge tracks as we retreated over the glacier ice. The weather was still very tliick and foggy at 3 a.m., but a little before 6 A.M. the fog cleared off and the sun shone through. We had now reached the southern edge of the glacier, and were back on the old undulating sea ice. We turned our sledges eastwards following parallel w^th the glacier edge. Immediately on our left rose large rounded hummocky masses of ice belonging to the Drygalski Glacier, and from fifty to sixty feet in height. The sky, meanwhile, had become again overcast with dense cumulus which drifted across rapidly from a south-easterly direction. The following daj^ we still travelled eastwards parallel to the southern edge of the Drygalski Glacier. The sledging was chiefly over soft snow, ankle deep, 137 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC with occasional high snow sastrugi, and here and there a patch of rij)ple(l sea ice. There could be no doubt about it being sea ice tliis time because in one place, at the foot of one of these steep snow ridges, we noticed a pool of water only thinly frozen over, and on breaking the ice I tasted the water and found it was very salt. Towards the end of this day's sledging we passed a long inlet trending north-westerly. This inlet was floored with sea ice, and made a long, deep indentation in the glacier ice. After our hoosh, and before turning into the sleeping-bag, ]\Iawson and 1 went on to the north over some high hummocky ridges of the Dryalski Glacier to look ahead. JNlawson, after a while, returned to camp, while I turned north-westwards to explore the inlet. After falling into a few crevasses which traversed the great billowy hummocks of blue glacier ice in all directions, I got down into the inlet, and on following it north-westwards, found that it gradually passed into a definite glacial river channel, and became quite un- practicable for sledging. It was quite clear from the steeji banks of this channel, cut out of the hard snow neve and glacier ice, that during the few weeks of thaw in this part of the Antarctic, great volumes of thaw water must rush doA\ii off the higher parts of the glacier towards the sea, and in their ])assage they tear out deep canyon-like channels in the glacier ice and neve. This channel trended at first exactly in the direction in which we wished to make, but it was obvious that it was an impossible route for the sledges. We decided on December 4 that we had better go on an extended reconnoitring expedition before we again risked landing our sledge in a labyrinth of pressure ridges and crevasses. After hauling our sledges for a little less than a mile, and meeting with steep slopes of snow dunes, we halted. While INIackay sewed one of the tent-poles, 138 REGION OF CREVASSES wliich had become loosened, back into its place in the canvas crown which held the tops of the tent-poles together, ]Mawson and I climbed on to some hum- mocks a little north of the camp to see wliich route would be best to follow on our recomioitring journey. After lunch we all three started with our ice-axes and the Alpine rope. We travelled up a broad bottomed snow valley for about two miles trendmg in the direction of jNIount Larsen. Then for a little over a mile beyond it trended more to the right in the direction of Mount Nansen. Here we got into difficult country, the snow surface being succeeded by steep-sided hummocks, rolls and ridges of blue glacier ice, with occasional deep chasms and very numerous crevasses. We fell into numbers of the latter up to our tliighs, but the snow- lids as yet were just strong enough to stop us going deeper. Mawson opened up one of these snow lids with his ice-axe, and Me noticed that the Ud was from one to one and a half feet thick, while the crevasse was thirty feet wide and of vast depth. JNIuch of the ground over which we were travelling rang hollow, and was evidently only roofed over by a tliin layer of tough snow. Altogether we travelled about four miles to the north of our camp, but could see no sign from there of any sea to the north of us. Meanwliile, ^Mackay diverged somewhat to the west, chmbed on the top of a high ice pyramid, but was unable to see any trace of the sea beyond. We now returned at a smart pace back to camp, arri^-ing about 9 a.:m. We were all pretty tired, and, as usual before entering the tent, we took off our spiked ski-boots so as to avoid puncturing the waterproof floorcloth, and put on finnesko. Hoosh was prepared, and we had a good meal of it, as well as of fried seal meat with blubber and seal oil. It was evident now that even if we were to succeed 139 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC in crossing the Urygalski Glacier, the passage would occupy a good many days, even under the most favour- able circumstances, and our provisions were running very^ short. After we tuiished our hoosh, ^Slawson, with the field-glasses, sighted a seal near to the big berg to the south of us, which we hiul passed some five days previously. We decided that we would go after this seal the next day; meanwhile, the seal disajjpeared. Fearing that a blizzard might spring up on the following day, I proposed to go that evening out to the berg in search of seals, but ]Mackay kindly volunteered instead and started off with his riick-sack and ice-axe and a small allowance of provisions, consisting of some cooked seal meat, biscuits and chocolate. He had a long journey before him. AVHiile he was gone 1 was chiefly occupied m dividing up our rations into half-ration lots. At 5 P.M. I was attracted by the notes of a penguin behind an ice mound at no great distance. Itousing !Mawson, we both went in jjursuit and after a long and severe chase, captured an Adelie penguin. At about midnight, December 4-5, ISIackay re- turned to camj) after his fourteen miles' tramp over the sea ice. He brought back with him a most welcome addition to our larder in the shape of over thirty pounds of seal meat, liver and seal blubber. He reported that he had had great difficulty in crossing the large ice- crack where we had constructed the causeway for our sledge some five days previously, and he said that it would now have been impossible to have got the sledge over it. Mackay had been up over seventeen hours, and had been sledging, travelling over heavy ice, and carrying his heavy load of seal meat wth only short intervals for meals. He had travelled a distance of about twenty-four miles, and of course under the cir- cumstances was much exhausted and badly in need of 140 A NEW ROUTE a long rest. By securing the so much needed additional food-sui^ply, he had rendered us an extremely important service. It now, of course, became necessary to give him the needed rest on the following day. Accorduigly, the earlier jiart of December 6 we spent in the sleeping- bag. Soon after midnight, December 5-6, we left our camp on the south side of the Drykalski Glacier, and struck across the liigh ridges of blue ice into the small valley in the glacier \\hich we had prospected two days pre- \'iously. As usual a keen wind was blowmg off the plateau at this time of the morning, but the tempera- ture soon rose to plus 23' Falu'. at 7.15 a.m. The sky was overcast with heavy stratus and cumulus clouds, especially in the direction of Cape Wasliington. We passed over a considerable number of crevasses without any serious accident. The day's sledging was hea\y on account of the strongly undulating surface of the ice and the quantity of soft snow in the ice valley on the surface of the Drygalski Glacier. The following day, December 7, was also dull and lowering ■with verj'^ dense cumulus clouds over Cape W^ashington and ^Mounts INIelbourne and Nansen. W^e inferred that tliis dense cumulus was due to the presence of open water between the Drygalski Glacier and Cape Wasliington, and were not a little anxious as to whether, in the event of the sea ice having all drifted out on the north side of the Drygalski Glacier, it would be possible for us to travel shorewards on the surface of the glacier itself, when we got to the other side. W^e encountered many precipitous slopes from thirty to forty feet deep, often with overhanging cornices, barring our northward progress like those already met with in the part of the glacier from which Me had retreated. These over- 141 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC hanging cliffs, however, were not quite as serious as tliose wliich we had left beliind, and by making con- siderable detours we managed to circumvent them. At last we seemed to have got amongst an impassable belt of liigh crevassed ice ridges with precipitous chasms between. After a good deal of reconnoitring ahead a clue out of the labyrinth was discovered in the form of a series of high snow ridges which led backwards and for\vards, in and out, amongst the high-pressure ridges, and eventually enabled us to land our sledges in a broad crevassed valley on the glacier surface. After the hoosh at the end of our day's sledging, JNIawson and I walked about two miles, looking out for a track for the next morning. The outlook was by no means encouraging, as the surface still bristled with huge ice undulations as far as the eye could reach. It was just as though a stormy sea had suddenly been frozen solid, with the troughs between its large waves here and there partly filled \vith snow, while the crests of the waves were raised by hard ridges of drift snow, terminating in overhanging cliffs, facing the north. It was obvious, too, that the glacier ice over which we would have to travel, was still very heavily crevassed. As we returned, a mild blizzard sprang up from the south-south-west, bringing low drift with it. The blizzard cleared off in about an hour and a half, and the sun came out strong and hot, and rapidly thawed the snow on our tent and on the food-bags stored on our sledges. The follo-n^ng day, December 8, we dug away the drift snow piled by the bhzzard against our sledges, and were pleased to find that the day was beautifully fine and sunny Avith a light breeze from 142 OPEN WATER AGAIN the west-south-west. The sledging was very heavy up and down steep ice slopes with much soft snow between. jSIawson had a slight attack of snow bhndness on December 9. The day was so warm that we even felt it oppressive, the temperature at midnight being as high as plus 19° Fahr. The glacier ice kept cracking from time to time with sharp reports. Possibly this may have been due to the expansion of the ice under the influence of the hot sun. At one spot the sledges had to be dragged up a grade of 1 in 3 over smooth blue glacier ice. This was exceedingly heavy work. At last, when we were near to our time for camping, oSIackay, on going on a short distance ahead to reconnoitre with the field-glasses, sighted open water on the northern edge of the Drygalski Ice Barrier, about three to four miles distant. He announced his discovery with shouts of edXaTza, edXaTza, which thrilled us now as of old they thrilled the Ten Thousand. It was no sparkling waters of the Euxine that had met liis gaze, but a Black Sea nevertheless, for so it appeared as its inky waves heaved under the leaden sky. But what a joy to have reached once more that friendly water world that went up by many a creek and river to our homes. It was now clear to us that we could not hope for sea ice over which to sledge westwards to the shore, where we proposed to make our final depot before attempting the ascent of the great inland plateau in order to reach the INIagnetic Pole. During the day we were cheered by a visit from several snow petrels, which flew around our camp, as well as from three skua guUs. Mawson managed to snare one of the skuas with a fishing-line, but it got away when he was hauling in the line. Our sledging 143 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC that day was not quite so heavy ; the ice undulations were less formidable, and the belts of snow between became wider and firmer. Just after lunch a beautiful Wilson's petrel flew around us. December 10 saw us still struggUng to cross the Drygalski Glacier. We could see that we were now on a pretty high ridge, but the highest part of the glacier now lay to the south and therefore behind us. We were much rejoiced towards the end of the day's sledging to find ourselves at last off the true glacier type of surface, and on to what may be described as an undulating barrier type. This improvement of the surface to our west enabled us to do what we had been longing to do for the last six days, turn our sledge westwards. At first we had to incline somewhat to the north-west in order to skirt round some liigh ice ridges. Then, after making some northing, we were able to go nearly due west. The snow surface was largely of the pie-crvist type; our ski-boots broke through it at every step and we sank in up to our ankles. At inter- vals we still crossed low ridges of solid glacier ice, traversed by crevasses. All the crevasses were more or less roofed over with tough snow lids. These lids sometimes were slightly in relief, or sometimes showed slight depressions in the general surface. In such areas the snow lids rung hollow as the sledges travelled over them. We found the snow lids always most treacherous close to either wall of the crevasse, and we frequently fell partially through at such spots, but had no very bad falls in this part of the glacier. The following day. December 11, we had a fine view of " Terra Xova " Bay, and as far as could be judged the edge of the Drygalski Ice Barrier on the north was now scarcely a mile distant. We were much surprised 144 IN A CREVASSE at the general appearance of the outHne of the Ice Barrier coastal ice and coast-line ahead of us. It did not agree, as far as we could judge, with the shape of this region as shown on the Admiralty chart, and we could see no certain indication whatever of what was called, on the chart, " the low, sloping shore." Accordingly we halted a little earlier than usual in order to reconnoitre. There was a conspicuous ice mound about half a mile to the north-west of this camp. Mackay started off with the field-glasses for a general look round from this point of vantage. Mawson started changing his plates in the sleeping-bag, while I prepared to go out with my sketch-book and get an outline panoramic view of the grand coast ranges now in sight. Crevasses of late had been so few and far between that I thought it was an unnecessary pre- caution to take my ice-axe with me, but I had scarcely gone more than six yards from the tent, when the lid of a crevasse suddenly collapsed under me at a point where there was absolutely no outward or visible sign of its existence, and let me down suddenly nearly up to my shoulders. I only saved myself from going right down by throwing my arms out and staying myself on the snow lid on either side. The Hd was so rotten that I dared not make any move to extricate myself, or I might have been precipitated into the abyss. For- tunately INIawson was close at hand, and on my calling to him, he came out of our sleeping-bag, and bringing an ice-axe, chipped a hole in the firm ice on the edge of the crevasse nearest to me. He then inserted the cliisel edge of the ice-axe in the hole and holding on to the pick point, swung the handle towards me: grasping this, I was able to extricate myself and climbed out on to the solid ice. It was a beautiful day, the coast-line showing up Vol. n.— w 145 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC very finely, and I was able to get from the ice mound a sketch of the mountains. JNIawson also took three photographs, making a panoramic view of this part of the coast. He was able, also, to get a valuable series of angles wth the theodolite, which showed that the shape of the coast-line here necessitated serious modification of the existing chart. PROFESSOR DAMD'S NARRATIVE (Continued) Die schonste Jungfrau sitzet Dort oben wunderbar, Ihr goldnes Geschmeide blitzet, Sie Kammt ihr goldnes Haar. Sie Kammt es mit goldenem Kamme, Und singt ein Lied dabei; Das hat ein wimdersamej Gewaltige melodei. Heine. "C^AR beyond the golden mountains to the north and *■ west lay our goal, but as yet we knew not whether we were destined to fail or succeed. JMeanwhile no time was to be lost in hurrj^ing on and preparing for a dash on to the plateau, if we were to deserve success. The following day, December 12, we sledged on for half a mile until we were a little to the west of the con- spicuous ice mound previously described. We con- cluded that as this ice mound commanded such a general view of the surrounding country, it must itself be a conspicuous object to any one approaching the Drygalski Glacier by sea from the north; and so we decided that as there was still no trace of the " low, sloping shore " of the chart, and that as the spot at which we had now arrived was very near to the area so named on the chart, we would make our depot here. We intended to leave at this depot one of our sledges with any spare equipment, a httle food, and all our 147 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC geological specimens, and proceed thence shorewards and inland with one sledge only. \Ve estimated that we still had fully 220 miles to travel from this depot on the Drygalski Glacier to the Magnetic Pole. It was, therefore, necessary now to make preparations for a journey there and back of at least 440 miles. We thought that with detours the journey might possibly amount to 500 miles. We could see, even from our distance of from twenty to thirty miles from the shore-hne, that we had no light task before us in order to win a way on to the high inland plateau. Before we knew that the whole of the sea ice had gone out between us and Mount Melbourne, we had contemplated the pos- sibility of travelling further northwards along the coast on sea ice, down to a spot marked on the chart as Gerlache Inlet. This inlet we now saw was situated amongst a wilderness of high sharp jagged mountain peaks rising to heights of from 6000 to 8000 ft. above sea-level, and as it could now be approached only from the land, it was now practically inaccessible. Nearer to us, and to the north-west of our position on the Drygalski Ice Barrier, was the giant form of Mount Nansen, one of the grandest and most imposing of all the mountains seen by us in the Antarctic. Further to the left and nearly due west of us was another fine dark mountain massif, Blount Larsen. Between Mount Larsen and ^Mount Nansen was a vast glacier with a rugged surface, steep ice falls and large crevasses. About midway between Mounts Larsen and Nansen was a huge nunatak of black rock, rising abruptly from the ice surface at a point several miles inland from the shore-line. Further to the left of Mount Larsen was another glacier less formidable in appearance and smaller in size than the Mount Nansen Glacier. This 148 SEAL AND PENGUIN MEAT terminated near the coast in rather a steep slope, and gradually became confluent with the Drygalski Glacier. To the south of this glacier, wliich may be termed the JNIount Larsen Glacier, was another great mountain massif with ^Mount Belligshausen on the north and JNIount Neumaer on the south. The foot-liils of Blount Neumaer terminated in steep precipices forming the northern wall of the Drygalski Glacier. Our first business was to lay in a stock of provisions sufficient to last us for our 500 miles of further journeying. jVlackay started for a small inlet about a mile and a half distant from our camp, where he found a number of seals and Emperor and Adelie penguins. He killed some seals and Emperor penguins, and loaded a good supply of seal steak, blubber, liver and penguin steak and liver on to the sledge. In the course of his hunting, he fell through an ice bridge, at a tide-crack, up to his waist in the water. INIawson and I went out to meet him when the sledge was loaded, and helped to drag it back to camp. We found it very hot in the tent, the weather being fine and sunny. It was dehghtful to be able at last to rest our weary limbs after the many weeks of painful toil over the sea ice and the Drygalski Glacier. We started cooking our meat for the sledging trip on the following day, December 13, our intention being to take with us provisions for seven weeks, in addition to equipment, including scientific instruments, &c. We estimated that the total weight would amount to about 670 lb. We were doubtful, in our then stale and weak- ened condition, whether we should be able to pull such a load over the deep loose snow ahead of us, and then drag it up the steep ice slopes of the great glaciers which guarded the route to the plateau. The sun was so hot that it started melting the fat out of our pemmican bags, so that the fat actually 149 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC oozed through not only the canvas of the bags them- selves, but also tlirough the thick brown canvas of the large fortnightly food-bags, which formed a sort of tank for containing the pemmican bags, and we found it necessary at once to shade the food-bags from the sun by piling our Burberry garments over them. Leather straps, tar rope, tins, sledge harness, lamp-black off the blubber cooker, warmed by the rays of the sun, all commenced to sink themselves more or less rapidly into the neve. We unpacked and examined both sledges, and found that of the two, the runners of the Duff sledge were the less damaged. As the result of the rough treatment to wliich it had recently been subjected, one of the iron brackets of this sledge was broken, but we replaced it with a sound one from the discarded Christmas Tree sledge. The following day, December 14, we were still busj'- preparing for the great trek on the morrow. Mackay was busy cooking Emperor penguin and seal meat for the plateau journey; Mawson was employed in trans- ferring the scientific instrument boxes and the Venesta boxes in which our Primus lamp and other light gear were packed from the Clii'istmas Tree sledge on to the DufF sledge. He also scraped the runners of the sledge with pieces of broken glass in order to make their surfaces as smooth as possible. I was busy fixing up depot flags, writing letters to the Conunander of the Nimrod, Lieutenant Shackleton, and my family, and fixing up a milk tin to serve as a post office on to the depot flag-pole. When all our preparations were completed we drew the Christmas Tree sledge with some of our spare clothing, our blubber cooker, a biscuit tin with a few broken biscuits, and all our geological specimens to the top of the ice mound, about a quarter 150 ANOTHER BLIZZARD of a mile distant. On reaching the top of the mound we cut trenches with our ice-axes in which to embed the runners of the sledge, fixed the runners in these grooves, piled the cliipped ice on top, then lashed to the sledge, very carefully, the flag-pole about six feet high, with the black flag displayed on the top of it. The wmd blew keenly off" the plateau befoi-e our labours were completed. We aU felt quite sorry and downcast at parting with this sledge, which by this time seemed to us hke a bit of home. We then returned to camp. Just previous to depoting this sledge, 3Iackay fixed another small depot flag close to the open sea a few yards back from the edge of the ice cliff. Soon after we had turned into our sleeping-bag, a gentle blizzard started to blow from west by south. This continued aU night, increasing in intensity in the morning. We were able to see great whale-backed clouds, very much hke those AN^ith which we had been familiar over JNIount Erebus, forming over Blount Nansen. As tliis blizzard wind was blowing partly against us, we decided that we would wait until it had either slackened ofi* or decreased in force. The whole of the next day, unfortunately, the blizzard continued. The sun was very hot, and as the result of its heat we were to-day for the first time subject to a new trouble. The blizzard, of course, drifted snow all over our tent; and a strong thaw set in on the side of it ^\hich faced the sun. The \\ind, flapping the canvas of the tent against the tent-poles, brought the thaw water through on to the poles facing the sun. Inside the tent, however, the temperature was just below freezing-point, and as the water started to trickle down the poles it froze. With the flapping of the tent backwards and forwards against the tent- poles, the small ridge of ice on the upper surface of each 151 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC tent-pole became drawn out into sharp, saw-like teeth, and these started cutting through the canvas. All through tliis day, consequently, we had to be con- tinually gettnig out of the sleeping-bag and running our hands down the tent-poles so as to rub off the ice teeth. The bhzzard continued till midnight of December 15-16, when its force markedly decreased. We break- fasted accordingly just after midnight. I dug out the sledge from the snow which had drifted over it, and JVIackay cached some seal meat in an adjoining ice mouth. At last, about 7 a.m., we made a start and were delighted to find that, chiefly as the result of the tlu-ee days' rest in camp, we were able to pull our sledge — weighing about 670 lb. — witli comparative ease. The snow, though soft, had become crusted over the sur- face tlirough the thaw brought on by the blizzard, followed by freezing during the succeeding cold night. The sledging was certainly heavy, but not nearly so distressing as that which we had recently experienced in crossing the Drygalski Glacier. The " tablecloth was being laid " on the top of Mount Nansen in the form of a remarkable flattish thin white fleecy cloud. It looked as though a high-level blizzard was blowing over the summit. We steered towards the great black nunatak midway between Mount Nansen and IMount Larsen, as INIawson and Mackay both considered that in this direction la}^ our cliief hope of finding a prac- tical route to the high plateau. On December 17 we had a very interesting day. The sledging was rather heavy, being chiefly over soft snow and pie-crust snow. It was difficult to decide sometimes whether we were on fresh-water ice or on sea ice. Here and there we crossed ice ridges, evidently pressure ridges of some kind. These would be traversed by crevasses which showed the ice in such places to be 152 AN ICE BRIDGE at least thirty to forty feet in thickness. Close to our final camping-ground for the day was a long shallow valley or barranca; it was from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty yards in width. The near side was steep, though not too steep for us to have let our sledge down; but the far side was precipitous, being bounded by an overhanging cliff from twenty to thirty feet high. The floor of tliis vaUey was deeply and heavily crevassed. This sunken valley, therefore, formed a serious obstacle to our advance. While Mackay was preparing the hoosh Mawson travelled to the right, and I to the left along this valley seeking for a possible crossing place. At last Mawson found a narrow spot where there had been an ice bridge over the valley, but this had become cracked through at the centre. It was nevertheless strong enough to bear our sledge. Near this ice bridge Mawson stated that he noticed muddy material containing what appeared to be foraminifera, squeezed up from below. The day had been calm and clear, and we were able to get detailed sketches of this part of the coast range. The following day we made for the ice bridge with our sledge, and found that the crack crossing it had opened to a width of eighteen inches during the night. The far side had become too, somewhat higher than the near side. We had httle difficulty in getting the sledge over, and after crossing several other cracks in the ice and neve without mishap reached once more a fairly level surface. A light plateau wind was now blowing from off the Mount Nansen glacier. The hard snow surface was furrowed by two very definite sets of sastiTjgi, one set coming from a south-westerly direction, and apparently caused by blizzard wind, the other from nearly north-west. The latter were evidently 153 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC due to strong ruslics ol" cold air from the high plateau down the broad valley occupied by the Blount Nansen glacier. That day we passed over a series of pressure ridges with their steeper sides directed towards the north-west. At the bottom of these steep slopes the ice was often crevassed, and sometimes we had some little difficulty in crossing them. They were probably due to pressure from the Drygalski Glacier. At lunch time, soon after midnight, we reached some very interesting glacial moraines in the form of large to small blocks, mostly of eruptive rock, em- bedded in the ice. It was probable, from their general distribution, that they formed part of an old moraine of Mount Nansen, though now about fii'teen miles in advance of the present glacier front. A conspicuous rock amongst the boulders was a greenish-grey to green- ish-black diorite, very rich in sphene. The brown crystals of sphene were frequently intercrystallised with the felspars, and gave the rock a veiy pretty appearance. Small fragments of sandstone and clay shale were also represented in these moraines. The larger blocks were up to seven feet in diameter, and formed chiefly of reddish porphyritic granite. We collected a nimiber of specimens from this moraine. Fine rolls of cumulus clouds were gathering to our north-east. The day was calm with occasional gleams of sunshine. After the plateau wind had died down about 2 P.M. it commenced to snow a little, the snow coming from between south-west and west-south-west. At midnight on December 19 we started sledging in the falling snow, guided partly by the direction of the wind, partly by that of the pressure ridges and crevasses, occasional!}^ taking compass bearings. Before we had gone far we reached a tide-crack with open water three to four feet wide. There was also a width 154 MAWSON IN A CREVASSE of about eighteen feet of recently formed thin ice at this tide-crack. We tasted the water in tliis crack and found that it was distinctly salt. It was clear then that at tliis part of our journey we were traveUing over sea ice. About half a mile further on we reached another open tide-crack, and had to make a considerable detour in order to get over it. The surface of the ice was now thawing, and we trudged through a good deal of slushy snow, with here and there shallow pools of water as blue as the Blue Grotto of Capri. On the far side of this second tide-crack, and beyond the blue pools, we reached a large pressure ridge forming a high and steep scarped slope barring our progress. Its height was about eighty feet. There was nothing for it, if we were to go forward, but to drag our heavy sledge up this steep slope. It was extremely exhausting woi'k, and we were forced to halt a few times, and had to take the sledge occasionally somewhat obliquely up the slope where it was very steep. In such cases the sledge frequently skidded. Our troubles were increased by the fact that this ice slope was traversed by numerous crevasses, which became longer and wider the further we advanced in this direction. At last we got to the slope, only to see in the dim light that there were a succession of similar slopes ahead of us, becoming continually higher and steeper. The ice, too, became a perfect network of crevasses, some of which were partly open, but most of them covered over with snow lids. Suddenly, when crossing one of these snow lids, just as he was about to reach the firm ice on the other side, there was a slight crash and IVIawson instantly dis- appeared from sight. Fortunately the toggle at the end of his sledge rope held, and he was left swinging in the empty space between the walls of the crevasse, being suspended by his harness attached to the sledge rope. 155 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Mackay and I hung on to the rope in case it should part at the toggle, where it was somewhat worn. Mean- while, Mawson called out from below to pass him down the Alpine rope. Leaving Mackay to keep hold of the toggle end of JVIawson's harness rope, 1 hurried back to the sledge, which was about ten feet behind, and just as I was trying to disengage a coil of rope Mawson called out that he felt he was going. 1 ran back and helped JNIackay to keep a strain on JNIawson's har- ness rope. Mawson then said that he was all right. Probably at the time he felt he was going the rope had suddenly cut back through the lid of the crevasse and let him down for a distance of about a couple of feet. Altogether he was about eight feet down below the level of the snow lid. While I now held on to JNIawson's harness rope Mackay hurried back to the sledge, and with his Swedish knife cut the lashing around the Alpine rope, and started uncoiling it, making a bowline at the end in wliich JNIawson could put his foot. Meanwhile Mawson secured some ice crystals from the side of the crevasse, and threw them up for examination. The Alpine rope having been lowered, Mawson put liis foot into the bowline and got INIackay to haul his leg up as high as his bent knee would allow it to go, then, calling to him to hold tight the rope, INIawson, throwing the whole weight of his body on to it, raised himself about eighteen inches by means of his arms so as to be able to straighten his right leg. ^Meanwhile, I took in the slack of his harness rope. He then called to me to hold tight the harness rope, as he was going to rest his whole weight on that, so as to take the strain off the Alpine rope. Mackay then was able to pull the Alpine rope up about eighteen inches, which had the effect of bending up ]Mawson's right leg as before. Mackay then held fast 156 DANGEROUS TRAVELLING the Alpine rope, and Mawson again straightened him- self up on it, resting his whole weight on that rope. Thus httle by little he was hoisted up to the under surface of the snow lid, but as his harness rope had cut back a narrow groove in this snow lid several feet from where the snow gave away under him ^lawson now found his head and shoulders pressing against the under side of the snow lid, and had some difficulty in breaking through this in order to get his head out. At last the top of his head emerged, a sight for which ^lackay and I were truly thankful, and presently he was able to get his arms up, and soon his body followed, and he got safely out on the near side of the crevasse. After this episode we were extra cautious in crossing the crevasses, but the ice was simply seamed -vnth them. T^\ice when our sledge was being dragged up ice-pres- sure ridges it rolled over sideways with one runner in a crevasse, and once the whole sledge all but disappeared into a crevasse, the snow lid of which had partly collapsed under its weight. Had it gone down completely it would certainly have dragged the three of us dowTi with it, as it weighed nearly one-third of a ton. It was clear that these high-pressure ridges and numerous crevasses were caused now, not by the Drygalski, but by the Nansen Glacier. It was now somewhat fogg\', but occasionally the fog and mist lifted, and in the distance one caught glimpses of magnificent cliffs of reddish brown granite, with wisps and wreathes of white mist hanging aroimd the sunm:iits. The view reminded me of the Grampians in Scotland near Ossian's Cave at the Pass of Glencoe. Later on in the day we saw in the dim light that we had before us a long steep descent into an ice valley, which appeared to be hea\'ily crevassed at the bottom. As we were uncertain whether we could get across it at 157 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC this spot we left our tent and sledge, and reconnoitred aliead, taking with us the Alpine rope and our ice-axes. We found a way of crossing this valley, but could see that the ice-surface ahead of us was apparently worse than ever. We returned to our tent and sledge, and put up the tent, and chopped lumps of ice off the glacier with which to load the skirt, as no snow was available at the time. It was just conmiencing to snow, and wind was freshening from the south-west. We were now in a perfect labyrinth of crevasses and pressure ridges. Snow continued falling heavily accompanied by a blizzard wind for tlie rest of that day and the whole of the succeeding night. Inside the tent we experienced some discomfort through the dripping of water caused by the tha\\-ing snow. As usual during a blizzard the temperature rose, and although the sun's heat rays were partly intercepted by the falling snow quite suffi- cient warmth reached the side of the tent nearest the sun to produce this tliaw. Pools of water lodged on the foot of our sleeping-bag, but we were able to keep the head of it fairly dry by fixing up our Burberry blouses and trousers across the poles on the inside of the tent so as to make a temporary waterproof lining just above our heads. We were all thoroughly ex- hausted, and slept until about 7 a.m. the following day, December 20. By that time the snow cleared off. About six inches of snow had fallen, and was lying deeply drifted in places. We dug away the drift snow from around the sledges, and after the morning hoosh held a council of war. The question was whether we should continue pulling on in the direction of the nunatak rising from the Mount Nansen Glacier, or Avhether we should retreat and tr\' some other way which might lead us to the plateau. ^lackay was in favour of hauling ahead over the IVIount Nansen Glacier, while 158 A SECOND RETREAT Mawson and I favoured retreat, and trying a passage in some other direction. At last we decided to retreat. Our fortunes now, so far as the possibihty of reachmg the Magnetic Pole were concerned, seemed at a low ebb. It was already December 20, and we knew that we had to be back at our depot on the Drygalski Glacier not later than February 1 or 2, if there was to be a reasonable chance of our being picked up by the Nimrod. We had not yet climbed more than 100 ft. or so above sea-level, and even this little altitude was due to our having climbed ice-pressure ridges, which from time to time dijDped down again to sea-level. We knew that we had to travel at least 480 to 500 miles before we could hope to get to the JNIagnetic Pole and back to our depot, and there remained only six weeks in which to accom- plish this journey, and at the same time we would have yet to pioneer a road up to the high plateau. Now that everji;liing was buried under soft snow it was clear that sledging would be far slower and more laborious than ever. We soon proved that this was the case, for after starting the sledge it gathered masses of soft snow around it and under it as it went, and at the end of 200 yards we had to halt for a temporary rest, hoist the sledge up on one side and knock away the masses of clogged snow from underneath it. This had to be repeated every few hundred yards, and after we had gone half a mile we decided to leave the sledge and go ahead with ice-axes and Alpine rope to reconnoitre. We started off in a south-westerly direction with the intention of seeing whether the Mount Bellingshausen Glacier slope would be more practicable for our sledges than the Mount Nansen Glacier. We trudged tlirough soft thawing snow with here and there shallow pools of water on the surface of the ice. Tliis, of course, 159 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC saturated our socks, which froze as the temperature fell during the night. After proceeding about two and a half miles we observed with the field-glasses that the foot of the Mount Bellingshausen Glacier was not only steep but broken and rugged. We decided to examine what appeared to be a narrow stretch of snow mantling around the base of a granite mountain, one of the offshoots from the Mount Larsen massif. After crossing a good deal of pressure ice and crevasses, and floundering amongst the boulders of old moraines we reached some shallow lakes of thawed snow near the junction between the sea ice and the foot of the snow slope for which we had been steering. In the neighbourhood of the moraines, which here consisted of great blocks of eruptive rock partly or wholly im- bedded in ice, the blocks became so warmed up by the sun's heat that they partially thawed the ice around, and in some cases above them: and so when one stepped near one of these blocks, or over a concealed block, the ice gave way with a crash letting one down a depth of from one to three feet. At one place, before reaching the shallow lakes, we found quite a strong stream of water flowing just under the surface of the ice. This was evidently supplied from thaw water from the slopes near the shore-line. After paddhng, unwillingly, in the shallow lakes we reached the foot of what proved now to be not a snow slope but a small branch glacier. This was covered with a considerable depth of soft newly drifted snow, and we found the ascent in consequence verj' tiring as we sunk at each step in the soft snow over our knees. At last we attained an altitude of 1200 ft. above sea- level, and were then high enough to see that the upper part of this branch glacier joined the Mount Bellings- hausen Glacier at about 800 ft. higher and some half 160 Depot on the Drygalski Barrier 'Backstair's Passage" on the Ascent from the Sea-Ice to the Plateau. Mount Larsen on the Left SEARCHING FOR A PATH mile further on. We were well pleased with this dis- covery, but as the glacier front ascended about 1500 ft. in less than a mile we did not look forward to the task of getting our heavy sledge up this steep slope, encumb- ered as it was with soft deej) thawing snow. On our return to the shore-line down the glacier slope we discovered that it was slightly crevassed in places, though not heavily so. At the foot of the glacier, and a short distance towards our camp, we found a moraine gravel. This was intermixed with a dark marine clay containing numerous remains of serpulje, pecten shells, bryozoa, foraminifera, &c. Mac- kay also found a j^erfect sjjecimen of a solitary coral, allied to Delto-cyathus, and also a Waldlieimia. All these specimens were carefully preserved and brought into camp. While we were collecting these specimens we could hear the roar of many mountain torrents descending the steejD granite slopes of the great moun- tain mass to the south of our branch glacier. Occa- sionally, too, we heard the boom and crash of an ava- lanche descending from the high mountain top. Such sounds were strange to our ears, accustomed so long to the almost perfect solitude and silence of the Antarctic, hitherto broken only by the bleating of baby seals and the call of the penguins. Mawson discovered in another part of the moraine, nearer to our camp, a bright green mineral forming tliin crusts on a very pretty quartz and felspar porphyiy. These we decided to examine more carefully on the morrow. We were all thoroughly exhausted after the day's work, and JNIackay had a rather bad attack of snow- blindness. For some time after we got into the sleep- ing-bag, and before we dozed off, we could still hear the intermittent roar of avalanches like the booming of distant artillery. Vol. n.-u 161 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC The folloAving day, December 22, we picked our way with our sledge cautiously amongst the crevasses and over the pressure mounds, the traversing of which gave us some trouble in places, and eventually reached a fairly good track along the ice parallel to the moraine from which we had been collecting the day previous. We found a large pool of thaw water on the surface of the ice. This was fed by a sub-glacial stream coming from an old rock moraine. We could hear this stream rolling the pebbles along in its channel. At another point the moraine showed a remarkable cone, which at first sight we took for a tjq^ical esker, but a nearer examination revealed the fact that the whole cone, with the exception of the exterior, was formed of solid ice with only an outer coating of sand, mud and gravel associated with abundant marine organisms similar to those collected bj' us the previous day. We halted when we arrived opposite the green mineral observed by ^lawson the previous day. We collected a good deal of this. At first sight we thought it was the common mineral epidote, but its hardness and the fact that it had turned yellow, where it was weathered, made this hypothesis untenable. The green crusts formed by it were about one fourteenth to one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness, and it was evidently fairly Avidely distributed in that locahty, as numerous large joint faces of the quartz and felspar porphyry were completely coated with it. A little further on we came upon an enormous silicious sponge, eighteen inches by two feet in diameter, adhering firmly to one of the moraine boulders. We secured specimens of this. Altogether the locality was most fascinating, and we longed to have been able to spend more time there. Amongst other interesting problems was the question 162 SOME PROBLEMS as to how the material of the sea floor came to be up- hfted here to a height of twenty to thirty feet or more above sea-level, and as to how the marine sediments came to be resting on an old conical surface of dense ice. We tested the latter to see whether it was of salt- or of fresh- water origin; it was not distinctly saline, though slightly so — much as glacier ice would be if it were sprayed by the sea. None of us could account for this curious phenomenon. It seemed as though the marine muds had been subjected to considerable pressure, as numbers of the fossils in it were triturated and shattered. It is of course just possible that in the forward movement of the jNIount Xansen Glacier it may have pushed up some of the sea bottom above sea- level, and stiU there remains the question as to how masses of ice came to find their way under the morauie sediments. It is possible that after an extensive glacia- tion of this region the glacier ice from inland spread over the spot where tliis moraine is now situated, but on the retreat of the ice inland, while stiU a small thickness of ice was left in this bay, a submergence ensued, and during that submergence a marine mud was deposited over the ice together with the larger organisms found in association with the mud. Then there was an advance of the ice once more, and moraines of large blocks of rock were laid down over the top of the moraine muds and the relics of the ancient glacier ice. Then once more the ice retreated to its present position leaving the moraine blocks and moraine muds of the old ice m the relative situations mentioned. As we skirted the foot of the small branch glacier we noticed several small puffs of snow near the top angle of the snow slope which we proposed to escalade. Just as we were pulling our sledge to the foot of this slope the puff of wind with drift snow developed suddenly into a 163 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC strong blizzard. We pulled in against tliis with great diffieulty for half an hour, then eaniped at the foot of the slope. The blizzard with its heavy drift snow and the occasional gleams of warm sunshine cast much drift over our tent with accompanyuig thaw. Con- secjuently inside the tent water dripped heavily all over our clotliing and sleeping-bag. Fortunately we were just above the level of the thaw water of the small lakes, but we could hear water trickling close underneath our tent amongst the granite boulders of the moraines just under the ice. We were able now to economise fuel, as we could bale the water out of these rock pools and streams for making our hoosh, tea and cocoa. All that night the blizzard raged, and we thought any moment tliat the tent would be ripped up from top to bottom. It was getting verj' thin bj' this time and had already been frequently repaired by JMackay and ^lawson. On this occasion several new rents started from near the top of the tent and spread downwards. Moreover, the canvas cap of our tent was broken by the force of the wind and the pressure of the drift snow. The following day, about 7 a.m., I got up and dug away the drift snow from the lee side of the tent, wliich was cramping our feet and legs, and found that it was still snowing heavily outside, and blowng hard as well. In the afternoon the blizzard slacked off somewhat, and the drift nearly ceased. We got up accordingly and had a meal. We halved our sledge load, repacked the sledge, and by dint of great exertions dragged it up the steep snow and ice slope to a height of 800 ft. above the sea. This was done in the teeth of a mild but freshening blizzard. The blizzard at last got too strong for us, so that we left the load at the altitude mentioned and returned back to our tent with the empty sledge. 164 A PAKSELENK BETTER PROGRESS We had been pleased to find that the blizzard, although it had delayed us and damaged our tent, had proved a blessing in disguise. It had not brought with it much fresh snow, but had blown away most of the loose snow left by the preceding blizzard, leaving behind it now a fairly hard snow surface suitable for sledging. Mackay's eyes, still suffering from the effects of snow-blindness, were treated with a solution of thin tabloids (laminte) of sulphate of zinc and cocaine, with the result that his ej'es were much better the folloA\ang day, December 25. This day there was still a strong breeze coming off the plateau, and sweeping over our tent. A little later in the morning the weather became calm, and a glorious sunny day smiled upon us. ]Mawson and JMackay repaired the rents in the tent, while I saw to repacking of the sledge with the remaining half load, and collected some geological specimens. We started shortly before noon and commenced dragging up the second part of our load to the accom- paniment of the music of murmuring streams. During our interval for lunch, ]Mawson was able to get some theodolite angles. We had the great satisfaction, when we turned in at 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve, to find that we were above the uncomfortable zone of thaw, and ever}i:hing around us was once more crisp and dry, though cold. Our spirits, too, mounted with the altitude. We were now over 1200 ft. above sea-level. Cljaptcr cElcten PROFESSOR DAVIDS NARRATIVE {Continued) npiIE following day, December 25, was Christmas Day. -*■ When I awoke, I noticed a pile of snow on top of the sleeping-bag close to my head. At first, before I was fully awake, I imagined that it was the moisture condensed from ]\Iawson's breath. Then I heard the gentle patter of snow-flakes, and, on turning my head ill the direction in which the rustling proceeded, saw that the wind had undermined the skirt of our tent, and was blowing the snow in through a small opening it had made. Accordingly, I slipped out and snowed up the skirt again, trampling the snow down firmly. A plateau wind was now blowing with almost blizzard force. About two hours later we got up, and, after some trouble with the Primus lamp on account of the wind, had our breakfast, but, as the wind was blowing dead against us, we turned into the sleeping-bag for a short time. It was nearly noon before the wind died down, and we started off with our sledge, still relaying with half loads, the day being now beautifully clear and sunny. At the 1.300 ft. level we started our sledge meter again, ha^^ng lifted it off the ice while we were going up the steep slope. A little further on we were able to put the whole of our load again on to the sledge and so dispense with further relay work. This, too, was a great blessing. When we arrived at our spot for camping that night we had the satisfaction of finding that we were over 2000 ft. above sea-level, and that we had, in 166 CLIMBING THE PLATEAU addition to the climbing, travelled that day about four mUes. The plateau wind had almost gone, and once more we revelled in being not only high, but dry. Having no other kind of Christmas gift to offer, Mawson and I presented Mackay with some sennegrass for his pipe, his tobacco having long ago given out. We slept soundly that Christmas night. On December 26 we observed dense dark snow clouds to the north-east, and a little light snow commenced to fall, but fortunately the weather cleared towards the afternoon. Mawson lost one of his blue sweaters off the sledge, but he and INIackay went back some distance and recovered it. Towards the afternoon we found it neces- sary to cross a number of fairly large crevasses. These were completed snowed over, and although we frequently fell through up to our knees, we had no serious trouble from them on this occasion. Some of them were from twenty to tMrty feet in wdth, and it was fortunate for us that the snow lids were strong enough to carry safely the sledge and ourselves. JNIackay suggested, for greater security, fastening the Alpine rope around Mawson, who was in the lead, and securing the other end of it to the sledge. The roj^e was left just slack enough to admit of the strain of hauling being taken by the harness rope, hence INIawson had two strings to his bow in case of being suddenly precipitated into a crevasse. Tliis was a good system, which we always adopted afterwards in crossing hea\'ily crevassed ice. The following day, December 27, we decided to make a small depot of our ski-boots (as by this time it appeared we were getting off the glacier ice on to hard snow and neve where we should not require them) and also of all our geological specimens, and about one day's food-supply, together with a small quantity of oil — a 167 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC supply for about two days in one of our oil-cans. The following is a list of the provisions: Powdered cheese (enough for two meals). Tea (for four meals) . Twenty-five lumps of sugar. Hoosh for one meal. Chocolate (for one and a half meals). Twelve biscuits. We also left an empty biscuit tin into which we crammed our ski-boots, and our three ice-axes, using one of them stuck upright as a staff for a small blue flag to mark the depot. JSIawson took some good bearings with the prismatic compass, and we then proceeded on our way. This depot we called the Larsen Depot, as it was close to one of the southern spurs of JNIount Larsen. All eyes were now strained, as we advanced with our sledge, to see whether there was still any formidable range of mountains ahead of us barring our path to the plateau. At one time it seemed as though there was a high range in the dim distance, but a careful exam- ination Anth the field-glasses showed that this ap- pearance was due only to clouds. Our joy and thank- fulness was unbounded when we at last realised that apparently there was now a fairlj^ easy ascent of hard neve and snow on to the plateau. That day we sledged a little over ten miles. During the night there was a very strong radiant in the sky from about south-west to north-east, with a movement of altro-stratus cloud from north-west to south-east. Therefore, probably, this radiant was due to formation of great rolls of cloud curled over by the anti-trade wind as it pressed forward in a south-easterly direction. The rolls of 1G8 A STEADY ADVANCE clouds were distinctly curved convexly towards the south-east. The following day, December 28, we travelled on north-westwards in thick cloudy weather, at first quite cahn. At about 10 a.m. a breeze set in from the sea, spreading westwards over the top of Blount Nansen over 8000 ft. above sea-level. Above Nansen it met the upper current wind and was obviously deflected by it in a south-easterly direction. Meanwhile, in the direc- tion of the coast the sky was very dark and lowering, and probably snow was falling there. Remarkable pillars of cloud formed over the JNIount Larsen group. These were photographed by INIawson. We passed over occa- sional patches of nearly bare glacier ice, alternating with stretches of hard neve. When we camped that evening we had sledged a little over ten miles, and a keen, cold wind was blowing gently off the high plateau to our west. The following day, December 29, was clear, calm and cold. At noon a pretty strong wind was blowing off the plateau. The surface of the snow was fairly strongly ridged ^\^th sastrugi. One set was made by winds coming from between west-south-west and west by north, the other by winds nearly north-westerly, or between west-30° -north and west-40° -north. As this latter bearing was not far off the direction in which we were travelling, we were able from time to time to follow these minor sastrugi, which were thus of considerable help to us in bringing over the sastrugi more oblique to the direction in which we were travelling. The following day, December 30, ]\Iounts Larsen and Bellingshausen were disappearing below the horizon, and several mountains were showing up clearly and sharply to the north of us, the principal peaks of which were at first identified by us as Mount New Zealand 169 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC and Blount Queensland of Captain Scott's chart. Later ]\Iawson concluded that the western of the two at any rate was new and unnamed. There was still a strong plateau wind. We were now at an altitude of about 4500 ft. Once more, as in winter time, our breath froze into lumps of ice, cementing our IJurberry helmets to our beards and moustaches. In jjutting up the tent for lunch in the strong plateau wind, it became badly torn near the cap piece. This wind had started before midnight on the i^revious night, and was blowing strongly until the afternoon, at from twelve to about fifteen miles an hour. It carried along with it a little low drift. The plateau ^\ind did not die down luitil the evening. Our distance travelled was eleven miles, and we were still travelling on an up grade, being now nearly 5000 ft. above sea-level. December 31 passed off without any special event other than that after ]\lackay had repaired the tent in the morning it became torn again at lunch-time when we were fitting it over the tent-poles. JNIawson took a fresh set of magnetic observations. We camped for this purpose at the bottom of a wide undulation ui the neve surface. We were disappointed at his announcement that he made out that the Magnetic Pole was further inland than had been originally estimated. What with the observations with the Lloyd-Creak dip circle, and the time occupied in repairing the rents in the tent, we ran our- selves somewhat short of time for our sledging that day, and did not camp until a little before midnight. We were still dragging the sledge on an up grade; the surface was softer and more powdery than before, and the sastrugi heavier. Also since the previous Tuesdaj' we had been obliged to put ourselves on somewhat shorter rations than before, as we had to take one- 170 NEW YEAR'S DAY eighth of our rations out in order to form an emergency food-supply in the event of our journey to and from the jNIagnetic Pole proving longer than we originally anticipated. That night, about a mile before reaching camp, we sighted to the west of us, much to our surprise, some distinct ice falls. This showed us that the snow desert over which we were travelling had still some kind of creeping movement in it. A skua gull came to visit us this New Year's Eve. He had been following us up for some time in the distance, mistaking us, perhaps, for seals crawling inland to die, as is not infrequently the habit of these animals. We were now about eighty miles inland from the nearest open water. Being disappointed of his high hopes, he left us after that day and we saw him again no more. The run for the day was about ten miles. We felt very much exhausted when we turned into our sleeping-bag that night. January 1, 1909 (New Year's Day) , was a beautiful calm day with a very light gentle plateau wind, with fairly high temperature. The sky was festooned in the direction of Mount Nansen with delicate wispy cirrus clouds converging in a north-east direction. Later on, towards the evening, it was evident that these cirrus clouds were strongly bent round from south-west in a northerly direction. Possibly this bending with the concave side to the west-north-west was due to the pressure at a high level of the anti-trade Avind blowing towards the east-south-east. IVIawson took observations for latitude and for magnetic de\'iation at noon. He made our latitude at noon to be 74° 18'. That night Mawson gave us a grand hoosh and a rich pot of cocoa in celebration of New Year's Day. 171 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC We all thoroughly enjoyed this meal after our exhausting march. On Januarj' 2 we noticed that the sastrugi were gradually swinging round into a direction a little north of west. The snow was frequently soft in large patches, which made sledging very heavy. We ascended altogether about 290 ft., but we crossed a large number of broad undulations, the troughs of which were from thirty to forty feet below their crests. These un- dulations considerably increased the work of sledging, and the loose patches of snow were so very soft and powdery that the runners of our sledge sunk deeply into them, so that it was only with our utmost efforts that we were able that day to finish our usual ten miles. Again we were much exhausted when the time came for camping. We were beginning to suffer, too, from liunger, and would have liked more to drink if we could have afforded it. We talked of what we would have drunk if we had had the chance. jMackay said he would have liked to drink a gallon of buttermilk straight off; MaM'son Avould have preferred a big basin of cream; while I would have chosen several pots of the best coffee with plenty of hot milk. We were still climbing on January 3, haA-ing as- cended another 500 ft. It proved the heaviest day's sledging since we reached the plateau. The snow was still softer than on the previous day. and the sur- face was more undulating than ever, the troughs of the undulations being about fifty feet below the crests. The sastrugi themselves were from two to three feet in height. The crests of the large undulations were usually formed of hard snow, the strong winds having bloAMi any loose material off them. This loose material had accumulated to some depth in the troughs, and hence made the wide patches of soft snow which made 172 OVER 6000 FEET UP our sledge drag so heavily as we crossed them. By dint of great efforts we managed to finish our ten miles for tliat day. The next day, Januarj' 4, we were pleased to find that there was less up grade than on the previous day. We were now at an altitude of over 6000 ft., and found respiration in the cold, rarified air distinctly trjang. It was not that we suffered definitely from mountain sickness, but we felt weaker than usual as the result, no doubt, of the altitude combined with the cold. To- wards evening, large clouds developed, much like the whaleback clouds which we had often obser\ed forming over Erebus about the time of bUzzards. Great rolls of cumulus spread rapidly from the north- west towards the south-east, and we feared that a blizzard was impending. On the whole the sledging was a httle easier to-day than the preceding day, and again we managed to do our ten miles. On the morning of January 5 we found the sk}- thickly overcast, except to the south and the south-east, where clear strips of blue were showing. We thought that snow was coming. The weather was perfectly cahn, comparatively warm, but the hght dull. We could still see the new inland mountain and ]Mount Xew Zealand distinctly. The sun was so oppressively hot when it peeped out from behind the clouds that one could feel it burning the skin on one's hands. The surface was more marked by sastrugi than ever, but on the whole firm. We sledged ten miles. I will quote from my diary the notes regarding some suc- ceeding days. January 6. — To-day the weather was gloriously fine. Bright, warm sunshine with a crisp, cold air in the early morning and the weather almost calm. The pulling was rather hea\y during the afternoon; possibly the hot 173 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC sun may have somewhat softened the surface of the snow. This morning I left off my crampons and put on a new pair of finnesko. These latter proved some- what shpper)-, and in falling heavilj- this afternoon over one of the sastrugi I slightly strained some nmscles on the inner side of my left leg, just helow the knee. Tliis gave me a considcrahle amount of pain for the rest of the journey. JVIackay lost all his stockings and socks off the bamhoo pole of the sledge, but was fortunate enough to recover them after walking back over a mile on our tracks. January 7. — We were up at 5 a.m., when the tempera- ture was minus 13° Fahr. We were anxious to arrive at the end of our first five miles in good time for ^lawson to get a meridian altitude, and take theodohte angles to the new mountain and Mount New Zealand, wliich were now almost disappearing from view below the horizon. IMawson made our latitude to-day 73° 43'. This was one of the coldest days we had as yet ex- perienced on the plateau, the wind blowing from west by north. We all felt the pulling very much to-day, possibl}' because it was still slightly uphill, and prob- ably partly on account of mountain lassitude. The distance travelled was ten miles. Friday, January 8. — To-day, also, w^as bitterly cold. The wind blew very fresh for some little time before noon from a direction of about west by north, raising much low^ drift. Our hands were frost-bitten several times when packing up the sledge. The cold blizzard continued for the whole day. At lunch time we had great difficulty in getting up the tent, which became again seriously torn in the process. Our beards were frozen to our Burberry helmets and Balaclavas, and we had to tear away our hair by the roots in order to get them off. We continued travelling in the 174 OPTICAL EFFECTS blizzard after lunch. Mawson's right cheek was frost- bitten, and also the tip of my nose. The Avind was blowing all the time at an angle of about 45° on the port bow of our sledge. We just managed to do our ten miles and were very thankful when the time came for camping. The following day, January 9, a very cold plateau wind was still blowing, the horizon being hazy with low drift. We were now completely out of sight of any mountain ranges, and were toihng up and down amongst the huge billows of a snow sea. The silence and solitude were most impressive. About 10.30 a.m. a well-marked parphelion, or mock sun, due to floating ice crystals in the air, made its appearance. It had the form of a wide halo with two mock suns at either extremity of the equator of the halo parallel to the horizon and passing through the real sun. jMawson was able to make his magnetic deviation observation with more com- fort, as towards noon the wind slackened and the day became gloriously bright and clear. In the afternoon it fell calm. We were feeling the pinch of hunger somewhat, and as usual our talk, under these circumstances, turned chiefly on restaurants, and the wonderfully elaborate dinners we would have when we returned to civilisation. Again we accomj^lished our ten miles, and were now at an altitude of over 7000 ft. January 10 was also a lovely day, warm and clear; the snow surface was good and we travelled quickly. There was a strong " Noah's Ark " structure in the high-level cirrus clouds, there being a strong radiant point respectively in the north-west and south-east, and this made us somewhat apprehensive that we were in for another bhzzard. These cirrus clouds were also strongly curved with the concave side of the turve 175 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC facing the north-east. We thought this curve was, per- haps, due to the anti-trade wind bending round hi a direction following that of the curve in the wisps of cirrus. January 11. — We were up about 7 a.m., the tempera- ture at that time being minus 12° Fahr. It was a cold day to-day, and we had a light wind nearly southerly. At first it blew from between south and south- south-east; this gradually freshened at lunch time and veered towards the west. It then returned again more towards the south-south-east. JNlawson had a touch of snow-blindness in his right eye. Both he and Mackay suffered much through the skin of their lips peeling off", leaving the raw flesh exposed. JMawson, ])articularly, experienced great difficulty every morning in getting his mouth oj^ened, as his lips were firmly glued together by congealed blood. That day we did eleven miles, the surface being fairly firm, and there being no ap])reciable general up grade now, but only long-ridged undulations, with sastrugi. We noticed that these sastrugi had now changed direction, and instead of trending from nearly west, or north of west, eastwards, now came more from the south- east directed towards the north-west. This warned us that we might anticipate possibly strong head winds on our return journey, as our course at the time was being directed almost north-west, following from time to time the exact bearing of the horizontal magnetic compass. The compass was now very sluggish, in fact the theodolite compass would scarcely work at all. This pleased us a good deal, and at first we all wished more power to it; then amended the sentiment and wished less power to it. The sky was clear, and Mawson got good magnetic meridian observ^ations by means of his very delicately 176 THE MOVING GOAL balanced horizontal moving needle in his Brunton transit instrument. January 12. — The sky to-day was overcast, the night having been calm and cloudy. A few snow- flakes and fine ice crystals were falling. The sun was verj^ hot and it somewhat softened the snow surface, thereby increasing of course the difficulty of sledging. We sledged to-day ten and three-quarter miles. The evening, after hoosh, ]Mawson, on carefully analysing the results set forth in the advance copy of the Discovery Expedition jNIagnetic Report, decided that although the matter was not expressly so stated, the ^Magnetic Pole, instead of moving easterly, as it had done in the interval between Sabine's observations in 1841 and the time of the Discovery expedition in 1902. was hkely now to be travelling somewhat to the north- west. The results of dip readings taken at intervals earlier in the journey also agreed with this decision. It would be necessary therefore to travel further in that direction than we had anticipated in order to reach our goal. This was extremely disquieting news, for all of us as we had come almost to the limit of our provisions, after making allowance for enough to take us back on short rations to the coast. In spite of the anxiety of the situation extreme weariness after sledg- ing enabled us to catch some sleep. The following morning, January 13, we were up about 6 A.M. A light snow was falling, and fine ice crystals made the sky hazy. There was a light wind blowing from about south-south-east. About 8 a.m. the sun peeped through wth promise of a fine day. We had had much discussion during and after break- fast as to our future movements. The change in the position of the Pole necessitated of course a change in our plans. JNIawson carefully reviewed his Vol. 11.-12 177 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC observations as to the liosition of the JNIagnetic Pole, and decided that in order to reach it we would need to travel for another four days. The horizontally moving needle had now almost ceased to work. ^Ve decided to go on for another four days and started our sledging. It was a cold day with a light wind. The temperature at about 10.30 a.m. being minus 6° Fahr. At noon INIawson took a magnetic reading with the Lloyd-Creak dip circle, which was now fifty minutes off the vertical, that is, 89'' 10'. At noon the latitude was just about 73° South. The sastrugi were now longer and liigher than usual, and there were two distinct sets. The strongest sastrugi trended from south to north; a subordinate set from south-east to north- west. That day we sledged thirteen miles. January 14. — The day w-as gloriously clear and bright with a warm sun. A gentle wind was blowing from about south-south-east, and there was a little cumulus cloud far ahead of us over the horizon. The surface of the snow over which we were sledging was sparkling with large reconstructed ice crystals, about half an inch in width and one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness. These crystals form on this plateau during w^arm days when the sun's heat leads to a gentle up- w^ard streaming of the cold air with a small amount of moisture in it from beneath. Under these influences combined -Hith the thawing of the surface snow, these large and beautiful ice crystals form rapidly in a single day. We observe that after every still sunny day a crop of these crystals develops on the surface of the neve, and remains there until the next wind blows them off. They form a layer about half an inch in thickness over the top of the neve. In the bright sun- light the neve, covered with these sheets of bright reflecting ice crystals, glittered like a sea of diamonds. 178 AT THE MAGNETIC POLE The heavy runners of our sledge rustled gently as they crushed the crystals by the thousand. It seemed a sacrilege. The sastrugi were large and high, and our sledge bumped very heavily over them with a prodigious rattling of our aluminium cooking-gear. It was clear that the blizzard winds blow over tliis part of the plateau at times with great violence. Apparently all the winds in this quarter, strong enough to form sastrugi, blow from south or west of south or from the south-east. Our run to-day was twelve miles one hundred and fifty yards. January 15. — We were ujd to-day at 6 a.m. and found a cold southerly breeze blowing, the temperature being minus 19° Fahr. at 6.30 a.m. ISIawson got a good latitude determination to-day, 72° 42'. At about t^\enty minutes before tioie noon ^lawson took magnetic observations with the dip circle, and found the angle now only fifteen minutes off the vertical, the dip being 89° 45'. We were very much rejoiced to find that we were now so close to the IMagnetic Pole. The observations made by Bernacclii, during the two years of the Discovery expedition's sojourn at their winter quarters on Ross Island, showed that the ampti- tude of dailj^ swing of the magnet was sometimes con- siderable. The compass, at a distance from the Pole, pointing in a slightly varymg direction at different times of the day, indicates that the polar centre executes a dail}^ round of wanderings about its mean position. Mawson considered that we were now practically at the Magnetic Pole, and that if Ave were to wait for twenty- four hours taking constant observations at this spot the Pole would, probably, during that time, come vertically beneath us. We decided, however, to go on to the spot Avhere he concluded the approximate mean position of the IMagnetic Pole would lie. That 179 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC evening the dip was 89° 4i8'. The run for the day was fourteen niiles. From the rapid rate at \\hich the dip had heen increasuig recently, as well as from a compai'ison of Bernacchi's magnetic observations, Mawson estimated that we were now about thirteen miles distant from the j^robable mean position of the South JMagnetic Pole. He stated that in order to accurately locate the mean position possibly a month of continuous observation would be needed, but that the position he indicated was now as close as we could locate it. We decided accordingly, after discussing the matter full}' that night, to make a forced march of thirteen miles to the ajjproximate mean ])osition of the Pole on the following day, put up the flag there, and return eleven miles back on our tracks the same day. Our method of procedure on tliis journey of twenty-four miles is described in the journal of the following daj'. Saturday, January 16. — We were up at about 6 a.m. and after breakfast we pulled on our sledge for two miles. We then depoted all our heavy gear and equip- ment with the exception of the tent, sleeping-bag, Primus stove and cooker, and a small quantity of food, all of which we placed on the sledge together with the legs of the dip circle and those of the theodolite to serve as marks. We pulled on for two miles and fixed up the legs of the dip circle to guide us back on our track, the compass moving in a horizontal plane being now useless for keeping us on our course. At two miles further we fixed up the legs of the theodolite, and two miles further put up our tent, and had a light lunch. We then walked five miles in the direction of the JMagnetic Pole so as to place us in the mean position calculated for it by ISIawson, 72° 25' South latitude, 155° 16' East longitude. ^lawson placed his 180 I m \ ' m; I H I i;\ ISk'iv on i ii i I'l \ i i..\r. * Pool of Thaw Water formed by the emergence of a Scb-Glacial Stream South-east of Mount Larsen THE FLAG HOISTED camera so as to focus the whole group, and arranged a trigger which would be released by means of a string held in our hands so as to make the exposure by means of the focal plane shutter. Meanwhile, Mackay and I fixed up the flag-pole. We then bared our heads and hoisted the Union Jack at 3.30 p.m. with the words uttered by myself in conformity with Lieutenant Shackleton's instnjctions, " I hereby take possession of this area now containing the JVIagnetic Pole for the British Empire." At the same time I fired the trigger of the camera by pulling the string. Thus the group were photographed in the manner shown on the plate. The blurred liiie connected with my right hand repre- sents the part of the string in focus blown from side to side by the wind. Then we gave three cheers for his Majesty the King. There was a pretty sky at the time to the north of us with low cumulus clouds, and we speculated at the time as to whether it was possible that an arm of the sea, such as would produce the moisture to form the cumulus, might not be very far distant. In view of our subsequent discoverj^ of a deep indent in the coast-line in a southerly direction beyond Cape North, it is possible that the sea at tliis point is at no very con- siderable distance. The temperature at the time we hoisted the flag was exactly 0° Fahr. It was an intense satisfaction and relief to all of us to feel that at last after so many days of toil, hardship and danger we had been able to carry out our leader's instructions, and to fulfil the wish of Sir James Clarke Ross that the South Magnetic Pole should be actually reached, as he had already in 1831 reached the North Magnetic Pole. At the same time we were too utterly weary to be capable of any great amount of exultation. I am 181 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC sure the feeling the was uppermost in all of us was one of devout and heartfelt thankfulness to the kind Provi- dence which had so far guided our footsteps in safety to that goal. With a fervent " Thank God " we all did a right-about turn, and as quick a march as tired limbs would allow back m the direction of our little green tent in the wilderness of snow. It was a weary tramp back over the hard and high sastrugi and we were very thankful when at last we saw a small dark cone, which we knew was our tent, rising from above the distant snow ridges. On reaching the tent we each had a little cocoa, a biscuit and a small lump of chocolate. We then sledged slowly and wearily back, picking up first the legs of the theodolite, then those of the dip circle, and finally reached our depot a little before 10 p.m. In honour of the event we treated ourselves that night to a hoosh, which though modest was larger in volume than usual, and was immensely enjoyed. Mawson repacked the sledge after hoosli time, and we turned into the sleeping-bag faint and weary, but happy witli the great load of apprehension of possible failure, that had been hanging over us for so many weeks, at last removed from our minds. We all slept soundly after twenty-four miles of travel. Ci^apter Ctoeliie PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE {CmHnued) Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet. Tennyson. T CALLED the camp at a little before 10 a.m. the fol- -*■ lowing morning. We now discussed the situation and our chances of catching the Nimrod, if she came in search of us along the coast in the direction of our depot on the Drygalski Glacier. We had agreed, before we decided to do the extra four days' march to the sliifted position of the Magnetic Pole, that on our return journey we would do not less than thirteen miles a day. At the Magnetic Pole we were fully 260 statute miles distant, as the skua flies, from our depot on the Drygalski Glacier. As we had returned eleven of these miles on the day previous we still had 249 miles to cover. It was now January 17, and the Nimrod was due to start to search for us on February 1. As there was of course jilenty of sunlight day and night, we thought it quite possible that she might be up to the Drygalski Glacier on February 2 — possibly on the morning of that day. We accord- ingly decided to try and make back to our Drygalski depot by February 1. This gave us fifteen days. Con- sequently we would have to average sixteen and two- thirds miles a day in order to reach the coast in the time specified. This of course did not allow of any delay on account of blizzards, and we had seen from the evidence of the large sastrugi that blizzards of great 183 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC violence must occasionally blow in these quarters, and from the direction of the sastrugi during our last few days' march it was clear that the dominant direc- tion of the blizzard would be exactly in our teeth. The prospect, therefore, of reaching our depot in the speci- fied time did not appear bright. Providentially we had most beautiful and glorious weather for our start on January 17. It remained fine for the whole day, and we were greatly favoured by a light wind which now blew from between north-west and west-north-west — a perfectly fair wind for our journey. In fact the wind changed direction with us. It had helped us by blowing from the south-east, just before we reached the Magnetic Pole, and now it was blowing in tlie oppo- site direction, helping us home. That day, m sjiite of the late start, we sledged sixteen miles. On January 18 the weather again was fine, and we had a hard day's sledging. Unfortunately ]Mawson's left leg became very lame and pained him a good deal. There was a strong radiant in the clouds towards the north-west, and we were a little apprehensive of the wind in consequence. Our run for the day was sixteen miles two hundred yards. Tliis was the end of my week's cooking, and we were able to indulge that night in a fairly abundant hoosh, also in very milky and sweet cocoa, and JNIackay admitted that he actually felt moderately full after it for the first time since we had left the Drygalski Depot. The following day, January 19, we boiled the hypso- meter at our camp, and found the level to be about 73.50 ft. above the sea. The boiling-point was 196.75° Fahr. There was a cold fresh wind blowng from the south-east, a head wind for us, the temperature at the time being minus 11° Fahr. There were still low cumulus clouds to the north of us. The vAnd freshened in the 184 SUGAR IN THE HOOSH afternoon to a mild blizzard, and we found pulling against it very severe work. That morning we had quite an unusual diversion. Mawson, who is a bold culinary exiJerinienter, being messman for the week, tried the experiment of surrejititiously introducing a lump of sugar into the pemmican. JMackay detected an unusual flavour in the hoosh, and cross-questioned Mawson severely on the subject. JNlawson admitted a lump of sugar. JMackay was thereupon roused to a high jjitch of indigna- tion, and stated that tliis awful state of affairs was the result of going out sledging with " two foreigners." This mild blizzard partly obliterated our old sledge tracks by piling over them new sastrugi of fine hard snow. We had a great struggle that day to make our sixteen miles, but fortunately the blizzard slackened off towards 9 P.M., and we just managed it. Owing to some miscalculation, for which I was responsible, we discovered that we had no tea for this week, our sixth week out, unless we took it out of the tea-bag for the seventh w^eek. Accordingly we halved the tea in the seventh week bag, and determined to collect our old tea-bags at each of our old camps as we passed them, and boil these bags together with the small pittance of fresh tea. And here I may mention the tastes of the party in the matter of tea somewhat differed. JMackay liked his tea thoroughly well and long boiled, whereas JMawson and I liked it made by just bringing the Avater to the boil; as soon as we smelt the aroma of tea coming from underneath the outer lid of the cooker we used to shut off the Primus lamp immediately and decant the tea into the pannikins. JMackay had always objected to this pro- cedure when we were sledging along the sea ice where water boils at about 212° Fahr. ; now, however, he had a strong scientific argument in his favour for keeping 185 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC the pot boiling for a few minutes after the tea had been put in. He pointed out that at our present altitude water boiled at just over 196° Fahr., a tempera- ture which he maintained was insuilicient to extract the proper juices and flavour from the tea, unless the boiling was very much prolonged. Mawson, however, averred — on chemical and physical grounds — that with the diminished atmosiiheric pressure certain virtuous constituents of the tea could be extracted at a lower temperature. The discussion was highly scientific and exhilarating, though not very finite. It was agreed as a compromise to allow the boiling to continue for three or four minutes after the water had come to the boil before the tea was poured out. As in our progress coastwards we were continually coming upon more old tea-bags at our old camps, and always collected these and did not tlirow away any that had been used before we soon had quite an imposing collection of muslin bags with old tea leaves, and with the thorough boiling that they now got there was a strong flavour of muslin superadded to that of old tea. Nevertheless this drink was nectar. January 20. — ^^Ve were still able to-day to follow our sledge tracks, which was a great blessing, the magnetic needle being of so little use to us. We had the wind slightly against us bringing up a little low drift. Again we made our sixteen-mile run, tliough with great difficulty, for the wind had been blowing freshly all day on our starboard bow. In view of the good progress that we had made, and after carefully calculating out the provisions left over, INIawson, who was at this time messman, pro- posed that we should return to nearly full rations, as we were becoming much exhausted through insuffi- 186 RAPID MARCHING cient food. This proposal was, of course, hailed with dehght. On January 21 there was a light wind with low temperature, clear sky and hot sun, which combined to consolidate the surface over wliich we were sledging. By this time Mackay and Mawson's raw lips, which had been cracked and bleeding for about a fortnight pre- viously, were now much better. JNIawson's lame leg had also improved. Again we did our sixteen-mile run. January 22. — We were up soon after 7 a.m. It was a clear day with bright sunshine. The wind started soon after 5 a.m., constantly freshening, as it usually did in tiais part of the plateau, till about 3 p.m. Then it gradually died down by about 10 p.m. The tempera- ture at 7.15 A.M. was minus 20° Falir., and at this altitude we found the wind at tliis temperature very trying. To-day we had to sledge over a great deal of pie-crust snow, wiiich was very fatiguing. Again we did sixteen miles. We had since the day before yesterday lost our old sledge tracks. Mackay earned a pound of tobacco, to be given him when we returned to civilisation, by being the fii-st to make the " land fall " — new mountain, Avest of JMount New Zealand — which showed out now in the far distance very faintly a little to the left of our course. It was a welcome sight to all of us. To-day we sledged fifteen miles. January 23. — The weather was bright and cold ■nith a light southerly wind. This day was very fatiguing, the sledging being over patches of soft snow and pie-crust snow. At the same time we were con- scious now that although we were sledging up and dowTi wide undulations we were on the whole going down hill, and the new mountain was already showing up as an impressive massif. The air was cold and 187 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC piercing. Mawson's right leg was still painful. That night we were all very much exhausted, and were obhged to allow ourselves fully eight hours sleep. Our run was sixteen miles. January 24. — To-day we had more heavy sledging over a lot of pie-crust snow and soft snow. The wind was blowing somewhat against us at about twelve miles an hour, the temperature Ijeing minus 4 Falir. in the afternoon. A low drift was sweeping in waves over the snow desert; it w'as a desolate scene. Later in the day we were cheered by the sight of ISIount Raxter. Towards evening we had some discussion as to whether w-e were following approximately our old out- going tracks. ]Mackay thought we were nearer to the new mountain than before, 1 thought we were further to the south-west, JMawson, who was leading, con- tended that we were pretty well on our old course. Just then I discovered that we were actually on our old sledge tracks, which showed up plainly for a short distance between the newly formed sastrugi. This spoke volumes for jNIawson's skill as a navigator. Dis- tance sledged sixteen miles. January 25. — It was blowing a mild blizzard. We estimated at lunch time that we Avere about eighty and a half miles distant now from our INIoimt Larsen Depot. The temperature during the afternoon was minus 3^ Fahr. We all felt, as usual, much fatigued after the day's sledging. For the past four or five days we each took an Easton SATup tabloid for the last stage but one before reaching camp, and this certainly helped to keep us going. This evening the blizzard died down about 8 P.M., and Mount Nansen was sighted just before we camped. January 26. — We lost our old sledge tracks again to-day. The weather turned cloudy in the afternoon, 188 A DIFFICULT DESCENT and the light was very bad. We now reached a surface of hard marble-hke neve, which descended by short steep slopes. We did not at first realise that we were about to descend what we had termed the Ice Falls on the outward journey. Every now and then the sledge would take charge and rush do\\n tliis marble stair- case, bumping very heavily over the steps. jNIawson and I frequently came hea\y cropj^ers. ]Mawson put on crampons outside his finnesko to enable him to get a grip of the slippery surface, but my crampons were frozen so hard and so out of shape that I was unable to get them on, so I followed behind and steadied the sledge as it continued bumjjing its way down the marble steps. At last we reached once more a flattened surface and camped. Our run for the day was fourteen and a half miles. January 27. — This morning we all felt very slack after the night spent in the closely covered sleeping bag, the sky at the time being cloudy. Under these circumstances, as we now had come down from our highest altitude by about 4000 ft., and the tempera- ture of course, had somewhat risen, we felt stifled and depressed. During the morning fine snow fell and the weather was quite thick to the south and east of us. INIawson steered us by the trend of the sastrugi. As the day wore on, the weather cleared up and we had a good view of the new mountain, JNIount New Zealand, and Mount Baxter. The pulling at first was very hard work, being up-hill, but later we had a good run down hill to the spot where we camped for lunch. After lunch we sledged down a still steeper slope, the sledge occasion- ally take charge. At this spot Mackay partially fell into a crevasse. To-day we were much cheered by the sight at last of ]Mount Larsen. Ey the time we reached the spot where w^e camped that night we had a good clear 189 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC view of Larsen. The distance travelled was sixteen miles. We were now only about forty miles from our 31omit Larsen Depot. Januarij 28. — We turned out of the sleej^ing-bag to- day at about 6.30 a.m. A blizzard was blowing, and after breakfast we had much difficulty in the cold wind in getting up the mast and sail. IVIackay, who usually did the greater part of this work, got his hands rather badly frost-bitten before our preparations were com- pleted. We used the thick green canvas floorcloth as a sail; the tent-poles sened us for a mast, and a piece of bamboo did duty as a yard. The wind ^vas blo^^^ng at, perhaps, about twenty- five miles an hour, and as soon as we started the sledge, it began to travel at such a hot pace that ^lackay and ]Mawson, with their long legs, were kept walking at the top of their speed, while I, with my shorter ones, was kept on a jog trot. Occasionally, in an extra strong puff of wind, the sledge took charge. On one of these occasions it suddenly charged into me from behind, knocked my legs from under me, and nearly jugger- nauted me. I M'as quickly rescued from this unchgnified position under the sledge runners by ]Mawson and JMackay. ^Ve had now arrived at a part of the jjlateau where the monotonous level or gently undulating surface gave place to sharp descents. It was necessary in these cases for one of us to untoggle from the front of the sledge and to toggle on behind, so as to steer and steady it. About noon, when we were in full career, the bow of the sledge struck one of the high sastrugi obliquely and the sledge was capsized heavily, but fortunately notliing was broken. After righting the sledge we camped for lunch. At lunch, with a faint hope of softening the stern heart of our messman for the week — jNIackay — and in- 190 THE DEPOT REACHED ducing him to give us an extra ration of food, I mUdly informed laim that it was my birthday. He took the hint and we all fared sumptuously at lunch and dinner that day. The day's run was twenty miles. It had been one of the most fatiguing days that we had as yet experienced, and we were all utterly exhausted when we turned into our sleeping-bag at 8.30 p.ii. January 29. — We were up at about 8 a.m., and found that the plateau wind was still blowing at a speed of about fifteen miles an hour. After our experience of the preceding day we decided that we would not make sail on the sledge, and as a matter of fact, found that pulling the sledge in the ordinary way was far less wearj'ing than the sailing had proved the preceding day. We pulled on steadily hour after hour, and jMounts Xansen and Larsen grew every moment clearer and larger, and we began to hope that we might be able to reach our depot at INIount Larsen that night. After we had sledged about ten miles, descending at a gentle grade all the way, we found that there was a slight up grade in the snow surface towards the foot of Blount Larsen, but it was not steep enough to cause us any trouble. But later in the day IMawson's sprained leg caused him a good deal of pain, and we had almost de- cided to camp at a point nearly twenty miles from our preceding camp, when JVIackay's sharp eyes sighted, at a distance of about a mile, our little blue flag, tied to the ice-axe at our depot. We soon reached the depot, fixed up the tent, had a good hoosh, and turned into the sleeping-bag past midnight. We were up at 9 a.m. on January 30. The day was sunny, but ominous clouds were gathering overhead as well as to the south. After breakfast we collected the material at our depot, chiefly ski-boots, ice-axes, oil, a little food, and geological specimens, and loaded these 191 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC on to our sledge. We found that, owing to the alternate thawing and freezing of the snow at our depot, our ski- boots were almost filled with solid ice. The work of chipping out this ice proved a slow and tedious job, and we did not get started untU about 11 A.ai. Soon after we got going we found ourselves for a time in a mesh- work of crevasses. These were from a foot up to about twenty feet in width. Nearly all of them were roofed over with a hard layer of snow. The only visible evi- dence of the existence of a crevasse was a slight de- pression in the snow surface at the inner edges of the two walls bounding the crevasses, the whole of the snow roof or lid being slightly counter-sunk below the general level of the surrounding snow surface. This, however, was not always the case, and crevasses not infrequently existed entirely concealed from view under a perfectly smooth hard snow surface. On ac- count of the fact, as ah-eady explained, that the snow lids were thinner next to the walls of the crevass, and thicker towards a position central between the walls, we alwaj's used to take care, if we could see the little depression in the snow surface — a sure indication of a crevasse — not to put our foot down near tlie edge of the depression, but to alight on the snow lid some feet away from the crevasse wall. On stepping out on to one of these snow lids a large piece suddenly gave way under me, and I was instantly precipitated into the chasm below, but fortunately caught the Alpine rope under my arm as I was falling; this broke the force of the jerk on my sledge harness. I was down about six feet below the snow lid, and ^lawson and ISIackay holding on to the harness and Alpine ropes wliich were supporting me, I was able to climb out quickly, and we resumed our journey. Shortly after this, and after crossing a number of other crevasses, we 192 A QUESTION OF ROUTE discovered that tlie wheel of our sledge meter had disappeared. Probably it had got into one of the crevasses, and gone to the bottom. As we were now so close to the end of our journey, the loss of this, wliich earlier in our travels would have been a serious disaster, was not of much importance. We had run about eight miles before this lunch, previous to the loss of our sledge meter wheel. At lunch-time Mawson compounded a wonderful new hoosh made out of seal liver, pounded up with a geological hammer, and mixed with crushed biscuit. We had some discussion as to whether it would be better to descend on to the sea ice by the old track up which we had come, which we termed Backstairs Passage, or make down the main Larsen Glacier to the point where it junctioned with the Drygalski Glacier. JNIackay was in favour of the former, Mawson and I of the latter. Mackay thought the devil one knew was better than the devil one didn't know, wliile Mawson and I feared that during the thaw, which was rapidly breaking up the sea ice at the time when we were ascending the plateau, the ice might have gone away from the base of Backstairs Passage right up to the steep granite cliiFs of the coast. Had this been the case, and had we descended by our old route, we should have had to retrace our steps and become involved in a very arduous upliill piece of sledging necessitating an ascent of at least 1000 to 1500 ft. in a distance of a Uttle over a mile. As subsequent events proved, Mackay was right and we were wrong. We held on down the main glacier with the imposing cliffs and slopes of dark-red granite and blackish eruptive rock intermixed with it close on our left. Mawson's leg was now so bad that it was only with considerable pain and difficulty that he could proceed, and both Vol. n.-i8 193 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Mackay's and my eyes were affected a good deal by snow- blindness and were painful. We found as we advanced that at about six miles easterly from our lunch camp, the surface of the JMount Larsen Glacier descended at a very steep angle. Somewhat ahead to the right it was clear that, where it junctioned with the Drygalski Glacier, it was seamed by enormous crevasses and traversed by strong pressure ridges. We held on with our sledge on a course which took us close to the north side of the glacier. At last the descent became so steep that it was with the utmost difficulty that we could hold the sledge back and prevent its charging down the slope. We halted here and INIackay went ahead to reconnoitre. Presently he came back and said that the narrow strip of snow covering the glacier ice, near its contact with the rocky cliffs on our left, was con- tinuous right down to the bottom of the slope, and he thought it was practicable, if we made rope brakes for the runners on our sledge, to lower it down this steep slope in safety. He fixed on some brakes of brown tarred rope by just twisting the rope spirall}^ around the sledge runners. We then cautiously started the sledge down the steepest bit of the slope, all of us ready to let go in case the sledge took charge. The rope brake worked wonders, and it was even necessarj' to put a slight puU on the sledge in places in order to get it down the steep snow surface. We had left the great crevasses and ice falls near the junction of the Mount Larsen and Drygalski Glaciers a little to our right. We now found ourselves on an ice-surface quite unlike anything which we had hitherto experienced. In the foreground were some small frozen lakes close to the foot of the granite hills; on the far side of the lakes were beautiful glacial moraines. All around the lakes, and for a considerable distance up the ice slopes de- 194 NEW ICE FORMATION scending towards them, the sui-face of the ice was formed of a series of large thin anastomosing curved plates of ice. These were pieced together in such a way as to form a pattern on a large scale resembling the cups of some of the recent compound corals, or the ancient extinct form known to geologists as Alveolites^ These cun'cd ice plates or tiles sloped at an angle of about 45", and formed, of course, an immense obstruction to sledging, as their sharp edges caught and held our sledge runners. We found, too, that it was very dis- tressing travelling over tliis extraordinary'- surface, which, from a scenic point of view, was exquisitely beautiful. As we stepjjed forwards, out feet usually crashed through the ice tiles, and our legs were im- bedded in the formation up to our knees. Frequently, under these circumstances, we would stumble forwards, and had some difficulty in dragging our legs out. It was like sledging over a ■wilderness of glass cucumber- frames set up at an angle of 4>5\ Another moment one would find the tiles thick enough and strong enough to support one, but their surfaces being at an angle of 45° to the horizontal, our feet would slip down them sideways and we ran an inmiinent risk of spraining our ankles. At every step we took we did not know until after the event which of the above two experiences would follow. After sledging for a short distance over surfaces of this kind, sloping somewhat steeply to the small lakes, we decided to camp on the pale green ice of one of these lakes. ^lawson tested this ice and found that it was strong enough to hold, though evidently of no great thickness. We sledged along this lake for a few hundred yards to its north-east end. There was a little snow here which would do for loading the skirt of our tent. By this time the sky was thickly over- 195 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC cast. We fixed up the tent, chopping httle holes in the surface of the smooth ice, in which to socket the ends of the tent-poles, and while JSlackay cooked, Mawson and I snowed the skirt. This was subsequent to a httle reconnoitring Avhich we each did. It was 2 a.m. before we camped on the lake ice, and 4 a.m. before we turned into our sleeping-bag. Close to our tent was the most beautiful lateral moraine wliich we had yet discovered. It was formed of blocks of bright red granite, together with quartz porph3'ries with much rusty stain due to oxidation of iron pyrites, and masses of dark bro^m rocks, niore basic, perhaps of an intermediate character between granite and diorite. We found that immediately to the right of us, in an easterly direction — that is, directly between us and our depot on the Drj'galski Glacier — were great pressure ridges of ice, and a vast entangle- ment of crevasses. In fact, in that direction the glacier seemed impassable. The only possible outlet for us with our sledge appeared to be close alongside of the lateral moraine at the point where the glacier ice joined it. Even this route was obviously a verj' difficult one, and we decided before we turned in that on the morrow we should have to unload our sledge and make a portage, or a plurality of portages. The ice on the small lake on which we were camped was only between two and three inches tliick, and had obviously formed quite recently after the thaw. It commenced to thaw now under the influence of the warmth of our sleeping- bag, as we lay in it, and w-e found shallow pools of water all around us when we awoke the next morning. Jam/an/ 31. — We were up about 11 a.m., having slept soundly after the very exhausting work of our previous day's sledging. During the night it had snowed heavily, there being fully from three to four inches of 196 PRESSURE RIDGES newly fallen snow covering everything around us, and it was still snowing while we were having breakfast. After breakfast the snow nearly ceased, and we took half the load off our sledge and started with the remainder to try and work a passage out of the ice-pres- sure ridges of the combined Drygalski and Larsen Glaciers on to the smoother sea ice, and eventually on to the Drygalski Ice Barrier. While Mawson and Mackay pulled, I steadied the sledge on the lower side in round- ing the steep sidelings. We were still sledging over the leafy or tile ice, which mostly crunched underfoot with a sharp tinkling sound. We skirted the lateral moraine for a distance of over half a mile, following a depression in the ice-surface apparently produced by a stream, the outlet of the waters of the small lakes. At one spot JNIawson crashed right through into the water beneath, and got wet up to his thighs. In spite of my efforts to keep it on even keel, the sledge frequently capsized on these steep sidelings. At last, after stioiggling up and down heavy slopes, and over low-lying areas of rotten ice, which every here and there let us through into the water beneath, we arrived at the foot of an immense ice-pressure ridge. It was a romantic-looking spot, though at the time we did not exactly appreciate its beauties. To our left was a huge cliff of massive granite rising up steeply to heights of about 2000 ft. The com- bined pressure of the Drygalski and Mount Larsen Glaciers had forced the glacier ice up into great ridges, trending somewhat obliquely to the coast cliff. We went back to the tent where we got some hot tea, of which ]\Iawson, particularly, was very glad, as he was somewhat cooled down as the result of his wetting. Then we packed up the remainder of our belongings on the sledge and dragged it down to where we had dumped the half load on the near side of the pres- 197 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC sure ridge. !Mackay reconnoitred ahead, and found that the large-pressure ridge, which appeared to bar our pro- gress towards our depot, gradually came nearer and nearer in to the granite cliff, until it pressed hard against the cliff face. Obviously, then, we were impounded by this huge pressure ridge, and would have to devise some mean of getting over it. Taking our ice-axes we smoothed a passage across part of the ridge. This proved a very tough piece of work. We then unloaded the sledge and passed each one of our packages over by hand. Finally we dragged the sledge up and hoisted it over and lowered it down safely on the other side. After this we reloaded the sledge and dragged it for some considerable distance over more of the leafy ice- surface alternating with flattish depressions of rotten ice and snow, with water just beneath. We were now troubled, not only by the tile-ice surface, but also by small channels with steep banks, apparently eroded by glacial streams which had been flowing as the result of tlie thaw while we were on the Magnetic Pole plateau. We were also worried from time to time as to how to get over the vast number of intersecting crevasses wliich lay in our path. Little by little the surface improved as we sledged towards our depot. The platy structure on the ice became less and less pronounced, giving place to a surface hke that of innumerable frozen wavelets with sharp crests. By lunch-time we arrived at a grand old glacial moraine. Amongst its boulders was a hand- some coarsely crystalline red granite of which Mackay secured a good specimen. Numbers of boulders pro- jected a few feet above the surface of the ice, but most of them were wholly encased in ice. After lunch, the sledging surface, though still hea\y, owng to the newly fallen snow, improved a little, but we soon found our 108 ICE DONGAS progress barred by what may be termed an ice donga, apparently an old channel formed by a river of thaw water. We encountered three such dongas that afternoon. They were from a few feet up to fifty or a hundred feet or more in width, and from ten to twenty feet deep, and bounded by precipitous or overhanging sides. After a considerable amount of reconnoitring by Mackay and Mawson, and often making considerable detours with our sledge, we managed to cross them. Our difficulties were increased by the innumerable crevasses and steep ice ridges. Some of these crevasses were open, while others were roofed over with tough snow. We fell into these crevasses from time to time, and on one occasion, INIackay and I fell into the same crevasse simultaneously, he up to his shoulders and I up to my waist. Fortunately we were able, by tlirowing out our arms, to prevent ourselves from falling right through the snow hd. While we were sledging on through the night amongst tliis network of crevasses, the skj^ became hea^^ly overcast, and it commenced to snow. At last we succeeded in getting within less than a mile of the moraine containing the boulders of re- markable sphene-diorite, specimens of which we had collected at that spot on our outward journey. Here we camped and turned into our sleeping-bag at 7 a.m. on February 1. It continued sno^ving heavily during the day, the fall being about six inches in depth. The snow on the side of the tent facing the sun thawed rapidly, and the thaw water dripped through and formed pools on top of our sleeping-bag. ISIawson's sprained leg pained him a great deal. We estimated that we. were now only about sixteen miles, as tlie skua flies, from our depot on the Drj'galski Glacier, but as we had only two days' food left, it became imperative to push on mthout 199 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC delay. We started sledging in the thick drivhig snow on the evening of February 1. The surface was covered with a layer of soft snow, nine inches in thickness, but in the drifts it was, of course, deeper. The work of sledging under these circumstances was excessively laborious and exhausting, and besides it was impossible to keep our proper course while the blizzard lasted. Acoordingly, Ave camped at 8 p.m., and after our evening meal we rolled into our sleeping-bag and slid into the dreamless sleep that comes to the w^orn and weary wanderer. At 8 A.M. on February 2 we were rejoiced to find the sun shining in a clear sky. We intended making a desperate attempt this day to reach our depot, as we knew that the Nimrod would be due — perhaps overdue — by the night. We saw as we looked back that our track of yesterday was about as straight as a corkscrew. Once more we pulled out over the soft snow, and although refreshed somewhat by our good sleep we found the work extremely trying and toilsome. We crossed an ice donga, and about four miles out reached the edge of a second donga. Here we decided to leave everything but our sledge, tent, sleeping-bag, cooking-apparatus, oil and food, and make a forced march right on to the Drygalski Depot. Accordingly we camped, had tea and two biscuits each, and fixed up our depot, including the Lloyd-Creak dip circle, theodolite and legs, geological collections, &c., and marked the spot with a little blue flag tied on to an ice-axe. We now found the sledge, thus lightened, distinctly easier to pull, and after making a slight detour, crossed the donga by a snow bridge. Soon we reached another donga, and successfully crossed it. At three and a half miles further at 8 p.m. we camped again and had 200 NEARING THE COAST a little cheese and biscuit. After tliis short halt we pulled on again, steering north-8°-east magnetic. JMawson occasionally swept the horizon with our ex- cellent field-glasses in hopes of sighting our depot. Suddenly he exclaimed that he saw the depot Hag distinctly on its ice mound, apparently about seven miles distant, but it was well round on the starboard bow of our sledge on a bearing of south-SS^-west mag- netic. JNIackay and I were much excited at JNIawson's discovery. INIackay seized the field-glasses as soon as IMawson put them down and directed them to the spot indicated, but could see no trace of the flag; then I looked through the glasses with equally negative results. IMawson opined that we must both be snow-blind. Then he looked through them again, and at once ex- claimed that he could see no trace of the flag now. The horizon seemed to be walloping up and down, just as though it was boiling, evidently the result of a mirage. JVIawson, however, was so confident that he had seen the flag when he first looked, that we altered course to south-38°-west magnetic, and after we had gone a httle over a mile, and reached the top of a slight emi- nence in the ice-surface, we were rejoiced to liear the announcement that he could now see the depot flag distincth'. We kept on sledging for several miles further. At midnight, when the temperature had fallen to zero, I felt that the big toe of my right foot was getting frost- bitten, ^ly ski-boots had all day been filled with the soft snow and the warmth of my foot had thawed the snow, so that my socks were wet through; and now, since the springing up of the wind and the sudden fall in temperature, the water in the socks had turned to ice. So we halted, got up the tent, started the Primus and prepared for a midnight meal, while, with ]\Iawson's assistance, I got off my frozen ski-boots and socks and 201 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC restored the circulation in my toe, and put on some socks less icy than those 1 had just taken off. We were much refreshed by our supper, and then started off again, thinking that at last we should reach our depot, or at all events, the small inlet a little over a mile distant from it, but " the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley." There was an ominous white streak ahead of us with a dark streak just behind it, and we soon saw that this was due to a ravine or barranca in the snow- and ice-surface interposing itself between ourselves and our depot. We soon reached the near cliff of the barranca. The barranca was about two hundred yards in width, and from thirty to forty feet deep. It w-as bounded by a vertical cliff or verj' steeply inclined slope on the near side, the north-west side, and by an over- hanging cliff festooned with stalactites on the south- east side. To the north-east a strip of dark sea-water ■was visible between the walls of the barranca, which evidently communicated by a long narrow channel with the ocean outside, some three miles distant. Inland, the barranca extended for many miles as far as the eye could reach. The bottom of the barranca imme- diately beneath us was floored with sea ice covered with a few inches of snow. This ice was traversed by large tide-cracks, and we were much excited to see that there were a number of seals and Emperor penguins dotted over the ice floor. We determined to try and cross the barranca. We looked up and down the near cliff for a practicable spot where we could let down our sledge, and soon found a suitable slope, a little to the north-east of us, formed by a steep snow drift. We sledged on to this spot, and making fast the Alpine rojjc to the bow of the sledge, lowered it cautiously, stern first, to the bottom. The oil-cans 202 FRESH FOOD in the rear of the sledge were rattled up somewhat when it struck bottom, but no harm was done. At the bottom we had some trouble in getting the sledge over the gaping tide-cracks, some ten to fifteen feet deep and three to five feet wide. Arrived at the middle of the floor of the barranca, jNIackay killed two Emj^eror penguins, and took their breasts and livers to replenish our exhausted larder. JMeanwhile, Mawson crossed to the far side of the floor of the barranca on the look-out for a possible spot where we might swarm up. I joined him a few minutes later, and as I was feeling much exhausted after the continuous forced marches back from the IMagnetic Pole, asked him to take over the leadership of the ex- pedition. I considered that under the circumstances I was justified in taking this step. We had accom- plished the work assigned to us by our leader, having reached the jMagnetic Pole. We were within two or tlxree miles of our Drygalski Depot, and although the only food left there was two days' supply of broken biscuits with a little cheese, we had a good prospect of meat-supply, as the barranca abounded in seals and penguins, so that for the present we had no reason to apprehend the danger of starvation. On the other hand, as regards our ultimate personal safety, our position was somewhat critical. We were not even certain that the Nimrod had arrived at all in Ross Sea that season, though we thought it, of course, very probable that she had. In the next case, on the as- sumption that she had arrived, it was ver^^ possible that in view of the great difficulties of making a thorough search along the two hundred miles of coast, at any part of which we might have been camped — difficulties arising from heavy belts of pack-ice and icebergs, as weU as from the deeply indented character of that bold 30S THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC and rugged coast — it was quite possible that the Nimrod would miss sighting our depot flags altogether. In the event of the Nimrod not appearing within a few days, it would be necessary to take immediate and strenuous action with a view either to wintering at the spot, or with a view to an attempt to sledge back around the great mountain massifs and over the many steeply crevassed glaciers for over two hundred miles to our winter quarters at Cape Royds. Even now, in the event of some immediate strenuous action being necessary, if the Nimrod were to suddenly appear at some point along the coast, I thought it would be best for JMawson, who was less physically exhausted than myself, to be in charge. He had, throughout the whole journey, shown excellent ca])acity for leadership, fully justifying the opinion held of him by Lieutenant Shackle- ton when providing in my insti'uctions that in the event of anything happening to myself Mawson was to assume the leadership. AVhen I spoke to him on the subject, he at first demurred, but finally said that he would act for a time, and would think the matter over at his leisure before definitely deciding to become per- manently the leader. I ofi'ered to give him authority in writing as leader, but this he declined to receive. IMeanwhile, the examination of the cliff face on the south-east side of the liarranca showed that there was one very difficult but apparently possible means of ascent. We returned to where we had left IMackay, and then we three dragged the sledge around to the edge of a rather formidable tide-crack, behind Avhich lay the mound of snow up which we hoped to climb; our idea being to unpack our sledge, drag it to the top of this steep mound, and rearing it on end at the top of the mound, use it as a ladder for scaling the overhanging cliff" above. Mackay managed to cross the tide-crack, using the 204 SEVERE CLIMBING bamboo poles of our tent as a bridge, and after some difficulty, reached the top of the snow mound under the overhanging cliff. Much to our disappointment, however, he discovered that the momid was formed of very soft snow, his ice-axe sinking in to the whole depth of the handle directly he placed it on top of the mound. It was obvious that as our sledge would sink in to at least an equal depth, the tojj of it would then be too short to enable any of us to scale the overhanging cliff by its means. We were, therefore, reluctantly com- pelled to drag our sledge back again over the tide-cracks to the north-west side of the barranca down which we had previously lowered our sledge. We then discovered that, as in classical times, wliile the descent to Avernus was easy, it was difficult and toilsome to retrace one's steps. With JNIawson ahead with the ice-axe and towing rope, and Mackay and I on either side of the seldge in the rear, we managed by puffing and pusliing together to force the sledge up a few inches at a time. At each short halt, JNIawson would stick in the ice-axe, take a turn of the leading rojDc around it, and support the sledge in this way for a brief interval while we all got our breath. At last the forty feet of steep slope was suc- cessfully negotiated, and we found ourselves once more on the level plain at the top of the barranca, but of course, on the wrong side in reference to our depot. As we were within three miles of the open sea we thought it would be safe to camp here, as had the Nhnrod sighted our depot flag and stood in to the coast, we could easily have hurried down to the entrance of the inlet and made signals to her. We had now been up since 8 a.m. on the previous day, and were very thankful to be able to enter our tent, and have a meal off a stew of minced penguin liver. We then turned into the sleeping-bag at about 205 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 7 A.M. Just about a quarter of an hour after we had turned in, as we learnt later, the Nhnrod must have passed, bound north towards ^Mount ]\Ielbourne, within three miles of the ice cUfF on which our tent was now situated. 0\\ing, however, to a light wind with snow drift she was unable to sight either our depot flag or tent. Ci^aptcr €l)irtcen PROFESSOR DAVID'S NARRATIVE (Cmduded) I7EBRUARY 3.— After sleeping in the bag from 7 •■■ A.M. until 11 A.M. we got up and had breakfast, packed our sledge, and started along the north bank of the snow canon. The snow and ice at the bottom were dotted with basking seals and moulting Emperor pen- guins. Fully a hundred seals could be counted in places in a distance of as many yards along the caiion. At about one mile from the camp we reached a small branch caiion, which we had to head oflf by turning to our right. We now proceeded about one and a half miles further along the edge of the main canon, and in ooir then tired and weak state were much dispirited to find that it still trended inland for a considerable dis- tance. We now halted by the sledge while Mackay went ahead to try and find a crossing, and presently Mawson and I were rejoiced to hear him shout that he had discovered a snow bridge across the caiion. Presently he rejoined us, and together we pulled the sledge to the head of the snow bridge. It was a romantic spot. A large slice of the snow or neve cliff had fallen obliquely across the caiion, and its surface had then been raised and partially levelled up wth soft drift snow. There was a crevasse at both the near and far ends of the bridge, and the middle was sunk a good deal below the abutments. Stepping over the crevasse at the near end we launched the sledge with a run down to the centre of the bridge, then struggled up the steep slope facing us, Mackay steadying the sledge 207 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC from falling off the narrow causeway, while we all thi-ee pulled for all we were worth. In another minute or two we were safely across with our sledge, thankful that we had now surmounted the last obstacle that intervened between us and our depot. While heading for the depot we sighted an Emperor penguin close to our track. Mackay quickly slew him, and took his flesh and liver for our cooldng-pot. Two miles further on we camped. Mawson minced the Emperor's flesh and liver, and after adding a little snow, I boiled it over our Primus so as to make one and a half pots of soupy mincemeat for each of us. This was the most satisfying meal we had had for manj'' a long day. After lunch we sledged on for over one and a half miles further towards the depot, and at about 10.30 p.m. reached an ice mound on the south side of the inlet in which the snow canon terminated seawards. This camping spot was a little over a mile distant from our dejjot. We were now all thoroughly exhausted and decided to camp. The spot we had selected seemed specially suitable, as from the adjacent ice mound we could get a good view of the ocean beyond the Drj'- galski Barrier. While jMawson and I got up the tent, Mackay went to kill a seal at the shore of the inlet. He soon returned with plenty of seal meat and liver. He said that he had found two young seals, and had killed one of them; that they had both behaved in a most unusual manner, scuttling away quickly and actively at his approach, instead of waiting without moving, as did most of the Weddell seals of wliich we had liitherto had experience. We discovered later that these two seals belonged to the comparatively rare variety kno\ATi as Ross seal. After a delicious meal of seal blubber, blood and oil, with fried meat and liver, cooked by Mawson, IMawson and I turned into 208 / WAITINGFOR THE SHIP the sleeping-bag, leaving JVIackay to take the first of our four hour watches on the look-out for the Nimrod. During his watch he walked uj) to our depot and dug out our biscuit tin, wliich had served us as a blubber lamp and cooker, together with the cut-down paraffin tin wliich we had used as a frying-pan. Both these he carried down to our tent. There he ht the blubber lamp just outside the tent and cooked some penguin meat, regalmg himself at intervals during his four hour's watch with dainty morsels from the savoury dish. When he called me up at 4 a.m. I found that he had thoughtfully put into the frying-pan a junk of Emperor's breast, weigliing about two pounds, for me to toy with during my watch. A cliilly wind was blowing off the plateau, and I was truly thankful for an occasional nibble at the hot penguin meat. After cooking some more penguin meat I called up JNIawson soon after 8 a.m. on February 4, and immediately afterwards turned into the bag, and at once dropped off sound asleep. JNlawson did not call Mackay and myself until after 2 P.M. We at once rolled up the sleeping-bag, and Mawson cooked a generous meal of seal and penguin meat and blubber, while ISIackay made a tloin soupy broth on the Primus. JNIeanwhile, I went on to the ice mound with the field-glasses, but could see nothing in the way of a ship to seaward and returned to the tent. We all thoroughly enjoyed our liberal repast, and particularly rehshed the seal's blood, gravy and seal oil. After the meal we discussed our future plans. We decided that we had better move the tent that afternoon up to our old depot, where it would be a conspicuous object from the sea, and where, too, we could command a more extensive view of the ocean. We also talked over what we had best do in the event of the Nimrod Vol. II.-14 209 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC not turning up, and decided that we ought to attempt to sledge overland to Hut I'oint, keeping ourselves alive on the way, as best we might, with seal meat. It must be admitted that the prospect of tackling two hundi-ed miles of coast, lornied largely of steep rocky foreshores, alternating with heavily crevassed glacier ice, was not a very bright one. We also discussed the date at which we ought to start trekking southwards. ^lackay thought we ought to commence making our preparations at once, and that unless the Nimrod arrived within a few days Ave ought to start down the coast with our sledge, tent, sleeping-bag, cooker and seal meat, leaving a note at the depot for the Ximrodj in case she should arrive later asking her to look out for us along the coast, and if she couldn't sight us, to lay depots of food and oil for us at certain specified spots. He considered that by this method we could make sure of beginning the long journey in a sound state of health, and, if fortunate, might reach Hut Point before the beginning of the equinoctial gales in JNlarch. ISIawson and 1, on the other hand, thought that we ought to wait on at our present camp until late in February. From Avhatever point of view we looked at it, our present lot was not a happy one. The possibility of a long wait in the gloomy region of the Drygalski Glacier, with its frequent heavy snows at this season of the year, and leaden sky vaulted over the dark sea, was not pleasing to contemplate. Still less cheerful was the prospect of a long, tedious and dangerous sledge journey towards Hut Point. Even the diet of seal and penguin, just for the moment so nice, largely because novel, would soon savour of ton jours perdrix. Dispirited by forebodings of much toil and trouble, we were just preparing to set our weary liml)s in motion to pack up our belongings for the short trek up to the 210 THE NIMROD ARRIVES depot, when Bang! went sometliing, seemingly close to the door of our tent; the sound thrilled us; in another instant the air reverberated with a big boom! much louder than the fii'st sound. JMawson gave tongue iirst, roaring out, "A gmi from the ship!" and dived for the tent door. As the latter was narrow and funnel- shaped there was for the moment some congestion of traffic. I dashed my head forwards to where I saw a small opening, only in time to receive a few kicks from the departing JMawson. Just as I was recovering my equilibrium, Mackay made a wdd charge, rode me down and trampled over my prostrate body. When at length I struggled to my feet, JMawson had got a lead of a hundred yards, and JMackay of about fifty. " Bring something to wave," shouted JMawson, and I rushed back to the tent and seized JMackay's riick-sack. As I ran forward tliis time, what a sight met my gaze. There was the dear old Nimrod, not a quarter of a mile away, steaming straight towards us up the inlet, her bows just rounding the entrance. At the sight of the three of us running frantically to meet the ship, hearty ringing cheers burst forth from all on boafd. How those cheers stirred every fibre of one's being! It would be hard, indeed, for any one, not situated as we had been, to realise the sudden revulsion of our feelings. In a moment, as dramatic as it was heavenly, we seemed to have passed from death into life. JMy first feelings were of intense relief and joy; then of fervent gratitude to the kind Providence which had so mercifully led our friends to our deliverance. A sudden shout from JMackay called me back to earth, " JMawson's fallen into a deep crevasse. Look out, it's just in front of you! " I then saw that JMackay was kneeling on the snow near the edge of a small oblong sapphire-blue hole in the neve. " Are you all 211 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC right, Mawson?" he sang out, and from the depth, eanie up the welcome word, " Yes." Mackay then told me that JNlawson was about twenty feet down the crevasse. We decided to tiy and pull him up with the sledge harness, and hurried back to the sledge, vm- toggled the harness, ran back with it to the crevasse, and let one end down to ^lawson. We found, however, that our combined strength was insufficient to pull him up, and that there was a risk, too, of the snow lid at the surface falling in on JNlawson, if weight was put upon it, unless it was strengthened with some planking. Accordingly, we gave up the attempt to haul JNlawson up, and while I remained at the crevasse holding one end of the sledge harness JNIackay hurried off for help to the Nimrod, which was now berthing alongside of the south wall of the inlet, about two hundred yards distant. !Mackay shouted to those on board, " ^lawson has fallen down a crevasse, and we got to the JNIagnetic Pole." The accident had taken place so suddenly that those on board had not realised in the least what had happened. A clear, fii'm, cheery voice, that was strange to me, was now heard issuing prompt orders for a rescue party. Almost in less time than it takes to write it, officers and sailors were swarming over the bows of the Nimrod, and dropi)ing on to the ice barrier beneath. I called do\™ to JNlawson that helj) was at hand. He said that he w^as quite comfortable at present; that there was sea water at the bottom of the crevasse, but that he had been able to sustain liimself a couple of feet above it on the small ledge that had arrested his fall, INIean- while, the rescue party, headed by the first officer of the Ximrodj J. K. Davis, had arrived on the scene. The crevasse Avas bridged with a suitable piece of sawn timber, and Davis, with that spirit of thorouglmess wliich characterises all his work, promptly had himself 212 GLAD MOMENTS lowered do^vTi the crevasse. On reaching the bottom he transferred the rope by wliich he had been lowered to JNIawson, and with a long pull and a strong pull and a pull altogether, the company of the Niuirod soon had ]\lawson safe on top, none the worse for the accident with the exception that his back was shghtly biiiised. As soon as the rope was cast free from INIawson, it was let down again for Davis, and presently he, too, was safely on top. And now we had a moment of leisure to see who constituted the rescue party. There were the dear old faces so well known on our voyage together the pre\'ious year, and interspersed \\ith them were a few new faces. Here were our old comrades Arm}i:age and Brocklehurst, Dr. JNIichell, Harbord (the officer who — as we learned later — had sighted our depot flag), our good stewards Ansell and Ellis, the genial boatswain Cheetham, Paton, and a number of others. What a joyous grasping of hands and hearty all-round welcoming followed. Foremost among them all to welcome us was Captain Evans, who had commanded the s.s. Koonya, which towed the Nimrod from L}i:telton to beyond the Antarctic Circle, and it goes without sapng that the fact that the Nimrod was now in command of a master of such experience, so well and favourably kno^\'n in the shipping world of New Zealand and Austraha, gave us the greatest satisfaction. He hastened to assure me of the safety and good health of my wife and family. While willing hands packed up our sledge, tent and other belongings, Captain Evans walked with us to the rope ladder hanging over the bows of the Nimrod. Quickly as all this had taken place, ]\Iackay had already found time to secure a pipe and some tobacco from one of our crew, and was now puffing away to his 213 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC heart's content. We were soon all on the deck of the Nimrud once more, and were immediately stood up in a row to be photographed. As soon as the cameras had worked their wicked will upon us, for we were a sorrj' sight, our friends hurried us off for afternoon tea. After our one hundred and twenty-two days of hard toil over the sea ice of the coast and the great snow desert of the liinterland, the little sliip seemed to us as luxurious as an ocean hner. To find oneself seated once more in a comfortable chair, and to be served with new-made bread, fresh butter, cake and tea, was Elysium. We heard of the narrow escape of Army tage, Priestley and Brocklehurst, when they were being carried out to sea, with only two days' provisions, on a small ice-floe surrounded by Killer whales; and how, just after the momentary grounding of the floe, they Avere all just able to leap ashore at a spot where they were picked up later by the Nimrod. We also heard of the extraordinary adventures and escapes of Mac- kintosh and McGillan in their forced march overland, without tent or sleeping-bag, from Mount Bird to Cape Royds; of the departure of the supporting-party to meet the Southern Party; and, in short, of all the doings at Cape Royds and on the Nimrod since we had last heard any news. Pleasantly the buzz of our friends' voices blended itself with the gentle fizzing of steam from the Nimrod's boiler, and surely since the days of Jolin Gilpin " were never folk so glad " as were we three. Here it may not perhaps be out of place to quote from Captain Evans' private log in reference to the relief of our Northern Party by the Nimrod. After hearing from the Western Party under Armitage that we were long overdue at Butter Point, and after con- sulting with ]\Iurray at Cape Royds, he decided to 214 The "Nimrod" Htxu dp in the Ice Captain l'.\ ws \m> jhi "Nimh I !< \ liLIZZAUU The Deck of tiif. "Nimboo" aftf.r a Blizzard THE SHIP'S WORK commence to search for us, as suggested in Lieutenant Shackleton's instructions on February 1. He left accordingly at that date, and after looking for us in vain at the Butter Point depot, and at Granite Harbour he sailed northwards for the Diygalski Ice Barrier Tongue, and when about three miles oiF our depot island had sighted our httle flag and cairn, but was not certain that it was a depot. Nearer approach was pre- cluded at the time by the pack-ice. Captain Evans' private log reads as follows : ''February 3, 1.30 a.m.— Cleared belt of pack- proceeded westward along Drygalski Barrier edge. JNIoderate to strong south-west wind, force four to eight with snow di-ift; 7.30 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. off Barrier. (At tliis time the Nlmrod must have passed witliin about three miles of the spot where we were at our last camp before reacliing the inlet, and had it not been for a little falling snow our flag and tent would prob- ably have been sighted on this occasion) ; 10 a.m. to 2.15 P.M.: coasted along the beach at distances of from one-fifth of a mile to three-quarters of a mile in water from ten to fifty fathoms; 1 p.m. wind dropped to calm; 2.15 p.m. bearing true north-20°-east, dis- tant twenty-four miles ]Mount ^Melbourne. Came to top of bight (Gerlache Inlet) full of pack; sounded in sixty-four fathoms; took bearings and stood eastward to search Cape Washington; 3.30 p.m. entered the pack-ice. ]\Iidnight: rounded Cape Washington at a distance of one and a half cables in eleven to twenty fathoms, both sides of the cape quite inaccessible — awful-looking ice cliffs northern side — crevassed ice slopes south side. Fresh south-south-west wind, force 5-5. . . . No sign of party or record anywhere. 215 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC February 4, 1909, 10 a.m. — Pack-ice stretching east and west to northward — turned back to try coast agam to the southward. Fresh soutlierly wmd, force 6 — clear and fine, barometer 28. 8G, thermometer 17°. . . . Proceeding again along Drygalski Barrier; 3 P.M. sighted two flags on Barrier edge and a httle back of it — small hilet developing. (The third officer, JMr. A. Harbord, first sighted these flags, and came to the captain and said, ' 1 think, sir, 1 see a flag,' and then Arm}i;age, bringing his powerful deer-stalking telescope to bear on the object, said to the captain, ' It's a dead sitter, sir.' T.W.E.U.) 3.40 p.m. arrived at upper end of inlet — picked up Professor David, Mawson and JNIackay, just arrived back from JNIagnetic Pole; 5 p.m. killed flrst Ross seal; 2 p.m. great depression, 4 p.m. great elation. . . . At 3.30 p.m., upon sighting the top of the Northern Party's tent, we fire a distress double detonator. Upon hearing tliis in the tent we learn that they all jumjjcd up, and upset each other, and everjiihing, including the tin of seal blubber and blood which thej'- were drinking, and which Professor David pronounces good when you get used to it, and rushed out, JNIawson fu'st, who almost immediately went down a crevasse, from which jNIr. Davis and a party from the ship soon pulled Iiim up. A great meeting — a tremendous relief." After afternoon tea came the joy of reading the home letters, and finding that the news was good. Later we all three had a novel experience, the fu-st real wash for over four months. After much diligent work A\ith hot water, soap and towel some of the outer casing of dirt was removed, and bits of our real selves began to show through the covering of seal oil and soot. Dinner followed at 6 p.m. and it is scarcely necessary to add that with our raging appetites, and all the new 216 LUXURY types of dainty food around us we over-ate ourselves. This did not prevent us from partaking liberally of hot cocoa and gingerbread biscuits before turning in at 10 P.M. None but those whose bed for montlis has been on snow and ice can reahse the luxury of a real bunk, blankets and pillow in a snug little cabin. A few minutes' happy reverie preceded sound sleep. At last our toilsome march was over, the work that had been given us to do was done, and done just in the nick of time; the safety of those nearest and dearest to us was assured, and we could now lay down our weary limbs to rest. Under Providence one felt one owed one's life to the patient and thorough search, sound judgment and fine seamanship of Captain Evans, and the devotion to duty of his officers and crew and no pen can describe how that night one's heart overflowed ^\-ith thankful- ness for all the blessings of that day. One's last thought in the twiHght that comes between wakefulness and sleej) is expressed in the words of our favourite record on the gramophone, the hymn so grandly sung by Evan Williams: " So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still will lead If one may be permitted to take a brief retrospect of our journey the following considerations present themselves: The total distance travelled from Cape Royds to the Magnetic Pole and back to our depot on the Drygalski Glacier was about 1260 miles. Of this, 740 miles was relay work, and we dragged a weight of, at first, a little over half a ton, and finally some- what under half a ton for the whole of this distance. For the remaining 520 miles from the Drj^galski Depot 217 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC to the Magnetic Pole and back we dragged a weight at first, of 670 lb., but this finally became reduced to about 450 lb., owing to consumption of food and oil, by the time that we returned to our depot. We were absent on our sledge journey for one hundred and twenty-two days, of wliich five days were spent in our tent during heavy blizzaxds, and five days partly in experimenting in cooking with blubber and partly in preparing supplies of seal meat for the journey from the sea ice over the high plateau, and tliree days in addition were taken up in reconnoitring, taking magnetic observations, &c. We therefore covered this distance of 1260 miles in 109 travelling days, an average of about eleven and a half miles a day. We had laid two depots before our final start, but as these were distant only ten miles and fifteen miles respectively, from our winter quarters they did not materially help us. We had no supporting-pai'ty, and with the exception of help from the motor-car in laying out these short depots we pulled the sledges for the whole distance without assistance except, on rare occasions, from the wind. The travelling over the sea ice was at first pretty good, but from Cape Bernacchi to the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier we were much hampered by screwed pack- ice with accompanying high and hard snow ridges. Towards the latter part of October and during Novem- ber and part of December the thawing surface of saline snow, clogging and otherwise impeding our runners, made the work of sledging extremely laborious. ]\Iore- over, on the sea ice — especially towards the last part of our journey over it — we had ever present the risk of a blizzard breaking the ice up suddenly all around us, and drifting us out to sea. There can be no doubt, 218 REVIEW OF THE JOURNEY in view of the wide lanes of open water in the sea ice on the south side of the Drygalski Glacier, when we reached it on Xovember 30, that we got to glades fir ma only in the nick of time. Then there was the formidable obstacle of the Drygalski Glacier, with its wide and deep chasms, its steej} ridges and crevasses, the passage of this glacier proving so difficult that although only a little over twenty miles in width it took us a fortnight to get across. On the far side of the Drygalski was the open sea forcing us to travel shorewards over the glacier surface. Then had come the difficult task of pioneering a way up to the high plateau — the attempt to force a passage up the Mount Xansen Glacier — our narrow escapes from having our sledge engulfed in crevasses — the heavy bhzzard with deep new fallen snow and then our retreat from that region of high-pressure ridges and crevasse entanglements — our abandonment of the proposed route up the snout of the Bellingshausen Glacier, and finally our successful ascent up the small tributary glacier, the " backstairs passage," to the south of Mount Larsen. On the high plateau was the difficulty of respira- tion, biting winds with low temperatures, difficult sledging — sometimes against blizzards — over broad undulations and high sastrugi, the cracking of our lips, fingers and feet, exhaustion from insufficient rations, disappointment at finding that the ]Magnetic Pole had sliifted further inland than the position previously assigned to it. Then, after we had just succeeded by dint of great efforts in reaching the Pole of verticity, came the necessity for forced marches, with our sledge, of from sixteen to twenty miles a day in order to reach the coast with any reasonable prospect of our being picked up by the Nimrod. 219 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Then came our choice of the difficult route down the snout of the BelHngshausen Glacier, and our conse- quent difficulties in surmounting the ice-pressure ridges; then the difficulty of sledging over the " tile-ice " sur- face, the opposing ice barrancas formed by the thaw water while we were on the high plateau; the final heavy snow blizzard; our loss of direction when sledg- ing in bad light and falling snow, and finally our arrest by the deep barranca of what afterwards was known as Relief Inlet. But ours were not the only, nor the greatest, diffi- culties connected with our journey. There were many disappointments, dangers and hardships for the captain, officers and crew of the Nimrod in their search for us along that two lunidi'ed miles of desolate and, for a great part, inaccessible coast-line. How often black spots ashore, proving on nearer view to be seals or penguins, had been mistaken for depot flags; how often the glint of sunlight off brightly reflecting facets of ice had been thought to be " helios," only the disappointed ones can tell; how often, too, the ship was all but aground, at other times all but beset in the ice-pack in the efforts to get a clearer view of the shore-line in order to discover our depot! This is a tale that the brave men who risked their Hves to save ours will scorn to tell, but is nevertheless true. As the result of our journey to the INIagnetic Pole and back, ]Mawson was able to join up in his continuous triangulation survey, Mount Erebus with IMount Mel- bourne, and to show with approximate accuracy the outline of the coast-line, and the position and height of several new mountains. He and I obtained geological collections, sketches and notes — especially on glacial geology — along the coast-line, and he also took a series 220 Party setting out from Ship iHHHHHSHHp^^^^^^ f'^'S"^' "i ^^^^^^^^^^^^^Hi M B i 1 / /j-l^i. iy / — — "yviB ' r M Ir "v ^-^^H VfU^'^m^ :vWv^ \ — :i^^ The Crow's Nest of the "Nimroh,*' as seen from the Deck PLANS FOR THE FUTURE of photographs; while ]\Iackay determined our altitudes on the plateau by means of the hypsometer. jNIawson also made magnetic determinations, and I was able to gather some meteorological information. A summary of this work is given in the Scientific Appendix, and details will be supplied later in the Scientific Memoirs of the expedition. Unfortunately the time available during our journey was too short for detailed magnetic, geological or mete- orological observations. Nevertheless, we trust that the information obtained has justified the journey. At all events we have pioneered a route to the jNIagnetic Pole, and we hope that the path thus found will prove of use to future observers. It is easy, of course, to be wise after the event, but there is no doubt that had we known that there was going to be an abundance of seals all along the coast, and had we had an efficient team of dogs we could have accomplished our journey in probably half the time that it actually occupied. Future expeditions to the South JNIagnetic Pole would probably do well to land a strong and weU-equipped party, either at Relief Inlet, or better, as near to " Backstairs Passage " as the ship can be taken, and as early in December as the state of the sea ice makes nangation possible. A party of three, with a supporting-party also of three, with good dog teams and plenty of fresh seal meat, could travel together for about seventy miles inland; then the sup- porting-party might diverge and ascend INIount Nansen from its inland extremity. The other party, mean- while, might proceed to the JNIagnetic Pole at not less than fifteen miles a day. This should admit of their spending from a week to a fortnight at the Pole, and they should then be able to return to the coast early in 221 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC February. Meanwhile, there would be plenty of scope for a third party to explore the foot-hills of JNIount Larsen and JNIount Nansen, search and map their won- derful moraines, and examine the deeply indented rocky coast-line from Nansen to the as yet untrod volcano Mount JSIelbourne. Ci^apter fourteen ALL ABOARD: THE RETURN TO NEW ZEALAND ri^HE Nimrodj with the members of the Northern '■ Party aboard, got back to the winter quarters on February 11 and landed JMawson. The hut party at tliis period consisted of JNlurray, Priestley, Mawson, Day and Roberts. Xo news had been heard of the Southern Party, and the Depot Party, commanded by Joyce, was still out. The ship lay under Glacier Tongue most of the time, making occasional visits to Hut Point in case some of the men should have returned. On February 20 it was found that the Depot Party had reached Hut Point, and had not seen the Southern Party. The temperature was becoming lower, and the blizzards were more frequent. The instruction left by me had pcovided that if we had not returned by February 25, a party was to be landed at Hut Point, with a team of dogs, and on March 1 a search-party Avas to go south. On Febru- ary 21 INIurray and Captain Evans began to make prep- arations for the landing of the reUef party. The ship proceeded to Cape Royds where INIawson was picked up. In accordance with my expressed wish he was offered the command of the relief party, and accepted it. If it became necessary to go south in search of the Southern Party the men landed at Hut Point would have to spend another winter in the south, as the ship could not wait until their return. It was therefore a serious matter for those who stayed, but there was no lack of volunteers. These arrangements being com- 223 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC pleted, most of the members of the expedition then on board went ashore at Cape Royds to get the last of their property jDacked ready for departure. The ship was lying under Glacier Tongue when I arrived at Hut Point with Wild on February 28, and after I had been landed with the relief party in order to bring in Adams and Marshall, it proceeded to Cape Royds in order to take on board the remaining members of the shore-party and some specimens and stores. The Nimrod anchored a short distance from the shore, and two boats were launched. The only spot convenient for embarkation near the sliip's anchorage was at a low ice chff in Backdoor Bay. Everything had to be lowered by ropes over the cliff into the boats. Some hours were spent in taking on board the last of the collections, the private property, and various stores. A stiff breeze was blowing, making work with the boats difficult, but by 6 a.m. on jNIarch 2 there remained to be taken on board only the men and dogs. The operation of lowering the dogs one by one into the boats was necessarily slow, and while it was in progress the wind freshened to blizzard force, and the sea began to run dangerously. The waves had deeply undercut the ice-cliff, leaving a projecting shelf. One boat, in charge of Davis, succeeded in reaching the sliip, but a second boat, commanded by Harbord, was less fortu- nate. It was heavily loaded with twelve men and a number of dogs, and before it had proceeded many yards from the shore an oar broke. The Nimrod was forced to shp her moorings and steam out of the bay, as the storm had become so severe that she was in danger of dragging her anchors and going on the rocks. An attempt to float a buoy to the boat was not successful, and for some time Harbord and the men with him were 224 Thk Ship off Pram Point, jcst before LEAvrxt; for the North The Motoh Cam beinu iaken aboaud thk "Nimhou" kok thk Kkti kn Joirnky ^Jl 1 Ready to start Home A DISASTER AVERTED in danger. They could not get out of the bay owing to the force of tiie sea, and the projecting shelf of ice tlu-eatened disaster if they approached the shore. The flying spray had encased the men in ice, and their hands were nunab and half -frozen. At the end of an hour they managed to make fast to a line stretched from an anchor a few yards from the chff', the men who had remained on shore pulling this hne taut. The position was still dangerous, but all the men and dogs were hauled up the slippery ice-face into safety before the boat sank. Hot drinks were soon ready in the hut, and the men dried their clothes as best they could before the fire. Nearly all the bedding had been sent on board, and the temperature was low, but they were thankful to have escaped with their lives. The weather was bitter on the following morning (March 3), and the Xijnrod, which had been sheltering under Glacier Tongue, came back to Cape Royds. A heaAy sea was still running, but a new landing-place was selected in the shelter of the cape, and all the men and dogs were got aboard. The ship went back to the Glacier Tongue anchorage to wait for the relief party. About ten o'clock that night ^Mackintosh was walking the deck engaged in conversation with some other members of the expedition. Suddenly he became excited and said, " I feel that Shackleton has arrived at Hut Point." He was verj^ anxious that the ship should go up to the Point, but nobody gave much attention to him. Then Dunlop advised him to go up to the crow's-nest if he was sure about it, and look for a signal. Mackintosh went aloft, and immediately saw our flare at Hut Point. The ship at once left for Hut Point, reaching it at midnight, and by 2 a.m. on JNIarch 4 the entire expedition was safe on board. Vol. n.-i5 225 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC There was now no time to be lost if we were to attempt to complete our work. The season was far advanced, and the condition of the ice was a matter for anxiety, but I was most anxious to undertake exploration with the sliip to the eastwai'd, towards Adelie Land, with the idea of mapping the coast-line in that direction. As soon as all the members of the exjjedition were on board the Xi7nrod, therefore, I gave orders to steam north, and in a very short time we were under way. It was e\'ident that the sea in our neighbourhood would be frozen over before many hours had passed, and although I had foreseen the possibility of having to spend a second winter in the Antarctic when making my arrangements, we were all very much disinclined to face the long wait if it could be avoided. I wished first to round Cajie Armitage and pick up the geological specimens and gear that had been left at Pram Point, but there was hea\y ice coming out from the south, and this meant imminent risk of the ship being caught and perhaps " nipjoed." I decided to go into shelter under Glacier Tongue in the little inlet on the north side for a few hours, in the hope that the southern wind, that was bringing out the ice, would cease and that we would then be able to return and secure the specimens and gear. This was about two o'clock on the morning of JNIarch 4, and we members of the Southern Party turned in for a much needed rest. At eight o'clock on the morning of the 4th we again went down the sound. Young ice was forming over the sea, which was now calm, the wind having entirely dropped, and it was evident that we must be very quick if we were to escape that year. We brought the Nimrod right alongside the pressure ice at Pram Point, and I pointed out the little depot on the hillside. INIackintosh at once went off with a party of men to bring the gear 226 HOMEWARD BOUND and specimens down, wMle another party went out to the seal rookery to see if they could find a peculiar seal that we had noticed on our way to the hut on the previous night. The seal was either a new species or the female of the Ross Seal. It was a small animal, about four feet six inches long, with a broad white band from its throat right do\\n to its tail on the under- side. If we had been equipjjed with knives on the previous night we would have despatched it, but we had no knives and were, moreover, very tired, and we therefore left it. The search for the seal proved fruitless, and as the sea was freezing over behind us I ordered all the men on boai'd directly the stuff from the depot had been got on to the deck, and the Nimrod once more steamed north. The breeze soon began to freshen, and it was blowing hard from the south when we passed the winter quarters at Cape Royds. We all turned out to give three cheers and to take a last look at the place Avhere we had spent so man)" happy daj's. The hut was not exactly a palatial residence and during our period of residence in it we had suffered many discomforts, not to say hardsliips, but, on the other hand, it had been our home for a year that would always live in our memories. We had been a veiy happy httle party within its walls, and often when we were far away from even its measure of civilisation, it had been the Mecca of aU our hopes and dreams. We watched the little hut fade away in the distance with feelings almost of sadness, and there were few men aboard who did not cherish a hope that some day they would once more live strenuous days under the shadow of mighty Erebus. I left at the winter quarters on Cape Royds a supply of stores sufficient to last fifteen men for one year. The vicissitudes of life in the Antarctic are such that 227 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC such a supply might prove of the greatest value to some future expedition. The hut was locked up and the key hung up outside where it would be easily found, and we readjusted the lashing of the hut so that it might be able to withstand the attacks of the blizzards during the years to come. Inside the hut I left a letter stating what had been accomplished by the expedition, and giving some other information that might be useful to a future party of explorers. The stores left in the hut included oil, flour, jams, dried vegetables, biscuits, jjemmican, plasmon, matches and various tinned meats, as well as tea, cocoa, and necessary articles of equii)ment. If any party has to make use of our hut in the future, it Avill find there eveiything that it requires. The wind was still freshening as we went south under steam and sail on JNIarch 4, and it was fortunate for us that this was so, for the ice that had formed on the sea water in the sound was thickening rapidly, assisted by the old pack, of which a large amount lay across our course. I was anxious to pick up a depot of geological specimens on Depot Island, left there by the Xorthern Party, and with this end in view the Nimrod was taken on a more westerly course than would otherwise have been the case. The wind, however, was freshening to a gale, and we were passing through streams of ice, which seemed to thicken as we neared the shore. I decided that it Avould be too risky to send a party off for the specimens, as there was no proper lee to this small island, and the consequences of even a short delay might be serious. I therefore gave instructions that the course should be altered to due north. The follomng wind helped us, and on the morning of I\Iarch 6 we were off Cape Adare. I wanted to push between the Balleny Islands and the mainland, and make an attempt to follow the coast- 228 (SMtJwd by G, Canton ) C NEW COAST-LINE line from Cape North westward, so as to link it up with Adehe Land. No ship had ever succeeded in penetrat- ing to the westward of Cape North, heavy pack having been encountered on the occasion of each attempt. The Discovery had passed through the Balleny Islands and sailed over part of the so-called Wilkes Land of the maps, but the question of the existence of this land in any other position had been left open. We steamed along the pack-ice, which was beginning to tliicken, and although we did not manage to do all that I had hoped, we had the satisfaction of pushing our little vessel along that coast to longitude 166° 14' East, lati- tude 69° 47' South, a point further west than had been reached by any previous expedition. On the morning of March 8 we saw, beyond Cape North, a new coast-line ex- tending first to the southwards and then to the west for a distance of over forty-five miles. We took angles and bearings, and Marston sketched the main outlines. We were too far away to take any photographs that would have been of value, but the sketches show very clearly the type of the land. Professor David was of opinion that it was the northern edge of the polar plateau. The coast seemed to consist of chfFs, with a few bays in the distance. We would all have been glad of an opportunity to explore the coast thoroughly, but that was out of the question; the ice was getting thicker all the time, and it was becoming imperative that we should escape to clear water without further delay. There was no chance of getting further west at that point, and as the new ice was forming between the old pack of the previous year and the land, we were in serious danger of being frozen in for the winter at a place where we could not have done any geological work of import- ance. We therefore moved north along the edge of the pack, making as much westing as possible, in the direc- 229 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC tion of the Balleny Islands. 1 still hoiked that it might be possible to skirt them and find Wilkes Land. It was awkward work, and at times the ship could hardly move at all. Finally, about midnight on JNIai-ch 9, I saw that we must go north, and the course was set in that direc- tion. ^Ve were almost too late, for the ice was closing in and before long we were held up, the ship being unable to move at all. The situation looked black, but we discovered a lane through wliich progress could be made, and in the afternoon of the 10th we were in fairly open water, passing through occasional lines of pack. Our troubles were over, for we had a good voyage up to New Zealand, and on INIarch 22 dropped anchor at the mouth of Lord's River, on the south side of Stewart Island. I did not go to a port because I wished to get the news of the expedition's work through to London before we faced the energetic newspaper men. That was a wonderful day to all of us. For over a year we had seen nothing but rocks, ice, snov.- and sea. There had been no colour and no softness in the scenery of the Antarctic; no green growth had gladdened our eyes, no musical notes of birds had come to our ears. We had had our Mork, but we had been cut off from most of the lesser things that go to make life worth while. No person who has not spent a period of his life in those " stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole " will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man. We landed on the stretch of beach that separated the sea from the luxuriant growth of the forest, and scampered about like children in the sheer joy of being alive. I did not wish to despatch my cablegrams from Half INIoon Bay until an hour previously arranged, and in the meantime we revelled in the warm 230 Last View of Cape Auare The first I,andino in New Zealand on the ui-.tukn of the Exfeiution. A Bay in Stewart Island IN NEW ZEALAND sand on the beach, bathed in the sea and climbed amongst the trees. We lit a fire and made tea on the beach, and while we were having our meal the wekas, the remarkable flightless birds found only in New Zealand, came out from the bush for their share of the good tilings. These quaint birds, with their long bills, brown plumage and quick, inquisitive eyes have no fear of men, and their friendliness seemed to us like a welcome from that sunny land that had always treated us with such open-hearted kindliness. The clear, musical notes of other birds came to us from the trees, and we felt that we needed only good news from home to make our happiness and contentment absolutely complete. One of the scientific men found a cave showing signs of native occupation in some period of the past, and was fortunate enough to discover a stone adze made of the rare pounamu, or greenstone. Early next morning we hove up the anchor, and at 10 A.M. we entered Half Moon Bay. I went ashore to despatch my cablegram, and it was strange to see new faces on the wharf after fifteen months during which we had met no one outside the circle of our owti little party. There were girls on the wharf, too, and every one was glad to see us in the hearty New Zealand way. I despatched my cablegrams from the little office, and then went on board again and ordered the course to be set for Lyttelton, the port from which we had sailed on the first day of the previous year. We arrived there on March 25 late in the afternoon. The people of New Zealand would have "w^elcomed us, I think, whatever had been the result of our efforts, for their keen interest in Antarctic exploration has never faltered since the early days of the Discovery expedition, and their attitude towards us was always 231 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC that of warm personal friendship, but the news of the measure of success we had achieved had been published in London, and flashed back to the southern countries, and we were met out ui the harbour and on the whanes by cheering crowds. Enthusiastic friends boarded the Nimrod almost as soon as she entered the heads, and when our little vessel came alongside the quay the crowd on deck became so great that movement was almost impossible. Then I was handed great bundles of letters and cablegrams. The loved ones at home were well, the world was pleased ^vith our work, and it seemed as though nothing but happiness could ever enter life again. BIOLOGY Notes by JAMES MURRAY, Biologist of the Expedition /^ N the calm evening of our departure for the south, ^-^ while the New Zealand coast was still in view, the Nimrod was accompanied by a number of southern Black- back or Dominican gulls, with their beautiful white-bor- dered black wings. An occasional cormorant flew past. Next morning these shore birds had left us, and their place had been taken by the albatrosses and petrels which were to keep us company thenceforward till we reached the Antarctic Circle. The pretty little speckled cape pigeon just crossed the Circle, and left us next day; the black-browed albatross was seen for a day longer; the sooty albatross went furthest into the Antarctic, and was last seen on Jan- uary 18. Just at the Antarctic Circle we were met by those peculiarly Antarctic birds, the snowy and Antarctic petrels. The wide zone of floating ice, a hundred miles or more across, would have been gloomy indeed without those two birds, which frequented tills zone in large flocks. These beautiful petrels, the Antarctic, with strongly con- trasting brown and white, the Snowy, pure white except for the black bill and feet, relieved by their bright plumage and sprightly flight the loneliness of this region. A few seals and penguins on the lower bergs were the only other living things among the ice. 233 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC The giant petrel and the httle Wilson's petrel were the only birds that ranged right from the New Zealand coast to the shores of Victoria Land. In the open sea to the south of the belt of ice even the Antarctic and Snowy petrels for the most part left us. The desolation and lifelessness of the Antarctic were fully realised as we approached the great Ice Barrier. There was no living thing in sight as we steamed east- ward, tracing the line of this immense glacier. Towards midnight there opened suddenly to our sight a scene of abounding life. The cliff of the Barrier terminated, and a wide bay opened up, extending far to the south, and partly filled by fast ice of one season's growth. Away to the eastward the cliff recommenced. This bay, which we afterwards referred to by the appropriate name of the Bay of Whales, was teeming with all the familiar kinds of Antarctic life. Hundreds of whales, killers, finners, and humpbacks, were rising and blowing all around. On the ice groups of Weddell seals were basking in the mid- night sunshine. Emperor penguins were standing about or tobogganing in unconcerned parties. Skua gulls were flying heavilj', or sitting drowsily on the ice. Only the Adelie penguin (busy nesting elsewhere), and the rarer kinds of seal were absent. It could hardly be supjiosed that this was a chance gathering of all these animals. Passing the same spot on the return journey westward, there was still the same abundance of life. There was probably land near by. Cape Royds. — To the biologist, no more uninviting desert is imaginable than Cape Royds seemed when we made our first landing, and for long afterwards. Here is absolute desolation, a black and white wilderness, rugged ridges of lava alternating with snowdrifts for a few miles, ending to the north and south in crevassed glaciers, and 234 BIOLOGY eastward in the snow-field stretching up to the rocky crags of the cone of Mount Erebus. On tlie very edge of the sea, the httle colony of Adelie penguins and the scattered skua gulls relieved the monotony. Beyond was no hving creature, no blade of grass, or tiniest patch of welcome green. Bleak and bare though it was, this stretch of two or three miles of broken country, where rocky peaks and ridges, moraines and snow drifts, diversified the surface, was the field of ojierations for the biologist. The white waste of glacier and snow-field was hopeless, the nearer country seemed little more jDromising. The sea was there, kno^\Ti to be teeming with varied life, but it was inaccessible till the ice should bridge it over. In the immediate vicinity of the camp were many little sharp peaks of kenyte, and short valleys filled with a cindery gravel derived from the decomposition of the same rock. Moraines covered the rock in places, and many of the valleys contained frozen ponds or lakes of various sizes up to half a mile in length. The first walks over the hills did little to encourage the biologist. The nigged kenyte, with its hard pro- jecting felspar crystals tearing the boots, supported no living thing. Little could we suspect that far beneath the thick ice of the lakes was plentiful hfe, dormant, it is true, but only waiting to be thawed out to spring into activity. Gradually, as we came to know it, it began to appear that the barrenness was not so absolute as we at first supposed. On an early walk, Mr. Shackleton brought home a scrap of moss and lichen, but it was long after- wards that the melting of the snow in the next summer revealed that fact that on some of the moraines the 235 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC growih of mosses and lichens was, comparatively speak- ing, luxuriant. A little dried-up pool, some two yards across, close by the penguin rookery, was quite covered by a film formed of bright green filamentous alga;. Around the edges of some of the smaller lakes, thick AVTinkled sheets of a plant of a dingy green or brown colour were seen, resembling some of the large foliaceous lichens in form. Wild brought in some of the same plant which he had found embedded in the transparent ice of a lake afterwards known as Clear Lake. In this situation it was of a beautiful orange red colour. Later on, this plant was found to be abundant in all the lakes, and in many of them it formed continuous sheets over the entire bed. INIany of the gravelly valleys showed a faint green tinge, showing where water had run in the summer-time. Microscopic Life It was while examining a bit of the orange-coloured weed under the microscope, that the first fresh-water animals were found. Two or three little red worm-like creatures were seen, creeping about like caterpillars, now and again coming to a stop and putting out their heads to feed, when they showed themselves to be rotifers, or wheel- bearing animalcules. Having thus ascertained that there were microscopic animals on this plant, a large quantity of it was gathered and washed in water to remove the adhering organisms. The sediment obtained was concentrated by straining, and a drop put under the microscope. INIyriads of li\ing things appeared, animals and plants. The plant-life consisted of various spheres and threads of green and blue-green alga?, some of the latter resembling strings of beads. 236 BIOLOGY The animals were more abundant, and in greater variety. The creeping rotifers were most plentiful, and there were several kinds of them besides the blood-red one fii'st noticed. Some were of curious shapes. Many were feeding, the two rotating wheels sweeping streams of minute isarticles towards the mouth. Small bear-like creatures were scratching among the debris or fiercely " pawing the air " with great curved, dangerous-looking claws. These were the water-bears. Miniature snakes (thread-worms) were twisting in and out, and lashing their tails. Some of the simplest of animals (protozoa), each consisting of a single cell, were there, the active infusoria swimming rapidly by means of their ciha, the slower-moving rhizopods jiutting out their little soft fijigers to feed or creep about. Animals higher in the scale were not wanting, though these were never seen alive. Skins of some mites related to the cheese mite, and of some small shrimps ( Crustacea) were occasionally found. Among all these animals the rotifers and water-bears were most important in point of numbers, and they lead such strange h\'es that they will be more fully described in later paragraphs. At any tinie during the winter an unlimited supply of these animals could be got for studj^ by simply melting a piece of ice containing some weed. In summer, the ponds and smaller lakes were completely melted for weeks, and tlien they were still more easily got by washing some of the weed. A few animals not found in winter then hatched out from eggs and swam about in the water. A large and beautiful rotifer named hydatina appear in Coast Lake only. In Coast Lake also a curious thing happened in summer. The stones at the margin became covered by bright red patches, as though they had been sprinkled 237 TJIE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC with blood. These patches were found to be formed of rotifers, of the same kind which were commonest among- the weed in winter. The red stains appear to rise owing to tlieir rapid nmltiphcation, and to their fixing- them- selves side by side as close as they can pack. The i)hoto- graph shows a small part of one of these stains trans- ferred by a brush to the microscope shde. In Coast Lake the largest of these patches of rotifers would not be more than an inch in diameter, but Priestley tells us that in a lake on the west side of the Sound they formed patches " as large as a man's head " and of appre- ciable thickness. Though this rotifer usually attaches itself by the foot when feeding, many of them let go their hold and go swimming in the water, so that when water from any of these lakes is taken for driking it can be seen that there is a fair sprinkling of red grains in it which must be swallowed with the water. In summer, too, in very shallow ponds and trickhng streams an alga of a brownish-green colour grows in large translucent sheets. Life in the Ice As soon as animals were obtained from the weed enclosed in the ice in the manner described above, it was obvious that mere freezing did not kill them. They were first got in the shallow lakes, where the weed could be seen through the transparent ice at the margins. There were plenty in all the shallow lakes. A shaft was sunk through fifteen feet of ice to the bottom of Blue Lake. There w^as a film of yellow weed covering the gravel of which the bottom was composed, and on this weed several kinds of rotifers were found alive. This fact seemed more remarkable later, when we found that Blue Lake did not melt during the two summers that -vve spent at Cape 238 Vt bk5««. Claws ok a W atkr-Kf.ah. MAfjviFiKt) ahoit 500 Diameters A NEW Species of Rotifi . i. . ^ \i i \]i ROTDS. Its distinctive FKATUK^. IS IML POS- SESSION OF WIN«-LIKE PhOTUBEKANC-ES AT THE Sides *A LARGE. FKEE-SWIMMING ROTIFER. CALLED Hy- DATINA. It is VEHY PLENTIFUL IN THE COAST Lakes in the Summer ViviPAROT7S Rotifer from the Salt Lakes. The oval Bodies seen in the Adult Animal ARE THE Young The Ghegahious Rotifer, which forms Blood-red Pat( hes in the Lakes at Cape Royds *A Single Specimen of Gregarious Rotifer. The Dark Portion is the Stomach, and the OVAL form of an Unborn Yovng Rotifer CAN BE SEEN The commonest Water-Bear Royds District L\ THE Cape BIOLOGY Royds. This means that the animals must be capable of remaining frozen for years, possibly for maziy years, without being killed. Though enclosed in the ice, there was no means of knowing how low temperatures they could endure, for the ice in the lakes might never be so cold as the ah-. A few simple experiments were carried out with the object of finding what degree of cold they could survive. Afterwards the experiments were extended in other direc- tions; they were heated, they were immersed in various saline mixtures; in short, they were submitted to various tests such as they might be exposed to in nature. It must be admitted that we did not ascertain what limits of tem- perature they could endure. We only know that thej" live at a certain low temperature; the Antarctic was not cold enough to show us any temperature at which they die. From facts previously ascertained we may predicate approximately what is the limit at the other end of the scale. Animal protoplasm is known to coagulate at a point well below the boiling-point of water. As the Antarctic was not cold enough, it was intended to use the resources of civilisation in order to get greater cold, by the use of liquid air. Unfortunately, the animals had to be subjected for some weeks to an almost tropical tem- perature, and were found to be all dead when they reached Sydney.* Tenacity of Life To test the degree of cold which they could stand blocks of ice were cut from the lakes and exposed to the air in the coldest weather of the whole winter. By boring into the centre of the blocks we found that thev were as cold * Since this was written, examination of the rotifers in London (in September 1909) has shown that they are still living. 239 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC as the air. A temperature of minus 40^ Fahr. did not kill tlie animals. Then they were alternately frozen and thawed weekly for a long jjeriod, and took no harm. They \\ere dried and frozen, and thawed and moistened, and still they hved. At last they were dried, and the bottle containing them was immersed in boiling water, which was allowed to cool graduall)' and still a great many survived. Again thej' were put into sea-water, and into the brine from the bottom of Green Lake, which is so salt that it only freezes at about zero ( Fahr. ) . They were left in these salt waters for a month, yet as soon as they were transferred to fresh water they began to crawl about as though nothing had happened. Such is the vitality of these little animals that they can endure being taken from ice at a minus temperature, thawed, dried and subjected to a temperature not very far short of boiling-point, all within a few hours (a range of more than 200° Fahr. ) . It is not the eggs merely that survive all these changes, but the grown animals. These are animals comparatively high in the scale. The rotifers are worms, and the water-bears (which stood the same tests) are cousins to the insects and spiders. Some very lowly plants are not killed by being put in boiling water and doubtless many very simple animals can live through cold greater than we found in the Antarctic. Men can endure exposure for a time to very much lower tempera- tures, and to dry heat far above the temperature of boil- ing-water, but the case of the rotifer is very different. Its little body actually takes those different temperatures, man's body does not. It is a curious fact that these animals, which can endure such extremes of heat and cold, and other imfavourable conditions, readily die when left in cold water at a mod- 240 THE EMPERORS' CONCLAVE BIOLOGY erate temperature. The water may get a few degrees warmer than they are accustomed to, and may be insuffi- ciently aerated, but there is nothing to alarm them and induce them to make use of their remarkable means of protection (whatever they may be). Exposed to low temperatures or to salt water, they contract into little round balls, and in this state they are (somehow) safe. In the cold water, which is just slightly unfavourable, the}^ see no cause for alarm, and so, as Mr. Shackleton aptly expressed it when told about it, " they go out with- out then* Burberries," that being the great sin against prudence on the part of a polar explorer. The rotifer is not as a rule a long-hved animal. I have heard of a patriach of five months, which then came to an untimely end. Generally their span is to be meas- ured by days or weeks, or at any rate, is limited by a single season. The majority of the creeping rotifers can protect themselves against drying up, by coating themselves with a kind of varnish, and so they prolong what would be an ephemeral existence through a period of years. As all activity is susjJended it may be questioned whether the animal gains anything by this marvellous protective capacity, but at least the chances of the race surviving are greatly increased by it. The Antarctic rotifers in like manner exist in a state of suspended animation when frozen in ice for a long period. If the lakes in which they live are only melted at long intervals and for short periods, it may be that some very ancient rotifers are aHve beneath the ice, possibly scores of years old. VmPABOUS Rotifers Most rotifers lay eggs, but a good many kinds bring forth the young alive and verj' completely developed. At Vol. n.-i6 241 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Cape Royds, twelve kinds of creeping rotifiers were found. Eight of these were well-known kinds which elsewhere lay eggs, and at Cape Royds they are reproduced in the same way. There were, however, two other kinds at Cape Royds, unknown anywhere else, and these are greatly more abun- dant than any of the others. It has been told how one of them forms blood-like patches in the lakes. Now, these two species bring forth living young, yet they belong to groups which usually lay eggs. One of them belongs to a genius {adineta) , no other known member of which is viviparous; the other (philodina gregaria) belongs to a section of the genus in which all the previously known species are oviparous. It is obvious that this mode of reproduction, being unusual in the groups to which thej' belong, must have been developed as an adaptation to the peculiar conditions, and their extraordinaiy abundance shows that it is per- fectly successful. Yet this is contrary to our preconcep- tion of what will be favourable under severe conditions. It is usually supposed that eggs are better protected against evil conditions than the adult animals, and that production of winter eggs ensures the continuation of the race when the animals perish, and it appears to be generally so among the lower invertebrata. Yet here, in one of the severest climates in the world, the process is reversed. Not only are the animals viviparous, but parents and young are alike indifferent to prolonged interruption of their activity by freezing, and when thawing occurs, development proceeds from where it left off. Since the viviparous rotifers are the most successful in the struggle for existence at Cape Royds, it is rather curious to note the total absence of animals of the genus Rotifer, which are all normally viviparous. 242 ^^■*n^"^*?$'^^ k ^ pi. |L -MURKAV liOhUi.NG YOLNG PENGLINS Two Empkror Penguins Al»t.LIt. i't.NGl INS BIOLOGY Life in Salt Lakes Green Lake is very saline. We do not yet know how much saline matter the water contains when the lake is entirely melted and mixed up by wind. The fluid obtained from under the ice in winter is a very dense and strong- smelling brine. There is abundance of life in this lake, but the number of kinds is much less than in the other lakes. Only two out of the twelve species of rotifers known at Cape Royds live in it. One of these {callidina con^tricta) is not very plentiful; the other {adineta grandis) is extremely so. This animal, wlaile developing the power of enduring cold, has at the same time become accustomed to living in salt water. Though they were not killed by the Green Lake brine, which is so much salter than the sea-water, none of these rotifers have been found m the sea. Water-bears in Ice Water-bears were found to hve while frozen in ice just as well as the rotifers did. It is an interesting fact that the only abundant species at Cape Royds is an Arctic species {macrohiotus arcticus) which was only previously known in Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land, and wliich has not yet been detected in the various collections made on the other side of the Antarctic by Bruce's and Nor- denskj old's expeditions. Distribution of Rotifers, &c. Most of the rotifers and other animals were found generally distributed in all the lakes visited. These cov- ered a ven.' hmited area, the most distant being no more than thirty miles apart. The nature of the microscopic fauna of other parts of the Antarctic is scarcely knowTi. Some of the Cape Royds lakes are richer than others, and the saline lakes are poorer, but the general distribu- 243 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC tion of most of the animals suggests easy dispersal from one to another. How are they conveyed? Only two methods suggest themselves to one acquainted with the local conditions. The skua gulls, which are so fond of bathing, may transfer a few adhering to their feet when they go from one lake to another. No other bird is at all likely to assist in this process. The other method, which seems likely to be the general one, is by wind. The weed at the margins of the lakes gets exposed and dried by the evaporation of the water, or more commonly by the abla- tion of the ice from the surface. It is then very light and easily blown about by the Mind, carrying its freight of dormant rotifers, &c. The experiments detailed above .show that in course of this dispersal they are scarcely exposed to danger at all. The hardest frost or the hottest sun cannot harm them, and should they even fall into the sea, they will not be killed if the plant which forms a raft for them eventually reaches the shore, when they may be again dried and driven by the ^ind till they find a suitable place to resume linng. A difficulty suggests itself in consid- ing this theory of dispersal by wind. The prevalcTit wind- storms are all from the southward. Northerly winds of force enough to move the dried plants are almost unknown. Though northerly winds prevail for a somewhat greater number of hours during the year than the southerlies, they are very light airs. Dispersal would then be easy in one direction only, and might be very slow, and depend- ent on the agency of the gulls in other directions. Life Among Moss The moss-dwellers are now well recognised among microscopic animals. There are rotifers and water-bears among the mosses at Cajie Royds, but the mosses them- 244 BIOLOGY selves are not very abundant, and the creeping rotifers have found a better home among the weed in the lakes. Among the mosses the animals lead even a harder life than they do in the lakes. In the lakes, when they do melt, the rotifers enjoy a period of some weeks when they can move and feed and multiply. Among mosses they feel at once the lowest temperatures of the air. They are frozen during the greater part of the year. Thej' are frozen even in summer for the greater part of every day. Only for a few hours daih% for a short time in the height of summer, the moss is thawed by the sun's rays. One wonders when the beasts get any time to grow. Yet they are there in abundance. They are all of different kinds from the lake dwellers. Xone of the rotifers were recog- nised, but some of the water-bears were. Biological Problems By what means do the rotifers sur\'ive freezing? It is not, as with higher animals, that they can keep warm in spite of the cold. They are too small for that. Their very blood, as the waterj' fluid filling the body cavity may be called, freezes very soon after the surrounding water. Whence is the microscopic fauna derived? Are the rotifers and water-bears surWvors from the remote time when a milder climate prevailed in Antarctica, when the country was covered with a vegetation of the higher plants and the coal-beds were in course of formation ? Or are they colonists from the temperate regions, wliich have migrated across the stormy Antarctic Ocean under present-day conditions? Some of the facts favour both theories. The small number of species, and the fact that the majority of them are widely distributed over the world, point to recent immigration. 245 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Penguins Though so much has been written about them, the penguins always excite I'resh interest in every one wlio sees them for the first time. There is endless interest in watching them, the dignitied Emperor, dignified notwith- standing his clumsy waddle, going along with his wife (or wives) by his side, the very picture of a successful, self-satisfied, happy, unsus])ieious countryman, gravely bowing like a Chinaman before a yelping dog — the little undignified matter-of-fact Adelie, minding his own busi- ness in a way worthy of emulation. They are j)erfectly adapted to a narrow round of life, and when compelled to face matters outside of their experience they often behave with apparent stupidity, but sometimes show a good deal of intelligence. Their resemblance to human beings is always noticed. This is partly due to the habit of walking erect, but there are truly a great many human traits about them. They are the civilised nations of these regions, and their civili- sation, if much simpler than ours, is in some respects higher and more worthy of the name. But there is a good deal of human nature in them, too. As in the human race their gathering in colonies does not show any true social instinct. They are merelj' gregarious; each penguin is in the rookery for his ovm ends, there is no thought of the general good. You might exterminate an iVdelie rookery with the exception of one bird, and he would be in no way concerned so long as you left him alone. Some little suggestion of altruism will appear in deal- ing with the nesting habits of the Adelie. Thieving is knowTi, among the Adelies at least. One very pleasing trait is shown, which they have in common uith man. Eating is not v,i\h them the prime business in life, as it is with the common fowl, and most animals. Both Emperors 246 BIOLOGY and Adelies, when the serious business of nesting is off their minds, show a legitimate curiosity. Having fed and got into good condition they leave the sea and go off in parties, apparently to see the country, and travel for days and weeks. The Emperor We saw the Emperor only as a summer visitor. Hav- ing finished nesting, fed up and become glossy and beau- tiful, they came up out of the sea in large or small parties, apparently to have a good time before moulting. While the AdeKes were nesting they began to come in numbers to inspect the camp. Passing among the Adelies, the two kinds usually paid no attention to one another, but sometimes an Adelie would tliink an Emperor came too close to her nest, and a curious unequal quarrel would ensue, the little impudence pecking and scolding, and the Emperor scolding back, ^vith some loss of dignity. Though more than able to hold her OA\'n with the tongue, the Adelie knew the value of discretion whenever the Emperor raised his flipper. They were curious about any unusual object and would come a long way to see a motor-car or a man. When out on these excursions the leader of a party keeps them together by a long shrill squawk. Distant parties salute in this waj' and continue calling till they get pretty close. A party could be made to approach by imitating this call. The first party to arrive inspected the boat, then crossed the lake to the camp. Soon they discovered the dogs, and thereafter all other interests were swallowed up in the interest excited by them. After the first discovery crowds came eveiy day for a long time, and from the manner in which they went straight to the kennels one was tempted to believe that the fame of them had been noised abroad. 247 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Ceeemoniks of JNIeeting Emperors are very ceremonious hi meeting other Emperors or men or dogs. They come up to a party of strangers in a stragghng procession, some big important aklermanie fellow leading. At a respectful distance from the man or dog they halt, the old male waddles close up and bows gravely till his beak is almost touching his breast. Keeping his head bowed he makes a long speech, in a muttering manner, short sounds following in groups of four or five. Having finished the speech the head is still kept bowed a few seconds for politeness sake, then it is raised and he describes with his bill as large a circle as the joints of his neck will allow, looking in your face at last to see if you have understood. If you have not comprehended, as is usually the case, he tries again. He is very patient with your stupidity, and feels sure that he will get it into your dull brain if he keeps at it long enough. By this time his followers are getting impatient. They are sure he is making a mess of it. Ajiother male will waddle forward with dignity, elbow the first aside as if to say, " I'll show you how it ought to be done," and go through the whole business again. Their most solemn ceremonies were used towards the dogs, and three old fellows have been seen calmly bowing and speaking simul- taneously to a dog, which for its part was yelping and straining at its chain in the effort to get at them. Left to themselves the Emperor penguins seem per- fectly peaceable, and no sign of quarrelling was ever noticed. When a party of them was driven into a narrow space they resented the jostling, and flippers were freely used, making resounding whacks, which apparently are not felt through the dense feathery fur. The flipper strikes with equal facility forward or backward. They seem to regard men as penguins like themselves. 248 BIOLOGY They are quite unsuspicious and slow to take alarm, so long as you stay still or move very slowly. If you walk too fast among them, or if you touch them, they get frightened and run away, only fighting when closely pressed. As one slowly retreats, fighting, he has a ludi- crous resemblance to a small boy being bullied by a big one, liis flipj^er towards the foe elevated in defence, and making quick blows at the bully. It is well to keep clear of that flipper when he strikes, for it is very powerful, and might break an arm. Emperors were killed by the dogs, but it is likely that they hunted in couples or in j^arties to do this. A long fight was witnessed between an Emjjeror and the dog Ambrose, the largest of our dogs native to the Antarctic. The penguin was quick enough in movement to keep always facing the dog, and the flijjper and long sharp bill were efficient weapons, as Ambrose seemed to appre- ciate. Only the bill was used, and it appeared to be due to short sight that the blow always fell short. JVIany of the apparently stupid acts of both kinds of penguins are doubtless to be traced to their very defective sight in air. The Emperor can hardly be said to migrate since he remains to breed during the winter darkness, and spends the summer among the ice or on shore in the same region. Yet he travels a good deal, and the meaning of some of his journeyings remains a mystery. The visits of touring- parties to the camp have been described. At the same season (early summer), when the motor-car was making frequent journeys southward to Glacier Tongue with stores for depot laying, we crossed on the way a great many penguin tracks. Many of these were beaten roads, where large parties had passed, some walking, some tobog- ganing. They all trended roughly to the south-east, and the wing marks and footmarks showed that they were all 249 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC outward bound from the open sea towards the shores of Ross Island. Some of the roads were twelve miles or more from the open sea. There were no return tracks. We expected to find that they had gone in to seek sheltered moulting-places, hut on a motor tri]) to the Turk's Head wc skirted a long stretch of the coast, and found no Emperors. On journeys they often travel many miles walking erect, when they get along at a very slow shuffle, making only a few inches at each step. In walking thus they keep their balance by the assistance of the tail, which forms a tripod with the legs. When on a suitable snow surface they progress raj^idly by tobogganing, a very graceful motion, when thej' make sledges of their breasts and propel themselves by the powerful legs, balancing and perhaps improving their speed by means of the wings. Eight of them visited the motor-car one day, near Tent Island, sledging swiftly towards us. Two of them were very determined fighters and refused to be driven away. One obstinate phlegmatic old fellow, who wasn't going to be hurried by anybody, did learn to hustle as the car bore down upon him. The Adelie The Adelie is always comical. He pops out of the water with startling suddenness, hke a jack-in-the-box, alights on his feet, gives his tail a shake, and toddles off about his business. He always knows where he wants to go, and what he wants to do, and isn't easily turned aside from his purpose. In the water the Adelie penguins move rapidly and circle in the same way as a porpoise or dolphin, for which they are easily mistaken at a little distance. On level ice 250 Empekohs Visit the Auelie Rookery; Ceremonial Bowing Emperors BowiMi to one another ^;v Cov AdELIB keeping HKK YOUN«i Onk \\ ahm Ax Adelie inspecting a Dog Hi Group showing a Moulting PFNcriN UUILUING Till', NKsr An Auelie calling fok a Math AriKii Commk-m inc; tmi: .Nkst BIOLOGY or snow they can run pretty fast, getting along about as fast as a man at a smart walk. They find even a small crack a serious obstruction, and pause and measure with the eye one of a few inches before veiy cautiously hopping it. They flop down and toboggan over any opening more than a few inches wide. They can climb hills of a very steep angle, but on uneven ground they use their flippers as balancers. They toboggan with great speed on snow or ice, or even on the bare rocks when scared, but in that case their flippers are soon bleeding. Veiy rarely they swim in the water like ducks. They lie much lower in the water than the duck. The neck is below the surface and the head is just showing. The Adelie is very brave in the breeding-season. His is time courage, not the courage of ignorance, for after he has learned to know man, and fear liim, he remains to defend the nest against any odds. When walking among the nests one is assailed on all sides by powerful bills. Most of the birds sit still on the nests, but the more pug- nacious ones run at you from a distance and often take you unawares. We wore for protection long felt boots reaching well above the knee. Some of the clever ones knew that they were wasting their efforts on the felt boots, and would come up behind, hop up and seize the skin above the boot, and hang on tight, beating with their wings. One of these little furies, hanging to your flesh and flapping his strong flippers so fast that you can hardly see them move, is no joke. A man once stumbled and fell into a colony of Adelies, and before he could recover himself and scramble out, they were upon liim, and he bore the marks of their fury for some time. Some birds became greatly interested in the camji, and wanted to nest there. One bird (we believe it was always the same one) couldn't be kept away, and came 251 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC daily, sometimes bringing some friends. As he passed among the dogs, which were barking and trying to get at him, he stood and defied them all, and when we turned out to try to drive him away, he offered to take us all on too, and was finally saved against his will, and carried away by Brocklehurst, a wildly struggling, unconquer- able being. The old birds enjoy play, while the young ones have no leisure for play, being engrossed in satisfj'ing the enormous appetites they have when growing. Four or five Adelies were inlaying on the ice-floe. One acted as leader, advanced to the edge of the floe, waited for the others to line up, raised his flipper, when they all dived in. In a i'(^w seconds they all popped out again, and repeated the iierformance, always apparently directed by the one. And so they went on for hours. VV^hile the Nimrod was frozen in the pack, some dozens of them were disporting themselves in a sea-pool alongside. They swam together in the duck fasliion, then at a squawk from one they all dived and came up at the other side of the pool. Early in October they began to arrive at the rookery, singly or in pairs. The first to come were males, and they at once began to scrape up the frozen ground to make hollows for their nests, and to collect stones for the walls with which they surround them. The digging is hard work and is done by the feet, the bird lying prone and kicking out backward. As soon as any apology for a nest is ready the males begin displaying, as sho\ni in the acompanying photograph. He points his bill vertically upwards, flaps his wings slowly, inflates his chest, and makes a series of low booming sounds, which increase in loudness, then die away again, the throat vibrating strongly. Then he slowly subsides into the usual attitude. 252 BIOLOGY We supposed this to be a part of his courtsliip, or as some phrased it " advertising for a wife," but there is good reason to suppose that the pairing is done before the birds leave the sea. Generallj' the male's displaying passes entirely disregarded. He continues it all through the nesting-season, till the chicks are nearly fledged and the moulting-time is near. An epidemic of displaying often took the whole rookery at once, when the hens were mostly away disporting themselves in the sea. When the rookery is pretty well filled, and the nest- building is in full swing, the birds have a busy and anxious time. To get enough of suitable small stones is a matter of difficulty, and ma}' involve long journeys for each single stone. The temptation is too strong for some of them, and they become habitual thieves. The majority remain stujjidly honest. Amusing complications result. The bearing of the thief clearly shows that he knows he is dong wrong. He has a conscience, at least a human conscience, i.e., the fear of being found out. Very differ- ent is the furtive look of the thief, long after he is out of danger of jiursuit, from the exjiression of the honest penguin coming home with a hard-earned stone. An honest one was bringing stones from a long dis- tance. Each stone was removed by a tliief as soon as the owner's back was turned. The honest one looked greatly troubled as he found that his heajD didn't grow, but he seemed incapable of suspecting the cause. A thief, sitting on its own nest, was stealing from an adjacent nest, whose honest owner was also at home, but looking unsuspectingly in another direction. Casually he turned his head and caught the thief in the act. The thief dropped the stone and pretended to be busy picking up an infinitesimal crumb from the neutral ground. The stone gathering is a very strong part of the nest- 253 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC ing instinct. It was kept up while sitting on the eggs, and if at a late stage they lost their eggs or young, they reverted to the heaping of stones, wliich they did in a half- hearted way. Unniated birds occupied tlie fringe of the rookery, and amused themselves piling and stealing till the chicks began to hatch out. After the two eggs were laid the males appeared to do most of the work. At any hour the males predominated, a very few pairs were at the nests, and relieving guard was rarely noticed. The females were never seen in the majority. Those which had been recently do\Mi to feed could be recognised by the fresh Crustacea round the nests. Judging by this sign, it would seem that some birds never leave the nest to feed during the whole period of incuba- tion. Many birds lost their mates through the occasional breaking loose of a dog. These birds couldn't leave the nests. Reabixg the Chicks The rookerj' is most interesting after the chicks arrive. INIany curious things happen as they grow. The young clucks are silvery or slaty-grey, with darker heads, which are for the first day or so heavy and hang down helplessly. As soon as they are hatched the mothers take equal share in tending them, whatever they may have been doing before that. For some weeks the nest cannot be left untended or the chicks would perish of cold or fall victims to the skuas. The parents keep regular watches, going down in turn to feed, and relieving guard is an interesting cere- mony. The bird just arrived from the sea hurries to the nest. It is anxious to see the cliick, and to feed it; the other is unwilling to resign, but at last reluctantly gets off the nest, e\ndently very stiff, stretches itself, and hangs about for a while before going dowTi to the sea. 254 :^^ ^H ■•A .^m ^ J ,>4S|^^^^^^^fc^^j^^^^^ ' ^^K ''W^t ^,^ 'j '- . JI -Muiiit-ii L'jLUit Li..\.\ ^--^ ;ii., -\:-.^j. SxRAXGEltS L»lSI'LAyiN\i InTEHIIST IN TIIK I.OXELY CHICKS , < i An t-i-I H A M > 1 ' A K t. An Adelie Reftsixg to be Frightened ^'£-y\ ^^^ "S& MrRRAT's Advances Resented -i '.' s," ^^IH m Ai.ni.n; thyim; i<> .MorntiK A coDPLK of WELL-grown Stranoehs BIOLOGY When the young ones can hold up their heads the feed- ing begins. At first the parent tries to induce its offspring to feed by tickhng its bill and throat. The old bird opens its mouth and the chick puts its head right in and picks the food out of the throat. The bird can be seen bringing it up into the throat by an effort. If the young is unwill- ing to feed some food is thrown right up on to the ground and a httle of it picked up again and placed on the claick's bill. After learning the way there is no need for such inducement, and the parents are taxed to satisfy the clamouring for more. For some weeks after the young are hatched life in the rookery goes smoothly along. One parent is always on the nest and the young birds do not wander. Then the trouble begins. The young begin to move about and if anything disturbs the colony they run about in panic. As they don't know nest or parent they cannot return home. They meet the case by adopting parents, and run under any bird they come to. The old birds resent this and a cliick is often pecked away from nest after nest till exhausted. The skuas get some at this time, but it is surprising how few. Most of the chicks take some old one unawares and get in the nest. She may have a chick already, or chicks, but as she doesn't know which is her own she cannot drive the intruder away. A sorely puzzled bird may be seen trying to cover four gigantic chicks. Some of the less precocious youngsters stay at home long enough to get to know the nest, and can find their way home after wandering a few yards. Such homes keep together a little longer. The time comes when both parents must be absent together to get enough food for the growing chicks. Then the social order of the rookery breaks down and chaos begins. The social condition which is evolved out of the 255 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC chaos is one of the most remarkable in nature, yet it serves its purpose and saves the race. A kind of communism is established, but the old birds have no part in it. They cherish the fiction that they have nests and children, and when thej' come up from the sea after feeding it is their intention to find the nest and feed their own young oidy. The young ones for their part establish a community of parents, and yet it isn't exactly that either, though it works out as if it were. It is each bird for itself. The chick assumes the first old one that comes within its reach to be its i^arent. Perhaps it really thinks so, as they are all alike. An old bird, coming up full of shrimps, is met by clamorous youngsters before it has time to begin the search for its hypothetical home. They order it to stand and dehver. It objects and scolds, and runs ofF. It may be by the irony of fate that it is its own young wliich accost it, but it can't know^ that. The chickens are both imperative and wheedling. Then begins one of those parent hunts wliich were so familiar at the end of the season. The end is never in doubt from the first. Every now and again the old one stops and expostulates. This shows weakness. There is no indecision on the part of the young one. It never seems anxious as to the result, but in the most matter-of-fact and persistent manner hunts the old one down. The hunts are often long and exhaust- ing. One chase was witnessed at Pony Lake beside the camj). Xine times they circled the lake, and the hunt was not over when the watcher had to leave. On that occasion they must have travelled miles. At the end the old one stops, and still spluttering and protesting, delivers up. One would think that in these circumstances the weaker chicks would go to the wall, but it does not appear to be so. There are no ill-nourished young ones to be seen. Perhaps the hunts take so long that all get a chance. 256 BIOLOGY A few days after the eggs began to hatch there was a severe bhzzard, which lasted several days. Snow was banked up round most of the birds. A snowdrift crossed the densest part of the rookery partly burying many birds. In the deepest part nests and birds were covered out of sight, and the only indication of the whereabouts of a bird was a little fumiel in the snow, at the bottom of which an anxious eye could be seen. jNIany less deeply buried birds had freed one wing or both, which became stiff with cold, as they could not be got back again. The snow, melting by the heat of their bodies, and refreezing, made walls of ice round the birds. JNIany got alarmed and left the nests, when the snow fell in and buried them. In the warm sunny weather that followed the melting snow filled many nests with pools of water. Some birds showed ingenuity in deahng with these floods. They moved their nests, stone by stone (always keejiing a hollow for the eggs or chicks) as much as their own width till they reached dry ground. Wliile the snowdrift remained some birds whose nests were buried scraped hollows in the snow and collected a few stones. On a moderate estimate about half the young perished in this blizzard. The old Adelies do not mind the cold. Their thick blubber and dense fur sufficiently protect them. In a blizzard they will lie still and let the snow cover them. Going to the rookeiy once after a blizzard I could see no jjenguins; they had entirely disaj^peared. Suddenly at some movement or noise I was surrounded by them; they had sprung up out of the snow. Domestic Entanglements While the Adelie appears to be entirely moral in his domestic arrangements, his stupidity (or Ms short-sight- edness which causes him to seem stupid) gives rise to many Vol U.-17 257 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC domestic complications. No doubt the presence of our camp upset the social economy, and probably when undis- turbed notliing of the kind would occur. lie has little sense of locality and one little heap of stones is very like another, yet pairs seem to have no means of recognising one another but by the rendezvous of the nest. Husbands and wives, parents and children, do not know one another, but if found at the nest are accepted as bond fide. All the birds go to their nests without hesitation when they come from the sea by the familiar route, but if taken from their nests to some other part of the rookery some find their way back without difficulty, others are quite lost. They are most puzzled when moved only a little away from home, and they will fight to keep another bird's nest while their own is only a couple of feet away. A bird will defend an egg or chick in the nest, but if it is removed just outside it will peck at it and destroy it. Considering these facts it will be evident that if the rookery be disturbed confusion follows. A mere walk among the nests caused innumerable entanglements. One bird would leave the nest in fright, flop down a yard away beside a nest already occupied, or on a nest left exposed by another scared bird. Then one-sided fights would begin, one bird attacking another under the impres- sion that it had usurped its nest, the rightful owner troubling little about the vicious pecking he was receiving, sitting calmly in conscious rectitude. A fight of this Idnd has been watched for an hour at a time, three neigh- bouring nests having been disturbed. One bird had got into another's nest, a second was trpng to establish a claim to the occupied nest of a third, and meanwhile the chicks of number one were neglected in the cold. A bird which had no family came and covered the chicks, but looked conscious of wrong doing and kept ready to bolt 258 BIOLOGY on a second's notice. All these birds but the last wanted their own nests and were Mithin a yard of them without knowing it. In all such cases, even when a bird got established on the wrong nest, there was always an adjustment after- wards. ^Vhen they calmed down they became uneasy, probably observing the landmarks more critically, and would even leave a nest with chicks for their own empty nest. A chick removed from the nest and put alongside was not recognised, and the old bird never seemed to connect the facts of the empty nest and the chick beside it. If a chick were taken from the nest under the old bird's very eyes and held in front of it, it was always the chick that was viciously attacked, not the aggressor. Some experiments were tried on them in order to trace the workings of the j)enguin mind. If a man stood between a bird and its nest so as to prevent it from getting onto it, the bird would make many attempts to reach home, nishing furiously at the man. After a time it would appear to meditate, and then walk oif rather dis- consolately, make a tour of the colony to which it belonged, and ajiproach the nest from another side. It appeared greatly astonished that the intruder was still there. This curious trait was often seen. It is like the ostricli burying its head in the sand and imagining it is safe, or like a man refusing to believe his own eyes. It appears to think that if it takes a turn round, or comes to its nest from the other side, the horrible vision will disappear. A bird was taken from a nest which had a chick in it and put down at a little distance. ^Meantime the chick was put in a neighbour's nest. Presently the bird came running up. It started back on seeing the empty nest, not in alarm or fear, but exactly as if tliinking; " I've come to the wTong house ! " trotted off to a distant part 259 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC of the rookery. Her reasoning seemed to be this: " There was a chick in my nest, therefore tliis empty nest can't be mine." She couldn't miagine the chick leaving the nest, and so never searched for it. It was only a yard from the nest all the time. After half an hour's searching in vain for any place like home she returned to the nest, and accepted the restored chick as a matter of course. A lost chick was never sought for. There would be no use; it couldn't be recognised. On account of this pecuharity we were able to make many readjustments of the family arrangements. When the bhzzard destroyed so many chicks we distributed the young from nests where there were two to nests where there were none. They were usually adopted eagerly and the plan was quite successful. 'When both birds are at a nest that is disturbed, or when the mate comes up from feeding to relieve guard, there is an interchange of civilities in the form of a loud squawking in unison, accompanied by a curious move- ment. The birds' necks are crossed, and at each squawk they are changed from side to side, first right then left. The harsh complaining clamour which they make was for long mistaken for (juan-eling. A bird returning from the sea came to the wrong nest and tried to enter into conversation Avith the occupant, who would have nothing to do with him. She knew her mate had just gone off for the day, and wouldn't be such a fool as to come back too early, so she sat still, indiffer- ent to the squawking of the other. A look of distress came into his face as he failed to get any response, and he was slow to realise that he had made a mistake. A small colony was found with about two dozen large chicks, unattended by any old birds. They were driven across the lake to a larger colony. Half-way over a few old birds were squatted, enjoying a rest. ^Vhen the chicks 260 BIOLOGY saw them they ran up to them joyfully, saying: " Here's pa and ma, hooray!" To their surprise they got the reverse of a cordial welcome, being driven away with vicious peckings. They were driven on to the larger colony and were swallowed up in it. The Adelies are not demonstrative of their affections. It is difficult to discover if they have any beyond the instinctive affection for the young. The pairing appears to be a purely business matter, and the mates don't even show any jDower to recognise one another. A penguin was injured by the dogs, but it seemed possible that it might recover, so we did not at once put it out of pain. In a couple of daj's it died. Shortly after we noticed a live penguin standing by it. We removed the dead bu'd to a distance, and after a while found the other standing beside it as before. It was the general opinion that it was the dead bird's mate which had found it out. Such an action is entirely opposed to what we expect after a long study of their habits. There are always plenty of dead birds about a rookery, and the living go about entirelj' indifferent to them. It is puzzling in any point of view, but it is less difficult to believe that the bird found its dead mate than that it took an interest in a dead stranger. Altruism When the young birds are well grown if there is an alarm they flock together, and any old birds present in the colony form a wall of defence between the young and the enemy. This habit has given rise to the belief that they are somewhat communistic in their social order, and that the defence of the colony is a concerted action. It is not so. Each bird is defending its own young one only, and will often fight with another of the defending 261 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC birds, or peck at any young one which comes in its way. There are real instances of altruism or kindness to strangers. Our passage tlirough the rookery frightened away tlie parent of a very young chick. A bird passing at the distance of a few yards noticed it and came over to it. He cocked his head on one side and looked at it, as if saying: "' Hullo! this little beggar's deserted; must do something for him."' He tickled its bill, as the parents do when coaxing the very young chicks to feed, but it was too much frightened to feed. After coaxing it in this way for some time he turned away and put some food upon the ground, and, lifting a little in his bill, he put some on each side of the chick's bill. Jusi, then the right- ful parent returned and the helper ran oil". This was not an isolated case, but was observed on several occasions. One incident seemed to reveal true social instinct. From a small colony of about two dozen nests all the eggs but one were taken in order to find out if the birds would lay again. As it turned out they did not. The birds sat on their empty nests for some time, then they disappeared. ^Vhen the time came for the solitary egg to hatch, about a dozen of the nests were reoccupied and the birds took their share in defending the one chick. Departure of the Young When they have shed most of their dowTi the young birds congregate at the edge of the sea. They cease from hunting the old ones for food, and appear to be waiting for something. When the right time comes, which they seem to know perfectly, they dive into the sea, some- times in small parties, sometimes singly, disappear for a time, and may be seen popping up far out to sea. They dive and come up very awkwardly, but swim well. 262 Biuim l{i&iN»i FKOM Snow [ M m A VjKW Ot TIU. KOOKKUV AtTKK A liLlZZARD KMPfcRORS ON TIIK MaKCH . 1 1 ^ li If y J ^ r E 1 [1 1! II 1 1 ' H ■ n ■f Ji T ' w X 1 ■ r 1 ^-^ A.^ I i It/ ' ^m ".- f "-■ r , . m.'..^ _ . -^ Emperors at rest BIOLOGY It is marvellous how fully instinct makes these birds independent. The parents do not take them to the water and teach them to swim. They haven't even the example of the old birds, wliich stay behind to moult. At an early age they become independent of their own parents, and earn their living by hunting any old bud they find. Though they have spent their lives on land, and only know that food is something found in an old bird's throat, when the time comes they leave the land and plunge boldly into the sea, untaught, to get their Uving by strain- ing Crustacea out of the water in the same way as the whale does. Some of our party reported that they saw penguins teaching the young to swim, but if this ever happens it is not general. Time and again the young have been watched lea\'ing as described, entirely C)f their o\\ti accord. At that season nearly all the old birds are in the moult and never venture into the water. Like the Emperor the Adelie is fond of travelling when family cares are off his mind. The great blizzard which wped out half the rookeiy left hundreds of old birds free. They began to explore the adjacent country in bands. The round of the lakes was a favourite trip and broad beaten roads marked this route. Tracks also led to the summits of some of the hills, though the short- sighted Adelie could hardly go there for the view. There was no general trek soutliwards, such as the Emperors made, yet the Southern Party found tracks of two at a distance of some eighty mUes from the sea. Nebuchadnezzar and Nicodemus These names dignified two penguin chicks. While chaos reigned in the rookery I found them exhausted and 263 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC covered with mire, having been hunted and pecked through the rookery. They were taken to the house, put in a large cage in the porch, and fed by hand with sarchnes and lish- cakes. The feeding was (hsagrecable. They didn't lilce the food and shook it out of their bills in disgust. So it was necessary to force it down their throats till it was beyond their reach. In a few days they became quite tame and recognised those who fed them. Familiar only with our peculiar method of feeding them, one of them indicated when he was hungry by taking my finger into his bill. ^Ve short- ened their names to Nebby and Nicky, and they answered to them, but they answered equally readily to the common name of Bill. The sounds of the rookery reached them and sometimes greatly excited them, and they made des- perate efforts to get through the netting of their cage. At these times we would take them out for a walk. They made no attempt to go to the rookery, and were rather frightened. Nebuchadnezzar was a very friendly little fellow, and would follow me about outside, and come running when called. The feeding was unnatural, and for this reason doubtless in a few weeks they died. The Ringed Penguin A single ringed penguin appeared at Cape Royds at the end of the breeding-season, just as the Adelies were beginning to moult. No ringed penguin had been seen in this part of the Antarctic before. It was evidently a stray one which had come ashore to moult. It is about the same size as the Adelie, but is more agile. It was at the season when the young Adelies go off to sea. At a little distance the ringed penguin, among a crowd of old 264 RETURN OF THE PENGUINS BIOLOGY Adelies, looked somewhat like a young Adelie with the wloite throat. I picked him up by the legs to hivestigate. To my surprise he curled round and bit me on the hand. An Adelie could not do so. A closer examination showed what he was. The Skua Gull Some hundreds of skuas nested in the neighbourhood of Cape Royds. At Green Lake and Coast Lake they were aggregated in what were known as skuaries. Coast Lake was the most populous skuary. Elsewhere they were widely scattered over the lower hills. There is no doubt that they are not social or even gregarious birds, and that they congregate at such places as Coast Lake out of their fondness for fresh-water bathing. They do not love their kind, nor have they any inducement to. Skua will prey on skua. They are callous, greedy, vulturous and disgusting. They may be seen sitting in a circle round a sick or wounded penguin, and they have been suspected of medi- tating an attack on the eyes of a sleeping man. When the young penguins are hatcliing they squat down right among the nests waiting for a chance to snatch one. When they have eggs or J^oung they swoojj down on an intruder in a menacing manner, which is rather alarm- ing when one knows how sharp and strong are their bills and claws. They rarely strike, however, thinking better of it at the last moment, and swerving suddenly upwards. When they do strike it is probably through miscalculation. Some birds were known which did habitually strike at every swoop. These blows did no damage, as if they come in front one involuntarily ducks, and from any other direction they strike the cap only. They were verj^ bitter against dogs, and gave no atten- 205 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC tion to men when they were present. Several of the dogs had learned to eat skua eggs, and the birds no doubt knew of this. They have a harsh cry, and the shrill chorus that went up when we had failed to find a nest sounded very much like laughter. They are very quarrel- some. When the rookery was strewn with fresh penguin carcases, victims of some dogs which had broken loose, the skuas would fight viciously over one, when there were plenty for aU. The skua has no true courage like the penguin. On one occasion we snared a skua and dragged it by a string into the midst of a small colony of penguins in order to see how these ancient enemies would behave when brought together. The penguins nearest to the skua pecked at it without leaving their nests. It bit and scratched for a veiy short while, and then gave it up and made no attempt to defend itself, though it was not hurt. As it lay motion- less some one called out that the poor thing was killed, and we began to feel remorse for our cruel experiment, but when thrown up into the air the skua did not come down again. The bird's one virtue is cleanliness. It enjoys its bath. Wherever there is a pool of fresh water the skuas may be seen splashing with great gusto, and they will bathe in a sea pool on occasion. Whales In summer whales were locally abundant, though nowhere else in such numbers as we saw in the Bay of Whales at the Great Barrier. As long as there was open water small schools of tinners and larger ones of killers were seen daily in IVIclNIurdo Sound. Even when the Sound was densely filled Avith pack, they came to the little sea-pools. For a long time in winter no whales were reported. 266 K&'' '>^. ■U--. KiLLKK Whales Sounding Seal sucklivq Young, ant> taking no Notice of the Motor Car ^i»t« rt . .-A.&.aibic^ JoYCfi: LiFTiN ■ ^ 1 .1 > Seax, ^^ Skca Gulls Skal-s Emerging from thk Watkr at their Blow-holes BIOLOGY The finner wdth its little fiii about half-way along the back, and its long pointed head, came very near, and often grazed the sliip. One came vertically uj) close by the ship's side, the snout ten or twelve feet out of the water. As usual in such emergencies none of the cameras were ready. The killers were often in family parties, or a few families together, some bulls of great size, with magnifi- cent triangular fin, like a boat's sail, six or eight feet long, the cows with much smaller, often curved tin, the calves following close by their mothers' tails to avoid getting lost. Some veiy small calves were seen in January. The humpback, with little rounded fin set far back, and the bottle-nose were rarely seen. The killer sometimes rested liis head on the edge of a floe and looked about with his wicked Uttle eye for a seal or penguin. These he would try to knock off by rising under the floe, and on one occasion a party of three men, who spent an anxious twenty-four hours adrift on a floe, related that the killers were trying this experiment with them. Seals Of the four Antarctic seals only the Weddell was common at Cape Royds. The crabeater kept to the pack and rarely came on shore. The sea-leopard and the Ross seal were very rare. The Weddell seal, or false sea-leopard, is a large and heavy animal. The skin and blubber of one large seal made a full sledge load. When it lies peacefully on the ice it is a shapeless lump. If disturbed, as for instance by putting your foot on it or throwing a dog at it, it shows ludicrous astonishment, curv^es both ends towards the intruder, open its mouth astonishingly wide, gasps and 267 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC bleats wth fear, its eyes starting from its head. It is slow to think of escaping, though its blow-hole may be close by, and prefers to roll over sideways. Sometimes the \Veddells pretend to be very fierce, and open the mouth to emit a kind of bellow, but they have no belief in their own fierceness and are usually looping away before the roar has time to frighten the enemy. In autumn as many as one hundred Weddells have been counted together on the ice of one little bay. Even in winter thej' came up through the tide-cracks occasional!}', though sometimes several weeks would jjass without any being seen. They used the holes which we kept open for dredging as blow-holes, and sometimes they reached there in a very exhausted condition, as evidenced bj' their distressed breathing. At these seasons there might be no other breathing-space for a long distance. The nearest rookery of Weddells was at Inaccessible Island, about eight miles from the camp. When the first young were born early in November we ran out frequently by motor-car to watch them. They were in no way alarmed by the car. The newly born calves, in their rough grey fur, already tried the intimidating roar, but there was more fear than fierceness in it. They can snap their lower jaws against the upper very rapidly, but without much force. Some of the mothers were very cowardly, and made for the blow-holes, leaving the young to their fate. Others made a determined stand against the intruders and looked so much like business that we didn't care to venture too near, and a few carried the war into the enemy's country and ran at us and chased us off. The rough coat is cast and the smooth spotted skin like the adult appears at a very earh^ age. In the middle of November we could scarcely find any that hadn't more or less moulted. 268 Weddell Seals (Quarrelling A Weddell Seal .vsleep SOMK OF THK DoGS BIOLOGY The crabeater can move much faster on ice or land than the Weddell. When not frightened it progresses in the same way as the Weddell, arching the back in caterpillar fashion very rapidly. When alarmed and excited it goes along for a short time in another manner, sweeijing the tail end from side to side, much as a fish swims and actually gets forward a Httle in this way. A crabeater is able to hold its own against one dog, though it might be overcome by several. A fight between one and the dog Erebus lasted for an hour, if it could be called a fight where they never came to close quarters. The lighter dog circled about, snapping at the seal's neck and flippers. The crabeater always turned smartly enough to be ready for him and frequentlj^ made a feint of moving in one direction, then made a sudden turn and snap, drawing his head close down to his shoulders and shooting it out as he snajiped, just as the sea-leopard is said to do. It was much more fatiguing for the heavy seal than for the dog, and it breathed heavily, making a continuous sound with its nostrils like snoring, but at the end of the hour it was still able to take care of itself. It became very angry as the dog's attack continued, wliereas the Weddell after any amount of baiting only seems more and more astonished. The Dogs Our dogs, though of an originally Siberian strain, were reared in the mild climate of New Zealand, beinff the descendants of dogs left there some generations ago by a returning expedition. They were small, and showed evidence of crossing with ignoble races. Yet they showed no sign of degeneracy in their ability to endure the unaccustomed severe climate, and on the short journeys for which they were used they did splendid work. 269 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC They revelled in the cold, enjoyed nothing so much as a roll and a fight in a snowdrift, and woiddn't use the kennels provided for them, preferring to curl up in the snow, at most in the shelter of the kennels, or to he on anything dark, such as a coal-bag. They showed some characteristics of the wild northern dog, and some had traces of their wolf ancestry. Gwen was purely wolfish in her w^ildness and impatience of restraint, and her son Terror was like her. It was attempted once to muzzle Gwen, after some penguin hunting exploit, but she nearly went mad in her efforts to get rid of the muzzle, turning and twisting so rapidly that the eye couldn't follow her, and she had to be freed from it. The struggle for kingship was not so sanguinary as is common with such dogs. Old Scamp's authority was never seriously disputed, though Trip and Wolf occa- sionally fought him. Scamp was not the heaviest or strongest dog, but he downed them all by his vehemence. The females were very jealous, and were apt to eat one another's litters. They make very good mothers. A litter was born on the Nimrod while going south. After we landed one of these pups was killed l)y the fall of a house during a blizzard. The body was flung out on the hill-side, some distance away. The mother. Possum, dis- covered it and nursed it for a whole day. Though some- what fierce and quarrelsome among themselves, the dogs were very friendl\' to man. They would take the severest beating when they had been misbehaving, and be friends the moment it was over. The young pups, born in the Antarctic, were very self-reUant little things. When \Gr\ young they used to issue from their shelter, run out in the snow and bark in defiance of everything. They got their drinking-water for a long time in the form of snow, and when summer 270 BIOLOGY came and water was given to them, they did not know what to make of it at first. They soon learned to appre- ciate it, and to consider it as the most valuable of all things, for of food there was always super-abundance. In late summer, when the snow had nearly all disappeared, and the lake by the house was frozen, then came a sort of water famine. We had no time to break the ice and give them water more than once a day. They got pretty thirsty in the sun, and some of them showed a good deal of intel- ligence in asking for and dealing with water. One day, on going out of the house, I heard the dog Roland barking furiously. Roland was tied at a good distance from the house, and for some time I paid no attention to the barking. When at last I looked in the right direction, Roland picked up her water tin and waved it frantically over her head. An old dog, Wolf, was so convinced of the value of water that, when a bowlful was given to him, he did not drink it all at once, but tried to keep a reserve for future use. He tried to bury it, as dogs habitually do with food. He carried the bowl carefully in his mouth, placed it in a hollow, and covered it up with gravel. Of course he lost the water, but the attempt deserved success. In their hunting they showed much intelligence. They took much greater liberties with the helpless Weddell seal than with the more active and aggressive crabeater, and as for the sea-leopard they seemed to know enough to leave him alone altogether. They hunted in couples or parties, and so got the better of the penguins. The pen- guins appear to be provided with efficient defensive weapons, but the dogs learned where to seize them safely. While one dog kept the attention of a penguin in front, another slipped round behind it and snapped at its leg. 271 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Some bolder dogs attacked the penguin in front, waiting for chance to bite at the neck. One snap finished the fight, the dogs usually leaving the disabled bird to chase a fresh one. After learning that penguin hunting was a punishable offence the dogs became very cunning. They slipped away on their hunting expeditions, without attracting attention, and the first intimation we had of it was the distant barldng as they surrounded some poor bird. Though they could have but little experience of the effect of shooting they stood in wholesome terror of a gun. Daisy and Gwen especially knew that a gun coidd hurt at a distance, and that flight was useless, so they slunk home when a shot was fired, keeping cover as far as possible, and hid below the house. Daisy was the most inveterate hunter, and regularly took her children away to teach them to become self-sup- porting. At last her propensity led her, there is no reason to doubt, to a painful death. She took her whole family once out hunting on the pack-ice. The pack was blown out and the dogs were given up for lost. Some days later they all came back, having evidently had a trying experience, their faces matted with blood and sea salt. Emboldened jjerhaps by this escape, Daisy again went hunting on the pack, taking Roland with her, and again the pack went out to sea. Roland returned, but Daisy never did. AVhen taken for a walk through the rookery, the dogs bore themselves with a most virtuous air, looking with in- difference at the penguins as if they had no idea what they were good for. When detected penguin-Avorrying, old Scamp made for his kennel, and sat there pretending he had never been away, looking very innocent, overlooking the fact that he was dripping with blood. 272 BIOLOGY Makine Biology Towards mid-winter the ice in a little bay, bounding Cape Ko3'ds on the south, was strong enough to permit of dredging at depths of from six to twenty fathoms. The bottom here was a fine black mud, with larger and small jjebbles of kenyte in it. In the mud were embedded large shell-fish, the fragile purjile Pecten, the siphon-l)earing Anatina, and others. On the pebbles were growing bush- like sponges, and large sea-anemones adhered to them. One or two reddish-brown sea-weeds were plentiful and once or twice we brought up great turnip-like fixed tuni- cates. Ugly and greedy big-headed fishes (Nototheia), and equally greedy carnivorous whelks of a large size {N eohuccinum) crowded to any bait put down. Among the sponges and seaweeds were numerous other forms of fife, tube-dwelling worms with beautiful flower- like heads of tentacles; delicate shells, almost invisible to the naked eye, many larger and smaller Crustacea, though none of any considerable size; hairy worms like the sea- mouse with a double row of phosphorescent lamps, flash- ing in succession from head to tail. When captured these worms have a spiteful habit of breaking themselves up into small pieces. In this region there is a prevalence of j^ellow and orange-red colours. The commonest sponges are yellow; so is the sea-anemone. Some of the corals are very bright orange. INIost of the Crustacea and many worms, star-fish, &c., are orange-red or yellow. All these are bottom forms of hfe. With the available methods of collecting very little was got in the open water of the sea, away from the bot- tom, only a few small Crustacea, some diatirus, and occa- sionally a few sea-butterflies (Pteropods) of large size and red colour. Vol. U.-18 273 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC The phosphorescence remarked in some of the bottom worms was also found in the copepods of the open sea. The phosphorescence is chs^jlayed by cold-blooded animals, living in a temperature always some degrees below the freezing-point of fresh water, and it is shown ecjually throughout the winter. Dredging at greater depths than twenty fathoms was rarely possible, owing to the nearness of open water in IMcINIurdo Sound, always within a mile of the camp. From this cause we did no deep dredging at all, only on one or two occasions at nearly one hundred fathoms. From the mouth of the bay down to the depth of one hundi'ed fathoms the bottom sloped steeply. A\'hether from this cause or owing to the strong current in the sound, there was no mud in this zone of the bottom. In the shallower parts there were large and small kenyte pebbles, but at fifty fathoms and upwards no pebbles were got. The bottom appears to be carpeted with a dense growth of living things, as if the dredge merely bit and was immediately drawn up it was usually full of stuff. In this deeper region the animal life differed greatly from that in the muddy bay, though many kinds were found throughout both places. iTere we first got the long- legged sea-spiders [Pycnogonida), glassy sponges, the white shells of Lima, the delicate lace-corals, &c. The sponges were especially abundant and in some variety, though rarely of much beauty. One glassy sponge resem- bled an egg, with bundles of long glassy spicules project- ing at regular intervals from the smooth surface. In this region there was less orange and yellow colour- ing, the tendency being to white. JNIost of the glass sponges and many of the horny sponges were wliite or pale cream-coloured, and the Lima shells and lace corals were white. There were still some yellow sponges and 274 BIOLOGY most of the sea-spiders were reddish. At this depth we got the same fish as in the bay. A fish-trap, baited, was put down at twenty-five fathoms. It caught some dozens of pretty large big-heads the first time it was drawn, and aknost nothing afterwards, unless left for a considerable time. This seems to indicate that they are pretty plenti- ful, but that they grub very closely among the sponges and don't travel fast or far, so that the first haul exhausts the region immediately around the trap. When the trap was brought up great red worms hung like ribbons, one yard, or even two yards, below the trap. These could con- tract until they would lie on the pahn of the hand. GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN ANTARC- TICA BY THE BRITISH AN PARCTIC EXPEDITION 1907-1909 By Professor T. W. EDGEWORTH DAVID, H.A.. F.R.S. AND RAYMOND E. PRIESTLEY, Geologist to the Expedition Introductory. T^HE conclusions provisionally adopted in these notes -■• are based on the geological collections and observa- tions obtained by the Southern Party, the \V'^estern Party, and the Noi-thern Party of our ex])editi()n as well as by the whole party, when in winter quarters at Cape Roj'ds. The only determinable fossil as yet found in the great Beacon sandstone formation of Antarctica, the piece of coniferous wood, figured in these notes, was obtained from the collection made by the Southern Part}'. As a result of the explorations, chiefly by Nordensk- jold, Larsen, (iunnar Andersson, Bruce, Charcot and Ar^towski, we now know the following about the portion of Antarctica south of America. In parts of Graham Land there must be a foundation platform of gneiss and gneissic granite, as boulders of these rocks, several metres in diameter, are found deposited on the plateau of Seymour Island, to the east of Graham Land, as recorded by Gunnar Andersson. In 1903 the French Antarctic expedition, under the command of Dr. Charcot, landed on the South Shetland 276 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS Islands, and after exploring Palmer Archipelago and Gerlache Strait wintered at Wandel Island. An interest- ing and detailed account of the geological specimens col- lected has been given by Dr. E. Gourdon.* Amongst the rocks described are hornblende granites, quartz diorites, uralitic gabbros, trachyandesites with hornblende and mica, dacites and andesites with associated tuffs, labra- dorite rocks, diabase basalts, micro-granites with pyroxene and soda-hornblende. He also describes crystalline schists, quartzites and quartz veins. Dr. Gourdon concludes that these rocks are part of the eruptive series of the chain of the Andes. Nordensk- jold is of the same opinion in regard to the eruptives of Graham Land. In the South Orkneys fossil graptolites, associated with radiolarian jaspers, were discovered by Bruce's expedi- tion. These prove the existence there of older palseozoic rocks, considered to be of Ordovician age. As far as we can learn there is as yet no evidence of the presence, in that region, of rocks older than Ordovician, unless some of the crystalline rocks of south-western Graham Land, such as those of Borchgrevink Nunatak, &c., antedate that period. The abundant fossil plants discovered by Nordensk- jold's expedition at Hope Bay, at the north-eastern end of Graham Land, show that in that region, now continu- ously covered with ice and snow, there existed in Jurassic times a rich and diversified flora embracing ferns, cycads and conifers. Amongst the plants found at Hope Bay the genera Sngenopteris, Tlnnnfeldia, Cladophlebis, PteroplnjUnm, and Otozamites have been recorded as well * Expedition Antartique Fran^aise, 3P03-05, comtnandee par le Dr. Jean Charcot. Sciences Naturelles; Documents Scientifiques Geographic Physique — Glaciologie, Petrographie par E. Gourdon, Docteur-es-Sciences de I'Universite de Paris. 277 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC from the Trias- Jura rocks of Eastern Australia and India, some of the forms being found also in South Africa and in the Argentine Republic. The distribution is sho>\'n on the following table: S. Africa India Argentine Australia Sagenopteris * . . . — x — x Thinnfelclia . . . x x x x Cladophlebis . . . x x — x Plerophijllum ... — x x x Otosamites ... — x — x So far no trace has been found in this flora of any representatives of the Glossopteris Flora of Gondwana Land, such as the Phi/llothcca discovered by Gunnar Andersson in the Falkland Islands. Evidently in Jurassic time a mild and a moist climate prevailed in Antarctica. The abundance of cretaceous Arnmonites collected by the Nordenskjold expedition at Snow Hill Island, to the east of Graham Land, points to a continuance of mild con- ditions into cretaceous time. The fossil Araucaria, Beech, &:c., unearthed by the Nordenskjold expedition at Sey- mour Island, adjoining Snow Hill Island on the north- east, prove that these mild conditions were further pro- longed into some part of Tertiary time. In marine strata, also of Tertiary age, and considered by Wilckens t to belong to Upper Oligocene or Lower INIiocenc, the Nordenskjold expedition found numerous bird bones since referred to five new genera, of penguins X * This list has been kindly supjilied by Mr. W. S. Dun, Paleon- tologist Geol. Sur. N.S. AVales, and of Sydney University. t Die Meeresablagerungen der Kreide — und Tertiiirablagcrungen in Patagonien. Neues Jahr. f. Min. Beilage-Band 21. 190'). i These are stated by Gunnar Andersson to be Anthropornis Nor- tlenskjolili, Pachyteryx, Espheniscus Gunnari, Delphinornis Larsrnii and Ichthyopteryx gracilis, v. Bulletin of the Geological Institution of the University of Upsala. Vol. vii., 1904-5, No. 13-14, p. 45. 278 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS besides two vertebra? of a big mammal, referred to the genus Zeuglodon. The marine fossils associated with these remains enabled Wilckens to come to the above decision as to the geological age of the formation. At Cockburn Island, to the north of Seymour Island, Gunnar Andersson describes a Pecten conglomerate 160 metres above sea-level. This marine formation he con- siders to be probably of Pliocene age, and the equivalent of the Parana beds of the north of the Argentine Republic or of the Cape Fairweather beds of Southern Patagonia. Nordenskj old's expedition proved that during the maximum glaciation, in late Geological time, the inland ice rose 300 metres higher than it does at present, in the neighbourhood of Borchgrevink Xunatak, at the south- east end of Graham Land. This was proved by the maximum height of erratic boulders found on the slopes of the nunatak, above the present level of the surface of the inland ice sheet. Gunnar Andersson mentions the occurrence of raised beaches at Cockburn Island and also at Sidney Herbert Sound. These pieces of e^'idence prove an emergence of the land, since the maximum glaciation, to the extent at all events of a few metres, possibly as much as forty metres. In the portion of the Antarctic visited by the German expedition, 1902, under the leadership of Professor E. von Drygalski, the following information has been obtained : In latitude 66° 48' South, longitude 89° 30' East, there rises at the edge of the inland ice a ridge-shaped remnant of a volcanic cone, the Gaussberg. This attains a height of 366 metres above the sea, and is formed of leucite-basalt tuff and leucite-basalt rich in olivine, lumps up to the size of one's fist being found in the lava. The top and slopes of the Gaussberg, as recorded by Dr. Philippi, 279 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC are strewn with erratics.* These are formed of wliitish garnet-bearing gneiss, a darker biotite-gnciss, niica-sehist, fragments of red (juartzite, &c. The crystalline rocks are considered to be i)robably of xircha'an age. In the Victoria Land region of the Antarctic the re- searches of Ross, Borchgrevink, and above all of Cajjtain R. F. Scott and the geologist of the Discover ij expedition, H. T. Ferrar, prove that there is developed in that region an ancient comjdex of gneisses and gneissic granites, with mica-schists, calc-schists and quartzitts, and that these rocks are capped for a great distance by a formation almost horizontally bedded, called by Ferrar the " Beacon sandstone." A little argillaceous limestone was observed bj' him associated with this sandstone. Ferrar found plant remains in the sandstone, but in such an altered condition that they could not be determined. Ferrar has given a detailed and very valuable descri])tion of the geology of Victoria Land and Ross Island explored by him on this expedition. The petrology of the rocks col- lected has been worked out by G. T. Prior.f Amongst volcanic rocks are comprised hornblende- basalts, olivine-basalts, dolerites, basalt tufl's, keuytes, phonolitic trachytes and phonolites. Amongst the founda- tion rocks of South Victoria Land, Prior records crystal- line limestones with chondrodite, gneiss, granites, diorites, camptonites, kersantites and banakite. Amongst the sedimentary rocks" he refers to sandstones, somewhat carbonaceous, as well as black shaly to slaty rocks. The volcanic rocks, as pointed out by Prior, are closely allied in chemical composition and mineral constitution * Veroffentlicliungen des Instituts fiir Meereskunde und des Geo- graphischen Instituts an der Universitat, Berlin. Heft. 5 Octr. 1903. Deutsche Siidpolar-Expedition auf dem Schiff " Gauss." t National Antarctic Expedition, I901-190i, Natural History, Vol. i.. Geology. British Museum, 1902. 280 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS to the volcanic series described by Dr. P. IMarshall, from the neighbourhood of Dunedin, New Zealand. It may be noted that these volcanic rocks are developed partly along the coast-line of Victoria Land, partly in islands arranged in lines subparellel to this coast-line. It is worthy of comment that the volcanic zones of Victoria Land were not definitely traced by ]Mr. Shackle- ton in the ranges reached by him m liis furthest south journey this year. No trace whatever of volcanic rocks was noticed by him, either in situ or in the moraines of the vast coast range which bounds the Great Ice Barrier on its south-west side, near the latitude of 84° to 86° South. Physical Geography These observations relate wholty to the region between the meridians of 170^ East and 150° West. The shore- line in this region of the Antarctic continent is deeply indented by the Ross Sea. This commences just south of the parallel of 70°, and extends to the parallel of 78° South. Ross Sea is bounded at its east side by dense belts of jiack-ice and low snowbergs, which prevent any view of the coast-line being obtained excepting near the extreme south-east corner of Ross Sea; there. Captain Scott, in the Discovery, found a new range of mountains rising from a land afterwards known as King Edward VII Land. Southwards Ross Sea is bounded by the cliff of the Great Ice Barrier, which has an extent of about 470 miles in an east and west direction. This chfF aver- ages about 150 ft. in height. In places it sinks to nearly sea-level in low gulhes. The surface beyond this Great Barrier, except for certain broad shallow undulations and small snow ridges (sastrugi). is practically level. Mr. Shackleton, on his southern journey, proved that it ex- tends southward for at least 350 miles. Westwards the 281 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Great Barrier cliff terminates in liigh-pressure ridges against Cape Crozier, the easternmost point of Ross Island. Ross Island with its towering volcanic cones rises like some vast castle at the end of tliis huge white wall. It is formed of four large volcanic cones, ^Mounts Terror, Terra Nova, Erebus and Bird. The three lirst volcanoes appear to be situated on an east and west line of fracture. Another fracture line probably passes in a southerly direc- tion froni INIount Bird through JMount Erebus. Thus, Erebus may be said to be at the junction of two imi)ortant systems of earth fracture. Still furtlier south several smaller craters are situated on what may be termed the Erebus Fracture Zone, including that of Crater Hill, near Hut Point, the winter quarters of the Discovery expedition. Still further south are the volcanic islands. White Island and Black Island, and somewhat to the south-south-west Mount Discovery with the long volcanic promontory trending from it to the east-south-east, known as Minna Bluff. In the gaps between these islands and promontories the mass of the Great Barrier moves slowly, but surely, seawards towards the narrow south-westerly prolongation of Ross Sea known as McMurdo Sound. Pressure ridges of ice in this part of the Great Barrier, as well as actual measurements taken, prove that this part of the Barrier is moving seawards, both to the west and to the east of Ross Island. INIc^NIurdo Sound is bounded on the south by the low terminal cliff of the Great Barrier only a few feet in height. This low ice cliff extends westwards across INIcMurdo Sound, for a distance of about thirty miles, to the magnificent coast range of Victoria Land. JNIajes- tic peaks of gneiss, granite, sandstone and limestone capped by eruptive rocks rise almost sheer from the coast 282 PltlKSn.Y UKSIDK AN EKKATH' GrAXITE BoULDKIt, I.VING ON' KeNYTK AT CaPF; KoYK (.Jkanitk kkhatic at Cafk Koyi) GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS to altitudes of from 8000 up to 12,000 ft. Throughout its entire length from Cape North and the mountains re- cently discovered by our expedition further west, down to the parallel of 86^ South, a distance of about 1100 miles, the ranges form a slightly elevated border to an inland plateau. The continuity of these plateau ranges is interrupted at intervals by wide valley-like depressions, occupied by vast glaciers. These glaciers slope steeply to the sea, or to the surface of the Great Barrier, and are heavily crevassed. Further inland they ascend by gentle slopes, interrujJted occasionally by ice-falls, to the neve fields of the plateau. As one traces the coast-line northwards, from opposite Ross Island in the direction in which the Northern Party travelled to the South JNIagnetic Pole, one encounters some very remarkable features which materially modify the form of the coast-line. The first of these is called on the chart of the Antarctic Ocean, prepared from observa- tions under the direction of Captain R. F. Scott, the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier Tongue. It is about six miles in width, and projects twenty miles or more seawards from the coast-line. There is reason to suppose that this Barrier, as well as the one just to be described, is floating at its seaward extremity. North of the Nordenskjold Barrier is the Drygalski Barrier or Ice Tongue. This is a huge glacier actively moving fonvards into the sea. It is a true glacier at its landward end, with immense seracs, ridges and crevasses. The portion which projects seawards beyond the coast is about twenty miles in width, and thirty miles in length. Towards its seaward end, and also on its northern side, where it receives the bulk of the snow drifted by southerly bhzzards, it partakes rather of a flat-topped barrier type than of the glacier type with its characteristic rugged surface, 283 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Just inland to the north of the Drygalski Ice Barrier Tongue is a fme bay, Terra Nova Bay, inland from which, near its northern end, rises the majestic Mount Nansen. This is a Hat-topped mountain, obviously caj^ped by sedimentary rocks, and as a matter of fact, it has shed lumj^s of limestone and sandstone into the moraines beneath it. Still further north the beautifully symmetrical volcanic cone of JMount JNIelbourne attains a height of 8.*J."37 ft. The volcanic rocks with which it is associated trend sharply to the south-west, terminating in the high rugged cliffs of Cape Washington. To the north-east of JMount Melbourne is the deep indentation known as AVood Bay, and thence the coast bends abniptly to the east. It would seem indeed as though Mount INIelbourne is probably situated on some east and west line of earth fractures, hke Mounts Terror and Terra Nova. The coast-line tlien trends nearly north again, forming the west boundary of Lady Newnes Bay. Then it trends once more east to Cape Jones, an extinct volcano. Just off" Cape Jones lies the large volcanic island, Coulman Island. From here the coast again trends chiefly northerly to Cape Adare. Volcanic rocks are ex- tensively developed at this cape, but the ranges inland are formed of older rocks, such as granite, gneiss, schist, slate, &c., apparently still capped by the " Beacon sand- stone " formation. The island known as Possession Island — also volcanic — lies to the south-south-east of Cape Adare. This long cape, where tbe Sottihcrn Cross expedition, inider Borchgrevink, wintered, forms the north-east side of Robertson's Bay. From this bay the coast trends at first north-westwards for about 120 miles to Cape North. Near here, some hills, a little distance back from the coast, give one a sti'ong impression of their being of volcanic origin, though it is possible that they 284 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS are merely out-lying sugar-loaf hills, relics of a dissected plateau. It was clear from the sight which we obtained of the part of the coast, beyond Cape North on iSIarch 8, 1909, that the liills were high, having an altitude of from 6000 to 7000 ft., as measured by sextant, and that they formed the abrupt termination seawards of a deeply denuded high plateau. Tliis plateau is undoubtedly a northern pro- longation of the one travelled over by the Northern Party of our expedition on their journey to the South ^Magnetic Pole. It is also certainly continuous with the plateau traversed by Captain R. F. Scott in his western journey, in 1903, and it is proved now that it is part of the same plateau to which Lieutenant Shackleton led the Southern Party, and over which they travelled to an altitude of 10,000 ft. when they reached their furthest point 88° 23' South. Throughout the whole of this magnificent coastal range the evidence of past ice action is extremely clear. IMost of the valleys are wide, but a few, like the Ferrar Glacier Valley, are narrow. But whether wide or narrow, their rocky sides show most impressively the abrasive work of the great ice plough, indeed the rocky slopes bounding these glaciers are almost as even as the banks of a deep railway cutting. One is at once struck with the entire absence of those re-entering spurs and angles so character- istic of river-Avorn valleys. A curious feature, already mentioned by Ferrar, is the development of an extensive coastal shelf, for at any rate about 150 miles northwards of the latitude of Cape Royds. This coastal shelf may be possibly ascribed to step faulting, but it is also possible that it may be due to an over-riding of the foothills of the coast range, and a ploughing of them out by the former great ice sheet of the Ice Barrier, at a time when its surface was fully 285 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 1000 ft. higher tlian it is at present, and when it spread northwards into the Ross Sea, probahly at least 100 to 200 miles north of its present seaward termination. As regards the reason for the plateau of Victoria Land terminating in such steep mountain slopes east- wards, it is of course possible, as Ferrar suggests, that this is due to a heavy fault or series of faults running parallel to the shore-line. Certainly the scenery, particu- larly in the neighbourhood of Mount Xansen, and be- tween that and Mount JMelbourne, suggests a compara- tively recent change of base, down to which the base level forces have recently been working. In fact, these glacier-cut valleys appear to us to be distinctly young in their origin. The soundings in Ross Sea off this coast have some interest as bearing on tliis question, as also the presence of raised beaches in several places along the coast, and on Ross Island. McJMurdo Sound, from Ross Island to the coast of Victoria Land, is only thirty miles wide, and yet the sea is nearly 500 fathoms in depth within a few miles of the coast. As evidence of cinist movements raised beaches may be quoted. On Ross Island the}' were traced by us up to altitudes of 160 ft., and organisms were found in these beaches such as are found now living in the coastal waters, so that they probably indicate an uplift since the deposition of these organisms of a good deal more than 160 ft. At the Ferrar Glacier on the mainland, raised beaches extended up to at least 50 ft. above sea-level, and they reached apparently to an altitude of 20 to 30 ft. on the coast south-east of INIount Larsen, 200 miles further north. It is possible that the latter may be due to upthrust of the marine sediments by glacier ice. These changes in the level of the shore-line have taken place in quite recent geological time. It is, of course, possible that such 286 M=^ M U R D O O 75 fins Cape Rovds l^4.59fVri 4eOf™o ^'^ SOUND S77'— B O Sis Cape Bird n\Fn^ SEA o Beaufort I. ll3FnsO ^Q,'2">« ■ S 7r30' lyi' England S77' IF" [LAM showing line oF Section CEOCRAPMICAL MILES lO 5 O lO I ^ ' I ' I 1 I ' I t I ■ ~ » 3S3Fm. OeZFmsO ^ Depot I E1S7 MOniZONTAL SCALE OP CKOCflAPMICAL MILES rtCAt SCALC O^ FBCT Presenl glsoen SLA LCVLL LCWCL or M' Davidson SIJ?** SEA LKVEL LonslCS-E Lai 77' S. Uin»IM-E Lmg.l63-e. THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC changes might occur witliout being due to geological faulting. The sectional drawing shows the state of Ross Sea, and of ^Ic^Murdo Sound during the niaxinmni recent glacia- tion. It indicates that the ice attained a niaxunum tliick- ness formerly of nearly 4000 ft. in parts of McMurdo Sound from which it has now entirely retreated. Since the voj'age of Ross, in IS-il, the front of the Great Ice Barrier has retreated southwara.s in JSIc^Iurdo Sound to the extent of about thirty-five miles, as determined by Captain Scott. Signs of waning glaciation are conspicu- ous all the way from Blount Nansen to the furthest south mountains examined by the Southern Party of this ex- pedition in latitude 85° 15' South. For example, the sunmiit of ^loimt Hope, discovered by the Southern Party in latitude 83° 33' South, was strewn with erratics, at an altitude of fully 2000 ft. above the general level of the adjacent surface of the glacier ice. GLACIOLOGY The glacial phenomena of the region examined by us are due to the action either (a) of Water substance in the form of (1) sea ice, and ice-foot or shore ice; (2) glacier ice; (3) barrier snow and ice-fields; (4) inland ice and neve fields; (5) icebergs; (6) pack-ice; (7) thaw water forming surface lakes, and surface, englacial or subglacial streams; or (b) to the action of wind; or (c) to that of seasonal or diurnal changes of temperature. (a) Action of Water Substance (1) Sea Ice. — We made a series of observations, by cutting holes from time to time through the sea ice, to ascertain its maximum thickness throughout the area, and 268 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS also its methods of freezing. The maximum thickness measured by us amounted to about 7 ft., in the case of ice formed, in a sheltered position at Backdoor Bay near our winter quarters, between the middle of JNlarch and middle of September 1908. Ice had formed over the same area, a little earlier in IMarch, to the dejith of a few inches, but tliis was cracked up, and drifted away by the blizzards. This thickness of 7 ft. of ice was no doubt increased betw^een the middle of September and early in December. Ferrar states that the maximum thickness of sea ice which formed during the year 1903 at Hut Point, ]\Ic]Murdo Sound, was 8 ft. 5^ in. We observed that in i^laces the sea ice was fractured, through pressure of wind and tidal currents, and the broken slabs were forced over one another forming pressure ridges, from 10 to 20 ft. in height. It Mas interesting to note the effect on the sea ice of a sudden fall of temperature. The contraction fol- lowing on such a fall would put the sea ice, especially at its surface, into a high state of tension, and from time to time the surface would crack open with a loud rejiort. These contraction cracks gaped to a width of 3 to 6 ft., and the sea water between the walls of the crack, of course, began to freeze over. Frequently after ice had formed to the thickness of a few inches a rise of tem- perature would expand the ice. This expansion would tend to expend itself on all weak spots, especially on the planks of thin ice formed between the walls of the con- traction cracks. These would be buckled into small over- folds, until at last they became cracked through excess of thrusting, and overthrust faults resulted. In many of these cracks this process was frequently repeated. Another feature worth noting in the sea ice is, that owing to the great difference between the temperature of Vol. n.-i9 289 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC the sea water below the ice and that of the air above it, as soon as a contraction crack opened, tlie sea water appeared to be steaming. A wall of thick vapour would rise along the whole length of each crack. To this the term of frost-smoke is sometimes applied. The water vapour, as it rose, was being constantly condensed and deposited on the walls of the narrow cracks, so that gradually the intersjjace became filled with ice, and not infrequently a ridge of soft ice would be built up along the line of the old crack, to a height of 6 in. or so above the general level of the surrounding ice. As the ice was often traversed by a perfect network of these cracks, the resulting ridges gave the ice-surface the appearance of Indian paddy-fields, with their dividing " bunds," or mud walls. The sea ice was usually separated from the shore-ice, or ice-foot, by one or more well-marked tide-cracks. In ]McMurdo Sound, near our \nnter quarters, the tidal range of from 2 ft. to 3 ft. was quite sufficient to fracture the ice in contact with the land. The seals took advantage of these tide-cracks, and used them as blow-holes. The chief geological work done by the sea ice, as far as we could ascertain, was the transport seawards of wind- blown rock detritus lodged on the shore-ice and ice-foot, in the manner about to be described. Ice-foot or Shore-ice. — On first arriving on the shores of the Antarctic after the breaking up of sea ice, towards the end of the summer, one is puzzled to account for the low cliff, part snow, part ice, which almost every- where fringes the coast and so makes landing from a boat difficult. This fringe is seen to be made up partly of ice at its base, resembling somewhat the stalagmites of lime- stone caves, partly of layers of compressed snow, in some cases alternating with bands of sand and gravel. The ice-foot generally rises to a height of 6 to 10 ft. 290 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS above sea-level. It is usually in the form of a flat narrow terrace from 20 to 100 ft, wide, sometimes in that of a sheer cliff, occasionally as much as 80 ft. to over 100 ft. in height, the summit of which ascends inland in a more or less steep snow slojie. At its base, in summer, the ice-foot is almost invariably undercut by the sea, and from the overhanging roof thus produced there depend vast numbers of beautiful icicles. These icicles have, of course, been formed from the wash of the waves, and the sea water in the process of being frozen has extruded its brine, the salinity of which is such that the solution cannot freeze at a temperature above zero Fahr. These icicles are generally moist, and the moisture, in the form of con- centrated brine, works downwards, under the influence of gravity, to the tips of the icicles, which thus become sticky. Hence when a blizzard springs up and drives snowflakes against them, the flakes stick on chiefly at the tips and gradually build out those foot-like struc- tures which we have termed foot-stalactites, and which are illustrated. During the winter of 1908 and the succeeding spring and summer, we were able to see clearly the mode of growth of the ice-foot. After the sea surface had been frozen over snow carried by the wind from the land, or from the surface of the Great Ice Barrier formed drifts of greater or less thiclcness over the sea ice close inshore. These, at their shoreward end where the cliffs are 80 or 100 ft. in height, may form drifts of equal thickness with the height of the cliff. These drifts, of course, thin out seawards. They are stratified and contain numerous dark bands formed of chips of rock, broken crystals of felspar, &c. When, during the summer, strong blizzards disrupt the sea ice, large rafts of ice are dislodged from near the shore, and these carry away on their surfaces portions of the old snow-drifts. As the work of destruction proceeds 291 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC even the thick land«'ard portions of the snow-drifts are cracked off in large sHces, and float seawards, and thus in sununer time is formed that ahnost universal low cliff known as the ice-foot. During heavy weather when the sea is open the waves wash over the lower portions of the ice-foot, with the result that it is being constantlj'^ bathed in salt water, which freezes in successive layers on its surface. Thus, when the temperature is low the old masses of snow-drift, of wliich the upper part of the ice- foot is formed, become cased over with ice much in the same way as snow bergs become encased as the result of their being splashed bj' sea spray. (2) Glacier Ice axd Xeve. — The glacier ice of the portion of the Antarctic area examined by us either terminates inland in glaciers, some of which are hanging glaciers, and some piedmont glaciers, or ice-slabs, or it comes down to the sea where it is broken off from time to time to form true icebergs, close to the shore-line; or — - and this is a feature emphasised alreadj^ by Mr. H. T. Ferrar- — the ice may advance for a considerable distance from the shore-line into the sea. in some cases from 20 to 30 miles, probably far more in the case of the Great Ice Barrier, and thus discharge icebergs from its sides as well as its snout. Such glaciers were described by Ferrar as piedmonts-afloat, and we propose to retain this term for them. Glaciers. — A good example of this type was to be seen a little over two miles southerly from our winter quarters, just south of Cape Barne. The glacier there, called by us the Cape Barne Glacier, terminates seawards in a cliff about 100 ft. in height, and some three miles in length. It has its source in the neve fields of the western slope of ]Mount Erebus. These are fed, not only by new falling snow, but also by large quantities of drift snow swept over by the south-east bhzzards on to 292 Summer effect on a Berg; Icicles forming * The Barrikr Edgf. south of Hut Point, a>tkr the Sea Ice had broken awat o 9 o n GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS this, the lee side, of Erebus. The glacier was consider- ably crevassed at its seaward extremity, and passed up gradually, at a distance of some four or five miles inland, into the neve field. This glacier was not moving actively, as we never observed any trace of buckhng or crushing of the sea ice, where it abutted against the foot of the glacier cliff. Plad there been any appreciable forward movement it could not have failed to ridge up or crush the opposing sheets of continuous sea ice. At the same time the crevassed state of this glacier ice proved that move- ment was stUl in progress. A glacier of a Greenland tj^pe, also on a large scale, is the jNIount Xansen Glacier, occujjying the wide de- pression between jSIounts Xansen and Larsen. This great glacier is from 12 to 20 miles m width, and 60 to 70 miles in length. It is very heavily crevassed, and its surface is extremely irregular towards its seaward end. Where the surface falls steeply, it has raised immense pressure ridges in the sea ice along the shore, and bristles with hummocks and seracs. So difficult was this surface for sledging that we were forced to abandon it, after attempting to take our sledge by way of this glacier on to the ^Magnetic Pole plateau. On striking the upper end of tliis glacier, some 60 miles inland, we found that there was still a little ice present here and there underneath the wide neve field. This neve field spread out into a wide plain, and for a considerable distance before reaching the ^lagnetic Pole, the latter being over 220 miles inland at right angles to the coast-line — our horizon on all sides was bounded by these same vast neve fields. It is ob\nous that the 3Iount Xansen Glacier is moving steadily seawards, as shown by the great pressure ridges which it has raised in the sea ice opposing its advance. It must, therefore, still form an outlet for the neve-formed ice of the inland plateau. 293 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC The interesting question here suggests itself, Is there sufficient snowfall annually, on the area of the neve fields drained bj- this glacier, to compensate for the ice which is lost by ablation, or by being discharged as icebergs into the sea^ Until more data are available no accurate quantitative answer can be given to this (juestion. At the same time it ma}^ be remarked that there is a tolerably heavy snowfall along this part of the coast, and for a distance of at least 50 miles inland. Portions of the high plateau, at a greater distance inland from tlie shore than 50 miles at present probably receive only a very small snow supph'. It maj' be doubted whether the surface of this neve field far inland is not on the whole being reduced in level through the snow being drifted off it by the wind, or removed by the slow process of ablation. It is interesting to note that in front of the termination of the ]\Iount Nansen (ilacier there is an immense old moraine of the nature apparently of a medial moraine. We could trace this for fully 23 miles in advance of the present glacier snout. It follows that in comparatively recent geological time the IMount Nansen Glacier has re- treated by at least the amount quoted above. Piedmont Glaciers on Land. — A curious feature observed along the greater part of the coast-line of Victoria Land, from near INIount Discovery up to the Drygalski Ice Barrier Tongue, is the development, on the great coastal shelf, at an altitude of about 1000 ft. above sea-level, of a massive covering of blue glacier ice. This, in some cases, reaches the sea and breaks off to form bergs. In other cases the sheets do not reach the sea, and, there- fore, are probably on the wane. For the latter Ferrar suggests the appropriate name of ice-slabs. Several theories might be advanced to account for them. They may represent actual relics of the old Barrier ice sheet, wliich once filled McMurdo Sound and Ross 294 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS Sea for probably fully 100 miles north of Ross Island. Another view is that they may be local developments of ice resulting from a coalescing of a number of small neve fields developed m the cu-ques among the foot-hills of the plateau ranges. These foot-hills are frequently as much as 10 to 20 miles back from the edge of the coast-line. Piedmont Glacieks Afloat. — Three well-marked ex- amples of this type of glacier came under our notice. The first was Glacier Tongue, between our winter quarters and the old winter quarters of the Discovery at Hut Point. Glacier Tongue, as shown on the Admiralty Charts and the Reports of the Discovery expedition, is an elongated mass of ice stretching from the shore-line into the sea for a distance of about five miles. It has a width of about half a mile near its seaward end, and about a mile where it rests against the land. Both on its north and south side the Tongue is deeply indented "Rith a number of bays. Its height above sea-level varies from about 40 ft. up to nearly 100 ft. While the Nimrod was lying alongside this remarkable piedmont in February 1908, Captain England took soundings at about a mile east of its seaward end, and got a depth of 157 fathoms. As the maximum height of the glacier above sea-level does not here exceed about 40 ft., and tlie sea is 940 ft. deep, if tlie ice were aground it would have only one twenty-third of its volume above water, which of course is physically impossible. We must, therefore, conclude that this part of Glacier Tongue is afloat. At the same time it should be mentioned that alongside of this glacier there are traces of cracks, wliich some observers have considered to be tide-cracks. There mav be true tide-cracks near the shoreward end of the glacier, but we were not satisfied that the cracks noticed near its seaward end were really of the nature of tide- cracks. While waiting for the arrival of the Southern 295 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Party, the Nhnrod lay in a snug natural dock, formed by one of the bays on the north side of this glacier tongue, at about a mile from its seaward end. We carefully watched for any evidence of rise and fall of the tide in relation to the shore-line of the glacier, but were unable to observe any. We concluded from this circumstance that the glacier must be rising and falHng in unison with the tide. The sounding-tube of our Lucas sounding-ma- chine brought up a quantity of serpulcc and sponge spicules fi-om the sea bottom beneath the edge of the glacier where our ship was moored. The second piedmont-afloat is the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier Tongue. This Ice Barrier Tongue is about 20 miles m length, and 5 to G miles in width. Its southern edge is formed of ice and polished neve. Fierce blizzards have swept any loose snow off tliis southern edge of the Barrier. The northern edge was formed largely of snow, being chiefly of the nature of snow-drift, from 40 to 50 ft. in thickness. The latter terminates in a vertical cliff with overhanging snow cornices. Obviously this cliff was the combined result of the blizzard winds driving snow northwards to the lee side of this iiiedmont-afloat, and to the breaking away in summer time of the sea ice supporting the northernmost portions of this snow-drift. SUces are thus removed from time to time from the northern edges of the drifts, and so the cliff of the portion left behind becomes higher in proportion as the thicker ends of the wedges of snow-drift become broken away. Certainly no true tide-crack was visible on tlie south side of this Barrier, and only a small crack was seen on its north side. Strange to say, this big mass of ice and consolidated snow, Avhich rises at its centre a little over 100 ft. above sea-level, does not appear to communicate directly with a neve field at its inland end. Apparently then the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier is not now being 296 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS directly fed from the inland neve fields. It appears to represent an old piedmont-afloat, which is in the act of dwindling away from want of supplies of ice from the interior. Tliirdly, the Drygalski Ice Barrier Tongue is also of the nature of a piedmont-afloat. It is probably floating for at least three-quarters of the distance of 30 miles to which it projects from the shore into the sea. The surface of this glacier, where it leaves the shore-line, is extremely rough and rugged, being traversed, as stated in the narrative, by an immense number of chasms, pressure ridges and crevasses. On the south side, where the ice was still unbroken when we reached the glacier on November 30, 1908, the old sea ice was forced up into strong j^ressure ridges. The whole appearance suggested to us that this glacier is moving actively from inland seawards. We could see with our field-glasses that at a distance of about 50 miles inland it descended by steep ice-falls from a high plateau beyond. At the point where we crossed it, the glacier rose to an altitude at its centre of about 200 ft. above sea-level. It was here 12 miles in width. Further eastwards and therefore seawards, the glacier ice was more and more levelled up with snow, until eventually it passed into a true barrier type with a comparatively smooth surface. Captain Evans, after he brought the Nimrod into " Relief Inlet," where he picked up the Northern Party just returned from the Magnetic Pole, sounded alongside of the Drygalski Glacier and found a depth of 655 to 668 fathoms, at a distance of only about 18 miles from the rocky shore-line. As the Barrier here rises to a height not exceeding 50 ft. above sea-level it must surely be afloat. During the few weeks of thaw, in December and January, torrents of water must rush off from this glacier 297 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC in the form of englacial or subglacial streams. These in some cases cut deep open valleys with more or less precipitous sides; in other cases they tunnel channels for themselves under the covering of hard snow and ice, and the roofs of these tunnels collapsing through want of support produce rugged ravines, very difficult to cross with sledges. This Drj'galski Ice Barrier, on its northern side, con- tained in places a considerable amount of moraine material. It was evident that at the time when the glaciation of this region was at its maximum it must have been con- tinuous with the INIount Xansen glacier. These two glaciers, when united, doubtless formed a huge piedmont- afloat. (3) Barrier Snow- and Ice-fields, — The structure of the Xordenskjold and Drygalski Barriers throws con- siderable light on one of the most difficult problems of the Antarctic — the origin of the Great Ice Barrier. To ascertain the amount of annual snowfall on this Great Barrier is of very great importance, but we found tliis a hard problem, chiefly on account of the difficulty of dis- tinguishing between true newly fallen snow and old snow which has been drifted along by blizzards. We tried, during our observations in Antarctica, to eliminate the drift snow from the true snowfall, and our general con- clusion now is, that at Cape Royds the annual snowfall is equal to about 9 3^ in. of rain. On the journey of the southern depot party under Joyce, when laying a depot for the relief of the returning Southern Party in January- 1909, the fortunate discoverj'^ was made of Cap- tain Scott's old Depot A. The sharp eyes of Day discerned, at a distance of several miles, the top of the depot bamboo pole with just a \dsp of the old black flag still attached to it. Knowing the importance, from a scientific point of \'iew of estimating the extent and direc- 298 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS tion of movement of this depot, in the six years four months and a half that had elapsed since Captain Scott left it there, the party ^^sited it and ]Mackin- tosh took a series of angles and measurements, which enabled him to determine that the dej^ot had moved bodily to the east-north-east at the rate of a httle over 500 yards a year for the past six years and six months. The party also dug down through the hard snow to a depth of 8 ft. 2 in. when they came upon the original snow-surface on which the depot was formed. They were thus able to show that, during the above period, October 1, 1902, to February 15, 1909, on the average about 13 in. per year of hard snow had accumulated. In order to determine the density of this snow they melted down a considerable quantity of it, and measured the volume of the thaw-water resulting. This showed that the annual accumulation of snow on this part of the Great Ice Barrier is equal to about 73^ in. of rain. Tills depot is in the latitude of Minna Bluff, about 78" iO' South. Further north, as, for example, in the neighbourhood of ^Mount Xansen, the snowfall appeared to be considerably heavier, and it seemed to be heavier still nearer to the Antarctic Circle. As 7/^ in. of rain is equal to 73^2 ft. of snow it is obvious that the accumulation of snow, even as far south as between latitude 78 "^ and 79° is not inconsiderable, but on account of its great density this compressed snow, near ]Minna Bluff, formed a layer annually 13)^2 in. thick, instead of 7j/2 ft. thick. For the sake of simplicity it may be assumed that the rate of accumulation over the Great Barrier generally is about 1 ft. annually. Xow it has been proved that the Great Barrier extends inland for fully 300 miles in places. From the observations at INIinna Bluff, and the rate of movement of Captain Scott's Depot A, as measured by Captain Scott and again by Joyce, it may be inferred 299 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC that the Great Barrier there is travelhng seawards at the rate of about one-third of a mile per year. From tliis it may be argued that a snowfall on any part of the Barrier 300 miles inland woukl take 900 years to reach the edge of the Great Ice Barrier, where bergs are discharged into the sea. At tliis rate, if 1 ft. of snow is added to the Barrier every year a layer of snow, formed 300 miles inland, 900 years ago, if it reaches the Great Barrier cliffs at the present day will be covered by a thickness of 900 ft. of snow. Obviously this theory gives a vast thickness of snow to form the seaward end of the Great Barrier. Theoretically then as the result of the calculations from the observations of the southern depot party, it might be argued that a considerable thickness of the berg material derived from the Great Ice Barrier was formed of consolidated snow and neve rather than of true glacier ice. Practical proof of tliis was afforded us by another series of observations. At the end of the breaking up of the sea ice in the summer of 1907-8, three bergs drifted into JMciSlurdo Sound, and grounded between our winter quarters and Cape Barne. During the following winter the sea was frozen over around these bergs, and we were able to go over to them and study them. Fortunately they were much tunnelled by sea-worn caves. This en- abled us to see their internal structure. We found that all around the edge, particularly along the line of the wave-worn groove which surrounds all bergs, a good deal of ice was developed. This ice resulted evidently from the freezing of sea water as the waves washed and dashed against the foot of the berg cliff. In heavy weather a large quantity of spray would be flung high up against the cliff faces of the berg, and the spray freezing would encrust the exterior of the berg with ice. There was no evidence, however, of the existence of any solid ice inside 300 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS the berg, this portion of it being formed purely of compressed snow. From tliis fact we were led to speculate as to whether the whole of the berg might not be formed of hard snow, its submerged portion saturated, but only superficially, with sea water. That this was actually the case was proved later by Captain F. P. Evans. He saw in these bergs an excellent shelter for his ship from the bhzzards, and moored the Xiynrod to one of the larger bergs. While here he took soundings ai'ound the most typical of these tabular bergs, and found that whereas its cliff face rose to a height of 80 ft. above sea-level, the berg was aground in only thirteen fathoms of water; that is, the berg was submerged to a depth of 78 ft., so that practically half of it was out of the water and half immersed. This direct observation is obviously of great importance as bearing on the mode of origin and structure of the so-called ice- bergs of the Antarctic. There can, we think, now be little doubt that a great proportion, in some cases the whole, of the material of typical Antarctic bergs is formed of consolidated snow rather than ice. These observations may now be considered in their bearing on the origin of the Great Ice Barrier. Captain Scott has shown that the Great Ice Barrier for the greater part of its length, probably for 400 miles at least along its edge, is afloat. Wherever we got near to the chiF face of the Barrier, and we were at times very close to it, we were unable to see anything of the nature of true glacier ice, even in eases Avhere the chfF rose to a height of over 150 ft. above sea-level. On the other hand, there was every appearance of the Barrier being formed of numbers of superimposed layers of snow. On the line of argument previously given it is not improbable that a thickness of 900 ft. of snow, or thereabouts, may accumulate on a large proportion of the Barrier near its terminal cliff, so that obviously, a 301 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC great part of the thickness of the Great Ice Barrier is probably due to this compressed snow. The question still remains, as to what becomes of the glacier ice which undoubtedly does feed the Barrier at many spots along its western and southern boundaries. For example, the great glacier, 50 miles wide, up which the Southern Party travelled from the spot where they were compelled to diverge from the Barrier, latitude 83° South, must be discharging vast quantities of ice into the Barrier. This same glacier had raised ])ressure ridges on the Barrier surface for 20 miles out from its junction with the Barrier. It is clear, too, from the fact established both by the Discovery expedition and our own, that the Great Ice Barrier is moving seawards. The propelling force can be no other than that of glacier ice. This glacier ice descending from the inland plateau must also move seawards, but as it gets nearer to the Great Barrier ice cliff it becomes weighted down with a vast thickness of superincumbent snow, and it is quite possible that under these conditions a great deal of it may be thawed off from below by the sea water. The question here suggests itself, does the water circu- lating beneath the Great Ice Barrier ever have a tem- perature high enough to thaw fresh water ice? It does, of course, thaw the sea ice quite rapidly. (4) Inland Ice and Neve Fields. — Reference has already been made to this type of ice under the head of " Glaciers," in the description of the IMount Nansen Glacier. The great glacier discovered by the Southern Party between 83° 33' South and 85° South, over 100 miles in length and 50 miles in wdth descended about 6000 ft. in that distance from a vast inland snow plateau. This plateau is identical with that traversed by Captain Scott's party of the Discovery expedition, on their western journey in 1903. It is identical also with the plateau 302 /"'.^ t I GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS travelled by the Xorthern Party of our expedition in their journey inland to the South ^Magnetic Pole, as well as with the new land discovered by our expedition to the west of Cape North. This vast plateau extending, it is practically certain, for over 1200 miles from north to south, and over 200 miles from east to west, 7000 ft. high at its northern end, and at least 10,000 ft. at its southern, is formed superficially of neve. Doubtless beneath the neve is glacier ice. The neve is possibly of no very great thickness, for the horizontally bedded or gently inchned plateau rocks of the Beacon sandstone formation rise to heights of 8000 to 10,000 ft. above sea-level along the eastern border of the plateau. This structure of the plateau is illustrated on the diagram (p. 306). (5) Icebergs have already been described under the heading " Barrier Snow- and Ice-fields." ( 6 ) Pack ice has also been referred to under the head- ing " Sea Ice." It may be noted that in the Ross Sea the bulk of the pack ice, formed chiefly of fractured masses of sea ice, partly of small snowbergs and icebergs, impelled by the south-easterly winds drifts past Cape Adare to the part of the Antarctic Ocean which hes between Cape North and the Balleny Islands. This region appears to be permanently beset Mith very old pack ice and icebergs. As most of the blocks of sea ice have been twisted and piled on one another, this pack may be described as " screwed pack." (7) Thaw- WATER forming Surface Lakes, and Surface, Englaciai, or Subglacial Streams. — Some of the streams formed by thaw-water have already been described under the head of glaciers, in the case of the Drygalski Glacier. In the latitude of this glacier in 75° South, the thaw set in about December 10 and lasted to about the third week in January. 303 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Lakes and Lake Ice. — We found it difficult during tlie short period of our stay in the ^Viitarctic to ascertain to what thickness this ice formed during a single season. The dirticulty arose from the fact tliat in the summer of 1908-1909 the fresh water ice of these lakes did not entirely thaw. Some of the lakes were slightly saline, and some of these, such as Green Lake and Coast Lake, thawed com- pletely during the summer and during the winter the ice froze over them from top to bottom until, in the case of Green Lake, in August 1908, only a very little saline water, a few inches in depth, remained unfrozen, below a thickness of 5 ft. of ice. At the same time of year the water of " Coast Lake," also somewhat saline, was frozen solid, the lake being a little under 5 ft. deep. In the case of the fresh-water lake, known as Clear Lake, it was noticed that during the summer the ice thawed chiefly on the south side of the lake, Mhcre it was in contact with the black rock, and where that rock was specially warmed by the sun's rays. The sun being highest when it is due north, has its greatest heating effect on southern slopes. The ice towards the middle and north side of the lake did not wholly thaw. The same remark is true of the ice of the Blue Lake near our winter quarters. In the case of the Blue Lake we found, as the result of the shafts sunk, that in the south-west division of this lake the ice was at least 15 ft. in thickness, w-liile in the north-western division Brocklehurst sunk a shaft to 21 ft., but in his case a httle water was found be- neath the ice, whereas in the first case the ice was soUd doMTi to the bed rock. We are of opinion that this Blue Lake ice had not been thawed for probably at least three seasons. As many of these small lakes were encircled by steep 304 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS banks of hard rock, the ice, expanding as it formed, was forced to curve itself upwards in order to make room for itself, as it could not burst the sides of the rock basin. Thus its surface was frequently convex upwards. In this process of upward bulging of the ice towards the lake's centre each successive fresh layer of ice as it froze beneath the older and overlying layers, would buckle them and bend them. The latter would at last crack open, and so in the final stage of freezing of a small shallow lake, by the time that the whole of the water had frozen from top to bottom, the basin would be occupied by a biconvex cracked lens of ice, the cracks being widest at the top and tajDering away to nothing below. A curious feature which we observed in the lake ice was the presence of what we termed " snow tabloids." We found that in some cases these were merely empty bubble-like spaces in the ice filled with air. In other cases, however, where the bubbles were larger, 3 to 6 in. in width, they were occupied by snow. In some cases patches of thin rippled snow were inter-stratified in this lake ice. JNIost of this fresh-water lake ice exhibited at its sur- face a very beautiful structure, which we termed coralloidal structure. The mode of origin of this curious structure will be discussed in the Scientific ]Memoirs of this Expedition. (b) Action of ^Vixd ix Eelatiox to Antarctic GlACLU. PHENO:ME>rA An explanation has already been given of how vast quantities of finely divided rock material, chiefly in the form of sand, are constantly being blown on to the sea ice by the wind. For some distance seawards from the shore such wind-blown material must form an appreciable Vol. n.— 20 305 5 J t ; >« t " « £ f^ C 1 9 s«l x7 -°ai (^"'-1/ X r \-«./ " « --V; / 1 _o ■■-v; ^ 1 1 X o 7 > 5 i 1' 3 CJ * y I--- 4 II < UJ •^ * = / 1 / 1 5 »P J/ M 1 s < -J O- 1 f /Y-^l' 1 s^^', \ Ji s 1 5 3 o £ ='^'' 7 ~< \g o o u o 2 3 S « 2 ti V X a s s. ft l-lt !3 a. • If / O P^ < z •43 o < z o H UJ L.J |/_..._ X < CO —1 s u- 7 Z3 CO u J - (_> i A<. S/ a z: u £ 3 ■t CO 1 X g o ^ 00 ¥ / e 3 O C i o \[ a: OJ S o O o 1 X **l —1 u. J= ^ / E ] ID o k. / X < 5'L X J2 O i, / ca UJ > to UJ c u > o o o_> .._ a: c tn " 1 < c , □ LJ > CO ID ^ * < 3 f UJ X CD h O UJ o c " i o o " X o X u. Z o a: ? J 2 o o CD x: ►, 3 o >i "E CO z ^ ■ a b t— 2 CO I 10 (_) in s ^ ^ ; UJ 2 > o u g CO 3: rt « o z w g II ^ ^ en Cl- in ^ 1 = 5 n ;. 5»e 2: o c: o 5 ' i 1— OJ i CJ to tij u » CO IS 2 1 i 1 1 ill 2 1 ss S Sg SSS g Tr;:::"::?:?": i « — ) *» 7 ^ If » u 1 o ' ££ •■ jt o I > 5 m GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS amount of the sediments now forming on the sea floor. Ferrar has ah-eady commented on the great importance of the wind m these regions as a destructive agent. By accelerating evaporation of snow and ice, and by its mechanical erosive force on the surfaces of snow-fields, the blizzards are important contributors to the present deglaciation of Antarctica. The amount of snow annually blown out to sea must be very great, inasmuch as during blizzards, often of several days duration, the air is fre- quently so thick with fine particles of snow that one cannot see more than a few yards in front of one. We observed that sledge tracks and footprints on the snows of the coastal areas, or of the inland plateau, were nearly always, after the expiry of a few weeks, left in relief. This suggests that, at j^resent, in many parts of Antarctica the general surface of the snow and ice is being continually lowered by ablation and wind drift. (c) Changes of Teinipekatuke During spring and autumn when sunrise and sunset replace the perpetual sunlight of summer, and the per- petual darkness of \Ainter, the range of temperature between noon and midnight is most marked. On INIarch 10, 1908, when at an altitude of about 9000 ft., on Mount Erebus, and with the thermometer at about 10° Fahr., we observed that snow in contact with black lumps of kenyte lava exposed to the sun's rays thawed rapidl}', so that we w^ere able to get water to drink by laying a lump of snow in saucer-shaped hollows on the surface of this lava. At night these same rocks became very cold. There was no question here of the survival of any original vol- canic heat in the lava, as there was no thaw whatever of the snow where it touched the lava in spots shaded from the sun's heat. This absorjition of heat by black rocks 307 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC partly explains the survival of lichens high up on the slopes of Erebus. It also has the effect of prolonging a superficial local thaw from summer far into spring, on the one hand, and autunui on the other. Such a great diurnal range of temperature, combined with the effects of summer thaw followed by the severe frosts of winter, exei-ts a powerful disrupting force upon the rocks, and accounts for the extensive rubble banks and sheets and patches of loose and broken felspar crj'stals, which are spread over such a large area of country near INIount Erebus, &:c. At our winter quarters at Cape Royds we at first mistook these for beds of volcanic tuff. Volcanic Rocks Ross Island. — As the chief varieties of volcanic rocks met with in Ross Island have already been described by JNIessrs. Ferrar and Prior, a brief description of these vill suffice. At Ross Island we particularly studied the relations to one another of the three princij^al types of rock there developed, viz., kenyte, trachji;e and basalt. We are now in a position to say that, on the whole, the trachytes appear to have been the oldest rocks, the kenytes to be of inter- mediate age, and the basalts the newest. The evidence for this is as follows: On the western slopes of IMount Erebus, above our winter quarters, specimens were not infrequentlj^ found of Avhat at first sight appeared to be fragments of sand- stone enclosed in ken}i:e lava. A closer inspection of these showed that they were in reality varieties of trachyte. Similar specimens were met with in the kenytes near Cape Barne. It would seem from this that the oldest lavas in this area were trachji:es, and that later kenj^te eruptions followed, which partly destroyed the trach\i;es, and thus 308 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS the disrupted tracli}i;e fragments subsequently became embedded in the kenyte lava. In the next place we found that at Cape Barne the kenyte had been very powerfully intruded by the basalt. Large fragments of kenj'te were frequently found entangled in the basalt of the compara- tively recent volcanic cone at Cape Barne, and on a hne trending inland in a south-easterlv direction. In the case also of the long spur wliich extends from INIount Erebus to the old winter quarters of the Discovery expedition at Hut Point it is clear that the latest volcanic products of that locahty are scoriaceous basalts. These basalts are ob\-iously newer than the trachytes of Observation Hill; they are even newer than the oli\ine basalts of Sulphur Hill in the same area. In our ascent of Erebus we found that not only were there old kenj'te lavas developed on its flanks, but that at intervals on the way up the rock was still kenyte, becoming of newer and neAver age until the modern active crater was reached. Tliis crater was partly filled with molten lava from June to September 1908. It is evident from this that some of the kenyte is amongst the newest of all the volcanic products of Ross Island. The following table shows the probable chronological rela- tions of these lavas in descending order: Kenji;e of modern crater. Scoriaceous basalt. Olivine basalt. Pre-basaltic kemi;e. Trach\i;e. East Coast of Victoria Land. — The succession, therefore., on the whole has been from trachyte through kenji:e to ohvine-basalt. There can be no doubt that the whole of the traclniie eruptions, the pre-basaltic ken\i:e, and the olivine basalts antedate the epoch of greatest recent glaciation. The occurrence of large blocks of kemi:e at Gneiss 309 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Point, a few miles to the east-south-east of Granite Har- bour, suggests the possibihty that some of the dark sheets of rock near the highest jjortions of the plateau may per- haps be formed m part of kenyte. At tlie same time it is possible that these kenyte boulders of Gneiss Point have been drifted northwai'ds from Ross Island amongst the moraine material of the Avestern branch of the former gigantic Great Ice Barrier, when it occupied the whole of JMcMurdo Sound. Dykes of dark rocks, resembling tin- guaites, were not uncommon from Granite Harbour northwards to near Geikie Inlet, south of the Drygalski Glacier. We also observed dyke rocks full of small black bright 23rismatic ciystals of hornblende. These appear to be of the nature of hornblende lamprophyres. Small pieces of scoriaceous volcanic rocks were found by us as far north as Cape Irizar. These fragments may have come from the mountains of the western plateau. Foundation Rocks The oldest rocks seen by us in the Antarctic belong to the series already described bj^ Ferrar and Prior, and consist of banded gneiss, gneissic granite grano-diorite and diorite rich in sphene. In some spots, as at Cape Bernacchi, masses of very coarse white crystalline marble are interspersed in the gneiss. These foiuidation rocks have their planes of foliation sharply folded in places, as is the case at Depot Island, the axis of folding there being approximately ])arallel to the trend of the coast-line. Near the same spot huge enclosures can be seen in the gnessic-granite. These are partlj' greenish grey quartzites in masses ten to twenty feet in diameter, partly large lumps of blackish green coarseh' crystalline hornblende rock, with much sphene and a white mineral, appai'ently either saussuritised fel- 310 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS spar, or scapolite. In other places, as at Cape Bernacchi, black tourmaline schists with epidote were frequently interspersed through the gneiss, and the gneiss was also traversed by veins of white aplite, with small crystals of garnet. The coarsely crystalline belt of marble in the gneiss at Cape Bernacchi contained abundant graphite in the form of small flakes. It appears to us that the marble and the quartzite represent an old sedimentary formation, and the large enclosures of hornblende-and-sphene rock an old amphibolite or gabbro, both the former and the latter types of rock disrupted by the intrusive gneissic granites. Ferrar was of opinion that in the neighbourhood of the hill marked (d) on his map showing the valley of the Ferrar Glacier, the grey granite of these hills is older than the dolerite which rests upon its even upper surface, but that the pink granite of (d) is intrusive and later than the dolerite.* This is an important observation. We did not see this spot, but in other areas, as near Granite Harbour, the dolerite appeared to be newer than the granites. Older (?) Paleozoic Sedimentary Rocks Apart from the large enclosures of quartzites, &c., in gneissic granite, already referred to, the next oldest sedimentary rocks appear to be greenish grey slates brought back by the Southern Party from the surface of the great glacier up which they were travelling between JNIount Hope and " The Cloudmaker," in approximately latitude 84° South. These fragments, as Lieutenant Shackleton informs us, w^ere blown on to the surface of the ice from what appeared to be mountains of slate further west. The approximate relative position of these slate *Nat. Ant. Exped. Nat. Hist., Vol. i.. Geology, p. 38. Brit. Museum. 311 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC hills and of the granite hill of JMount Hope, and the nunatak of coal-bearing Beacon sandstone further south is shown in the jihotograph. At Cape Royds we found occasionally, but sparingly, erratics of radiolarian chert. The radiolaria appear to be of older palseozoic type, but we were unable to discover an}" rock like it in situ. Obviously at Cape Ro3"ds the erratics have travelled from some spot to the south and west. It is possible that these black and grey cherts belong to the limestone series discovered by the Southern Party in 85° 15' South. This limestone varies in colour from pink to dark grey. The pink limestone is banded with some dull green earthy mineral ; it contains numerous obscure casts resembling those of radiolaria. The dark bluish grey portion of this limestone does not show any trace of organisms. Apparently it has been too much metamorphosed to retain the outlines of any of its original fossils. It is traversed in all directions bj^ veins of white calcite. The limestones appear to be almost horizontally bedded, and are several hundreds of feet in thickness. The Southern Party were unable to determine the relation of this massive limestone to the adjacent Beacon sand- stone, as unfortunately there was a break in the con- tinuity of the section which prevented the junction of these two formations being seen. This limestone, 7000 ft. above sea-level, is higher geographically than the Beacon sandstone formation, but as the latter dips away from it towards the north-east, the limestone may be strati graphically below the Beacon sandstone. The Southern Party discovered large blocks of limestone breccia in the moraines near " The Cloudmaker." The fragments in the morainic breccias near this mountain are formed of limestones, not unlike those of the great nuna- tak, but whether these breccias belong to the basal beds of the Beacon sandstone formation, or to the base of the 312 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS massive limestones, or to crush breccia zones in the mas- sive hmestones is not as yet ajiparent. It is even possible that they may be stratigrajihicall}' above the Beacon sandstone, but this is improbable. Fragments of old limestones were observed by us in the ancient moraines of the ]Mount Xansen Glacier. These were associated with pieces of sandstone and fragments of grey clay shale with obscure impressions of fossU roots. This limestone appears to have been derived from the Beacon sandstone formation. It is very much altered through recrystallisa- tion, and we have been unable to recognise in it any fossils. It may be mentioned that when journeying to the South [Magnetic Pole at a spot about twenty miles south- east of Granite Harbour we found on a small island, Terrace Island, a large fragment of argillaceous lime- stone. This had evidentlj' been derived from the Beacon sandstone formation in the adjacent hills. When broken open it was found to contain small oval bodies, pointed at one end, and about one-tliird of an inch in length resembling seeds of fossil plants, possibly coniferous seeds. This specimen was subsequently left at " Depot Island," and has not since been recovered. The Beacon sandstone formation has now been proved to extend from at least as far as [Mount Xansen in the north to latitude 85° South, where it was explored in situ by the Southern Party, a distance of fully seven hundred miles. As described by Ferrar its thickness in the Ferrar Glacier Valley amounts to fully two thousand feet, and even then the base of the formation was not seen. The following is a generalised section of the Beacon sandstone formation in 85" South, in descending order, from information supplied by Mr. Shackleton and F. Wild of the Southern party: 500 ft. sandstone. 313 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 300 ft. sandstone with bands of shale, and about seven seams of coal, or seams formed of black shale alternating with laminse of bright coal. In tliis belt the following seams were seen in situ: 1 ft. to lYz ft. coal seam. Strata. 7 ft. coal seam with bands of grey shale. Strata. 5 ft. coal seam apparently formed of clean coal. Strata. 3 ft. (about) coal seam. Strata. 3 ft. (about) coal seam. Strata. 3 ft. (about) coal seam. Strata. 3 ft. (about) coal seam. Seven-hundred-foot sandstones with numerous water- worn quartz pebbles in the lower beds. These pebbles are from one to two inches in diameter. Total 1500 ft. In the medial moraine, below the great nunatak in 85° South, the Southern Party obtained, amongst several specimens of sandstone Avith much mother-of-coal, or mineral charcoal, one specimen of special interest. It was a fragment of fine grained hard sandstone, evidently de- rived from the Beacon sandstone formation higher up, showing a black band one-quarter of an inch thick run- ning through it. INIicro-slides of this examined at the University prove that it is a coniferous wood. The fol- lowing description of it has been written by INIr. E. J. Goddard, B.Sc, ]\Iacleay Research Fellow of the Lin- nsean Society, New South Wales: 314 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS Specimens from Medial ]\Ioeaixe, December 11, 1908 (Xo. 101) " Longitudinal sections of the included dark masses give a homogeneous banded ai^pearance of a distinctly organic nature. The banded ajipearance is due to the vascular nature of the organic elements composing the mass. The whole structure recalls to one's mind the appearance given by longitudinal sections of the xylem jjortion of the vascular area of a gymnosperm, such as Phnis. Only the xylem area is represented in the speci- men, no traces of medullary, cortical, or phloem tissue being visible. ^ledullary rays are present as shown in the micro-photograph. " The xylem itself is composed of a homogeneous mass of vessels, tracheidal in nature, no differentiation as re- gards the vascular elements being present. In places one may readily make out in longitudinal sections dark opaque bands of much greater size individually than the tracheides. These in aU probability represent resin passages belong- ing to the xylem. It would seem, further, that these masses might be considered as being nothing more than an aggregation of material similar in nature to that of the walls, and due to changes under the process of petri- faction. This, however, is opposed by the fact that they occur even in these small sections fairly commonly, and at the same time are all of exactly the same size as regards width. At all events they represent some definite struc- ture, and in all probability resin passages. " The walls of the tracheids themselves seen under the high power of the microscope appear to be pitted, but the preservation is by no means good enough to war- rant any remarks on this beyond that in the common wall of adjacent tracheides occur clear spaces of the same relative importance as the bordered pits of such a 315 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC g}'mnosperm as Pinus. These clear spaces occur regularly along the length of the tracheides, and stand out strongly against the dark colour of the walls in their preserved condition. " The nature of the xylem itself leads to the con- clusion that it is a portion of a gyninospermous plant, resembling strongly in nature the same portion of a coniferous plant." If the conclusion as to the coniferous character of the wood is correct, and there seems little reason to doubt its correctness, the lower limit of the age of the Beacon sandstone is perhaps lower carboniferous or Upper Devonian, unless conifers in the Antarctic had a deeper range in geological time than elsewhere. The plate shows the general appearance under the microscope of this fossil wood. The medullary rays are fairly distinct. This is the fii'st determinable fossil j^lant that has been obtained from the Victoria Land portion of the Ajntarctic. Although a date not older than carboniferous or Devonian is suggested by the presence of this coniferous wood, it is of course possible that the Beacon sandstone is of higher geological antiquity, and if the radiolarian rocks, already referred to, are conformable witli the Beacon sandstone, it may even go far do\Mi into the older palaeozoic. The degree of induration of these unfolded plateau sandstones and the general absence of fossils from the limestones is suggestive of a high geological antiquity. Raised Beaches Raised beaches were observed at two distinct localities on the western slojies of Ross Island, also near the mouth 316 Fossil Wood ix Saxdstoxe, from a Moraixe ix Latitude * S5° South GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS of the Ferrar Glacier, as well as to the south-east of Mount Larsen. The first locaUty on Ross Island was discovered by Armytage; the second locality by one of us; the raised beaches near the Ferrar Glacier also by one of us; while the Mount Larsen raised beaches were observed by the Northern Party on their journey to the South JNIagnetic Pole. These four localities may be referred to as: (1) Back Door Bay deposit. (2) Cape Barne deposit. (3) Ferrar Glacier dej^osit. (4) jMount Larsen deposit. Deposit (1) lies at a height of 160 ft. above sea-level. It was found at the bottom of a shallow flat-bottomed gulley sloping down eastwards into a small arm of McJNIurdo's Sound, called by us Back Door Bay. The area of the deposit was only a few square yards. It con- sisted of a brownish earthy material with abundant remains of crushed tubes of serpulge. Diatoms were fairly abun- dant in it. We were at first in some doubt as to whether this serpula deposit was a genuine raised beach, or merely a mass of sandy material from the sea floor pushed up by the ploughing action of the old McJMurdo Sound ice sheet. There has, of course, been a similar question raised in re- gard to the so-called raised beaches of Moel Tiyfaen in North Wales. The subsequent discovery by one of us of an extensive raised beach at an altitude of about 180 ft. near Cape Barne (deposit 2) is confirmatory evidence as to the genuine raised beach character of the first- mentioned deposit. At this Cape Barne deposit the mate- rial is largely formed of spicules of siliceous sponges and molluscan shells, as well as the remains of serjjute. The nature of the organisms there present is such as to render 317 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC it probable that the deposit was formed in water of some depth. It may therefore indicate an elevation of this jjart of the coast near Cape Barne, not merely of 180 ft., but perhaps of double that amount. Deposit (3) near the entrance of the Ferrar Glacier Valley. These deposits chief!}' consist of brownish sands with veiy numerous shells of a large species of pectens. They were discovered by one of us, and traced to altitudes of from 50 to 60 ft. Further north at Cape Bernacchi there are strongly marked terraces suggestive of raised beaches, which were observed by the Northern Party to extend up to altitudes of 100 ft. At Terrace Island, about twenty miles to the north of Cape Bernacchi we observed Mell-marked terraces, ranging up to about 80 to 85 ft. above sea-level. These had every appearance of having been laid down by the action of the sea, though no sea-shells were found amongst the sands and coarse gravel constituting this deposit. Deposit (4) south-east of Mount Larsen. A very curious type of what may be termed a raised beach or possiblj-^ an uptlu-ust area, was obsei'ved by us on our journey from the sea ice near the Drygalski Glacier to the foot of the small branch glacier at what we called Back- stairs Passage. This moraine deposit consisted of greenish grey muds underlying coarse moraines of granite blocks and quartz and felspar porphyry. Beneath the grey muds was ice; the ice was just very shghtly saline in places. These muds contained remains of serpulfe in great quantity, an enormous number of shells of that well- known arctic type amongst the foraminifera, BilocuUna, numerous representatives of horny polyzoa, siliceous sponges, and a perfect form of solitary coral allied to a perfect shell of lyothyrina, &c., dentalium, chiton, &c. The height of this deposit above sea-level could not be 318 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS definitely ascertained by us. It was at least 20 ft., pos- sibly as much as 30 ft., above the sea. The evidence generally of these raised beaches is very interesting, as showing the probability that when the ice, in recent geological time, had its maximum extension in tliis region, there was probably a subsidence, possibly due to the load, on tliis part of the earth's crust, of such a vast extra thickness of ice, and that after the subsidence, which probably lagged behind the epoch of maximum glaciation, there has been a gradual re-emergence to the amount of 150 to 200 ft. The bracliiopod and polyzoon in the raised marine mud from the Larsen area have kindly been identified for us by Mr. C. Hedley and Mr. E. F. Hallman respectively, of the Australian JSIuseum. Peat Deposits Amongst formations of recent origin may be men- tioned peat. A deposit of peat was discovered by one of us formed on the bottom of the lake called Coast Lake. This peat is formed from the remains of a large fungoid plant, which grows in profusion in the water of these coastal lakes \\'hcn the ice thaws in midsummer. A deposit of mirabilite was discovered by one of us at the spot shown on the map near Cape Bame, after the summer thaw had set in. The white colour of the salt during winter rendered it in- distinguishable from the surrounding snow, but after the thaw the difference of course was noticeable between this white salt and the edges of the dark volcanic rock. Apparently tliis mirabilite forms one of the products of evaporation of an old lake. Numbers of these dried lake basins were noticed by us amongst the glacial moraines on these western slopes of Erebus near Cape Barne and our winter quarters. 319 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC In regard to the important theoretical question as to whether the west coast of Victoria Land is of an iVtlantic or of a Pacific tj-pe, the following considerations ji resent themselves. Feet Inches Layers of Ice sepa- raied from one another Ice stroiiBly fibrous and prismatic with nu- nieious vertical bubble holes. The bottom ice (or 6 Id. in depth Is yellow. Pcnty fungus and ice mixed. Altern.-itln;; lamina; of fungus- pc3t and ice pass- int; downwards iuto 4 in. ut gritty pe^t. Pebbles of kenyte lava and fungus ce- mented by Ice. As pointed out by H. T. Ferrar, the massive Beacon sandstone formation terminates in steep, and in places precipitous, slopes along the whole line of coast from beyond Cape North southerly to ]\Iount Discovery. From there to where JMr. Shackleton and liis Southern Party, 320 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS after ascending the granite and slate mountains of this coastal range in latitude 83° 33', longitude 170° East, reached 85° South at an altitude of 6000 ft. sedimentary rocks were found to cap the ranges. They were disposed in gently dipping or nearly horizontal strata, and extended south-easterly to at least 86° South. At the Great Nunatak in latitude 85° South, longitude 165° East, the sandstone beds containing the seven seams of coal dip in a north-easterly direction at an angle of about 6° to 8°. There was no evidence there, nor as far nortliAvards as our exjjlorations extended, that is, to Mount Xansen, of any folding in the Beacon sandstone formation. At Depot Island, to the north of Granite Harbour, the ancient gneiss platform is there folded parallel with the coast-line, but this structure appeared to be the excejjtion rather than the rule. The Beacon sandstone, for reasons already given, is perhaps as old as paleozoic, possibly older palfEozoic. So, if the above conclusions are correct, there has been no appreciable folding in the part of Victoria Land examined by us since palaeozoic time. The coast-line is, therefore, in our opinion, of the Atlantic rather than of the Pacific type, and probably owes its trend and jjosition to a powerful fault or zone of faults, with a down-throw to the east. The volcanoes ]\Iount INIelbourne, JSIount Erebus, Mount Discovery, &:c., are probably on this fracture, or zone of fractures. If this view as to the Atlantic type of this part of the coast is correct, what has become of the great Andean folds developed on the west side of Graham Land? Possibly as Wilckens has suggested, west of Alexander I Land the Cordillera is submerged through faulting.* * Centralblatt fiir Min. Geol. und Pal., 1906, No. 6, p. 179. Vol. II.-21 321 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC In this case the Ross Sea subsidence area (if such it be) would have approximately the same relation to the Andean trend-lines in the Antarctic that the Gulf of Mexico and the Antillean and West Indian fracture zones bear to the trend-lines of the tropical Andes. It must, nevertheless, be admitted that the Great South Polar Shield of ancient and practicallj^ incompressible crystalline rock, intensely folded in the past, would be incapable of being further folded now, and if the Andean zone of disturbance traversed this shield it would be likely to traverse it as a zone of fractures with local lava effusions, rather than as a fold range of the Pacific type. This important matter will be discussed by us in detail in the Geological Memoir of tliis Expedition. Summary. — The following inferences are tentatively suggested in regard to the geology of Antarctica: (1) The majority of the tabular bergs of this region are largely, in some cases wholly, snowbergs, not icebergs. (2) Tioie icebergs are also found. (3) Glaciers in the Antarctic push out in some cases thirty miles from the coast, and must be afloat, as argued by Ferrar, for the greater part of this length. (4) The Great Ice Barrier is formed of true glacier ice at its sides and inland extremity, but the centre and seaward portion is formed, in its upper part, chiefly of snow. We agree with Captain Scott's conclusions that the Great Barrier except at its edges and perhaps at some distance inland must be afloat. At its eastern side it has been moving seawards at the average rate of about five hundred yards a year for the past seven years. (.5) Throughout the whole of the region of Antarctica examined by us, for 16° of latitude, there is evidence of a recent great diminution in the glaciation. In McMurdo Sound this arm of the sea now free from land ice was 322 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS formerly filled by a branch of the Great Ice Barrier, whose surface rose fully 1000 ft. above sea-level, and the Barrier ice in this sound, in areas from which the ice has retreated, was formerly about 4000 ft. in thickness. (6) The snowfall at Cape Royds from February 1908 to February 1909 was equal to about 9^ in. of rain. (7) The neve-fields of Antarctica are probably of no great thickness. (8) The southern and western sides of the sector of Antarctica south of Australia is a plateau from 7000 to 10,000 ft. high, which may possibly extend across the South Pole to Coat's Land and Graham Land. (9) Ross Sea is probably a great subsidence area. (10) The Beacon sandstone formation which extends for at least 1100 miles from north to south in Antarctica contains coniferous wood associated with coal seams. It is probably of palaeozoic age. (11) Limestones, pisolitic in places, in 85° 15' South, and 7000 ft, above sea-level contaon obscure casts of radiolaria. Radiolaria, in a fair state of preservation, occur in black cherts amongst the erratics at Cape Royds. They appear to belong to the same formation as the limestone. These radiolaria appear to be of older paleozoic age. (12) The succession of lavas at Erebus appears to have been first trachytes, then kenytes, then olivine basalts. Erebus is, however, still erupting kenyte. (13) Peat deposits, formed of fungus, are now form- ing on the bottoms of some of the Antarctic glacial lakes near 77° and 78° South. (14) Raised beaches of recent origin extend at Ross Island to a height of at least 160 ft. above sea-level. 323 THE HEART OF THE ANTARTIC NOTES IN REGARD TO MOUNT EREBUS By Professor T. W. EDGEWORTH DAVID and raymond priestley Volcanic Eruptions We observed that the eruptions of Erebus, hke those of Stromboli, were most frequent during a low barometer. The following is a description of the chief eruption of Erebus witnessed by us on June 1-i, 1908: This morning, about 8.4^5 a.m., as the small blizzard of the preceding night was subsiding we noticed that Erebus was more than usually active; the steam cloud over its summit was broader and taller than usual; and there were frequent outbursts of steam. At 11.30 A.M. it was noticed that an eruption of altogether unprecedented vigour, as far as our experience of Erebus went, was in progress. Immense masses of steam rushed u])wards to at least 2000 ft. above the sum- mit in about half a minute, and spread out to form a vast mushroom-shaped cloud. This rapidly became asym- metrical; while the main steam column was bent over to the left (northerly) by the return air current from the Pole, the higher ascending portion, at about 2.500 to 3000 ft. was carried by the upper current in a southerly, or more probably south-easterly direction. At about 2.30 P.M. there was a specially grand outburst of steam. It rushed upwards nearly vertically, just a trifle bent to the north, and dashed its head with great violence through the mushroom-shaped cloud or canopy, emerged on the other side, and must have ascended there from 1000 to 2000 ft. higher; in all about 5000 ft. above the sununit of the mountain. At 3.15 P.M. a bright glow was seen on Erebus by 324 b b b □ g o g b b b O o o O b O o o o o o o o O o o S o o o o o o o — M UJ ^ Ui 01 ~J O (D O — W W .-^ u< .01 .-J .CO to O — b b b b o b Q b b b o b 9 9 o o g g g g OOODOOOOOO" ~ oooOooooooo _ O O ^ q o o o o o GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ^lessrs. Priestley, Murray and Mackay. It illuminated the whole steam column to the base of the muslu'oom. We observed that the top of this column then spread out gradually, first into a club-headed lump, then into a mushroom-like form. At 3.25 P.M. a remarkably bright glow suddenly ht up all the lower part of the steam colunm above the crater. This was seen by Shackleton, Priestley and Day. By 3.45 P.M. the steam cloud had spread out much more and had besides risen higher, and the fii'st formed portions of the cloud trailed away in long streamers to the south with one extensive branch going first north by east, then north-westerly. At 3.50 p.:m. there was another bright glow. As re- gards the uprushes of steam the interval may not have been constant, but it seemed to be about four to five minutes. Towards 6 p.m. the bend over the steam column to the north-north-west or north-west was more strongly marked, and the asymmetrj' of the steam cloud was due to a preponderating amount of steam gathering to the north-west side of Erebus. By this time the older part of the steam cloud had formed a species of thin cirrus cloud, about 20,000 ft. to 30,000 ft. above sea-level. At 6.40 P.M. Shackleton obsei"ved a very bright glow on the steam cloud. By 8 P.M. the eruption appeared to be subsiding, and the steam cloud meanwhile stretched across the sk^-, now in a direction from east-south-east to west-north-west (the surface wind was at the time about north-north-east ) , and appeared to be passing almost over Sandy Beach and Horseshoe Bay. It was now delicately draped in the form of sinuous thin folds like a thin muslin skirt. Evidently the wind direction had changed at the summit level to about east-south-east to west-north-west. 325 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC That night there was a full moon. The sky a lovely deep blue near the zenith, paler towards the horizon. When the moon came over the great steam cloud of Erebus (22|4° of arc) the scene was sublime. Its hght was brightly reflected from the small glaciers at the south- west foot of the cone of Erebus ; all the rest of the west and north-west slope was in deep shadow. In middle distance below the base of the cone soft white mist swathed the mountain. Near Backdoor Bay and Caj)e Royds brightly moonlit patches of snow showed up the black and dark brown patches of rock; our hut and stable in the middle of the foreground with the dazzling wliite surface of our little lake with its winding bays and coves. On June 17, at 8 p.m., we noticed remarkable wliite cloud-like dense white cumulus to north-north-east over the ridge at the back of our hut and towards Horseshoe Bay. At 11 P.M. (about) Mawson came running down from Anemometer ridge to say that an eruption had broken out from a new quarter. We rushed out and witnessed a distinct eruption amongst the huge masses of steam hanging in the air to the north-north-east. The new mass of steam, of great volume, rolled up rapidly, starting at perhaps 2000 ft. above sea-level, to probably at least 5000 ft. above the sea. A photograph was taken of it, and afterwards more distinct steam eruptions were witnessed. The eruption appeared to have its origin on the southerly and south-south-west slope of Mount Bird, at perhaps about 2000 ft. above the sea-level. The steam cloud appeared to ascend to a height of about 5000 ft. above sea-level in an incredibly short space of time. These fumaroles or intermittent geysers must be among the most powerful known. They appear to be developed near the meridianal earth crack which extends from Mount Bird southerly through Mount Erebus. 326 GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS A description of the craters of Erebus has akeady been given in the narrative of this work, and the fact is emphasized that the interior of the old crater is largely filled with layers of large felspar crystals and pumice, alternating with beds of snow. Five of these felspar crystals are figured on the accompanying plate. ADDITIONAL NOTES ON ERUPTIONS By JAMES MURRAY We were not so fortunate as to witness an eruption of any great moment. The activity of Mount Erebus showed in the form of increased volume of the steam- cloud or " smoke-cloud " ejected from the crater, and in a red glow or flare at the crater, often visible at night. There were also steam eruptions from fumaroles more or less distant, sometimes many miles distant from the active crater. The Smoke-Cloud. — We referred to the cloud of steam which issued from the crater as the " smoke-cloud," to leave no chance of confounding it with the great laminated cloud which commonly hung over the mountain. The variations in the volume of the smoke-cloud were associated with high and low barometer. Occasionally, for a few days, no smoke was visible, and this was usually at times of liigh pressure. Even then we could not be sure that there was no smoke issuing, as there is a gap in the crater not visible from our camp. Great activity in the ejection of steam occurred with the glass as high as 29.5 (very high for this region), and as low as 28.3 (pretty nearly our minimum). A large volume of cloud was often thrown up with great force, to a height of several thousand feet, some- times as much as 5000 or 6000 ft., where it spread out 327 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Eruption or June 14, 1908 I LM-. ^^SA -£:?c^ ^.^^ ^^ • *" IB S^ J ^i^ S^ t~ N >r ^ ^t 3;__ ~^ 1 ^ r? jj^' Tr" l5r ^ O/i 1 ' ' Lj ' H ■ , B> ^ i // ^ 1 /j^ ^ ^ ^ i^^& 2 J^'ji ^* -, jX -^*'^H^S * ■■ -j-<«> ^ «l^ ■ ■ ^^-'^ jV, ^ r ^ii^y^j ^ i "^1- '*'4iiJ ^ ^ ^ i1 wS^ A ^ ^w- 4^-a- •Jr*^^ rf*d55'S^r I 1 I .11 »».. 417 ^ ' * S ^fi*r 'f Jr ' 1 ' J' -^ "N^^^r ^ -^"^ ' * rf ^ ^^^AL^ [^ ^ 111 *! ' i* ' / ^ I't rff ' ' iT" H^ tf** ri •^ ^ ^ 1 ^» « ni^ ^ ^ "^ - *' ^^^ ' til p-^M .-■ } *.i i^i '1'. iir' i '^ ^ ' -'i'--g|M>42 ir.fr ^ i! 1 / ^ ^ 1 *^k 1 \ \i. J ^ ^ i 1 6 \^^^ / \ W* ^ rf P ' Ibl 1^ 3BHir 2^ i ir " ^ ! \ / 1 ! ~^ "2 1 t~ / _:: :~ i^ iLjzir i i IT I 1 . r Temfebatubes of Ice of Blde Lake Blue Lake, in which we had come on solid bottom at a depth of 15 ft., was kept open for five months, from July to December. Here periodic readings were taken, in order to watch the rate at which the temperature at differ- ent depths changed in correspondence with the air tem- peratures. After some experience the shaft was covered 363 THE HEART OF THEANTARCTIC with sacking to prevent it filling up with snow. This would also reduce the circulation of air. On the Ih-st day, when the shaft was sunk to a depth of 5 ft., there was a difference of 23" between the surface (minus 21.0° F.) and the bottom (plus 2.0° F.). When the bottom at 15 ft. was reached a week later the whole range from top to bottom was 26° (top, minus 6.0°; bottom, plus 20.0°). On account of the high temperatures at the bottom we found these shafts very comfortable places to work in, and could lie down to pai'take of lunch, on a luxurious couch made of ice chips, in perfect comfort, when the air was down between minus 30.0° and minus 40.0°. Series of temperatin'es were taken at every 2 ft. in depth daily for a about a fortnight. Afterwards a series was taken once a month, as we had not time to read them oftener. In the diagram are shoAni the curves of temperature for six months, at one reading per month, compared with the curve of mean air temperature for the four weeks preceding each reading of the temperatures of the lake- ice. The scale of temperature on the left side reads up and down, from plus 28.0° Fahr. to minus 20.0° Fahr. The time reads from left to right, in months, July to December. The lowest curve, drawn thicker, is the mean air temperatui-e. The dotted line is the surface tempera- ture. The other four hnes reading from below upward, are the temperatures at 4 ft., 8 ft., 12 ft., and 15 ft. (bottom). The thin zigzag line is the M'eekly mean of the air temperatures. The air curve is always much lower. The others maintain their relative positions pretty steadily, except the surface cui-\'e, which fluctuates, mid becomes highest of all in December. These curves show some points of interest. The 364 PHYSICS similarity and uniformity of all except the surface curve are remarkable. We cannot build much theory on such curves, as the curves of ice-temperature represent single observations in each month, while the air curve is a real mean deduced from twenty-eight daily means. Still the similar course traced by each curve cannot be entirely chance. If there were no direct relation between the air curve and the others we would expect greater differences at different depths. The monthly mean is selected as giving the nearest estimate as to the rate at which the temperatures within the ice follow the air temperatures. The daily mean of air temperature would not be expected to correspond at all with the slower changes within the ice, but the curve was drawn, and fluctuated extremely. Then the mean for a week before each observation was taken, also the Aveekly means for the entire period, and they showed no obvious relation to the ice-temperatures. Even with the means for a fortnight before each monthly series the correspondence is far from close. When the curve of the monthly means is drawTi beside the others it is at once evident that it takes a place in the series, but that its range is much greater. All the curves converge steadily after August, and approximate very closely in November and December. MINERALS AND CHEMISTRY Notes by DOUGLAS MAWSON, B.Sc, B.E. A large variety of minerals, chiefly rock-forming types, were met with by the expedition. The minerals included felspar, pyroxenes, amphiboles, micas, garnet, &c. Among the most notable features was the occur- rence of idiomorphic felspar crystals a couple of inches in 365 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC length, found abundantly scattered about the old crater of Erebus. These had apparently been expelled by the explosive force of steam from the molten lava in which they occurred. Epidote, actmolite, tourmaline and calcite in the form of marble, were abundantly developed in the vicinity of Cape Bernacchi. In the marble cubes of graphite and iron pyrites, together with some tetrahedra of copper pyrites, were observed. In a moraine in this vicinity also a boulder of reef quartz containing iron pyrites was observed. Xatrolite was found in seams in boulders of basic lava in a moraine near Mount Larsen. Titanium minerals appeared to be abundant in the eruptive rocks and schists met with between Granite Harbour and IMount Larsen. An important occurrence of mirabilite near Cape Barne was noted by Priestley. This he found in rough masses several pounds in weight piled up at the northern end of one of the lakes. It is at a situation some height above the present lake level, but no doubt owes its origin to salts originally contained in the lake water. Gypsum was found by Joyce in fissures amongst the kenyte at the Penguin Rookery, Cape Royds. Mixtures of mag- nesium and and sodium sidphates, apparently originally derived from the sea, are to be found under most of the loose stones in the neighbourhood of Cape Royds. Sea spray and blown saline snow has no doubt carried these salts to their present resting-place. Ice Chystals formed on tue line of a fi3H trap OPTICS METEOROLOGICAL OPTICS Notes by DOUGLAS MAWSON, B.Sc. B.E. JMlRAGE. Wonderful exhibitions of mirage were of daily occur- rence, especially in the early morning hours. In summer time, travelling over the sea-ice on the Magnetic Pole journey, it was usually impossible to make theodolite observations between the hours of 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. on account of the extreme distortion of distant objects due to mirage effects. This was attributable to the fact that, at about this hour, a large body of cold dense air descends from the great plateau of South Victoria Land, flowing down the glacier Aalleys and minghng with the warmer air over the sea-ice. For the same reason the western mountains obserAcd from Cape Royds, always loomed larger in the early morning. Distant capes viewed over the open water often appeared to be hung up in the sky. The type of illusion known as Fata Morgana was of very frequent occurrence in the case of distant floating ice rafts; the warmer stratum of the air in proximity to the sea causing the slight irregulai'ities on the ice surface to appear as lofty pinnacles. Rings and Crosses Round the Sxin and Moon These phenomena, proceeding from the refraction of the light of the sun and moon, were numerous and varied. Both large and small rings were observed. Usually only those portions of the ring appeared which neighboured on the horizontal line through the sun or moon, normal to the line of sight. Parheha and parselene of this kind were of common occurrence. 367 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC In summer-time on the plateau we observed the most comi^licated and gorgeous phenomena of this kind. These were always best seen through coloured glasses. During the winter a fine example of a parselene appeared between us and Mount Erebus. The image must have been formed Avithin a mile or two of us. In winter when the atmosphere was cold, clear and still, similar rings could be artificially formed near the face by breathing towards the moon. The moisture in the breath freezes instantly on leaving the body, and the optical effect is produced in the cloud of tiny floating ice particles. Rings, coloured hke the rainbow, closely investing the moon, were of frequent occurrence during the winter night. On one occasion a magnificent exhibition of this kind appeared as a series of three coloured rings; that nearest the moon showed the colours of the first order in Newton's scale; the second and third rings showed the second and third orders respectively. The effect was similar to that seen when viewing a uniaxial crystal in convergent polarised light along the principal axis. Other Coloue Effects At certain periods of the year certain clouds are seen very brightly coloured. This colouring is strong, and all the colours of Newton's scale are seen as in the rainbow. This succession of colours increases in a direction away from the sun. The orders of colour increase successively with a corresponding reduction in distinctiveness, until too faint for observation. An isolated patch of cloud illuminated in this way resembles a fragment of a mineral like olivine viewed through an analyser under polarised light. This phenomenon was strongly shown only for 368 OPTICS the few days preceding the departure and the arrival of the sun respectively before and after the winter night. Especially at the intermediate seasons of the year the advent and departure of the sun each day was accompanied by prismatic sunset and sunrise effects. Mount Erebus was often bathed in a delicate pink light. Purple lights are apt to be produced on snow surfaces when obliquely lighted. Cavities in snow formations appear of a wonderful azure blue colour. Those in ice, on the other hand, appear bluish-green, or greenish. Earth Shadows The earth shadows, or dark shadow bands crossing the sky, seen when the sun is very low on the horizon, were observed in a variety of forms. Some of these certainly bore a relation to the relative positions of Mount Erebus and the sun. When on top of INIount Erebus we remarked the great conical shadow it threw at sunrise over ISIclNIurdo Sound and even as far as the western mountains. It was noted later on that a relationship existed between some of the earth shadows seen in the sky from Cape Royds and this conical shadow of Erebus. Other forms of the shadows are not so easily explained. On one occasion when the sun was low on the northern horizon near noon, just after its return, we observed the sky overhead crossed by six parallel earth shadow beams, directed from the sun supplying a Noah's Ark appearance. Vol. II.-24 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Additional Notes by JAMES MURRAY The sun, prime source of all the optical phenomena referred to, was seen for the last time before the long winter night on April 27, 1908. One-third of its disc was above the horizon at noon. It was again seen for the first time on August 17, 1908. The entire disc was above the horizon, and the bottom edge one quarter of the diameter from the horizon, so that it could probably have been seen a day or so earlier if the weather had been clear. The long night was therefore of 111 days (or less) . It is supposed that the night at latitude 77^ 30' considered astronomically, should be several days longer, and that the sun was seen later and earlier on account of refraction. The limits of the long day could not be so readily determined (by observation) as the sun went behind the mountains. The first year we had only a small part of the long day, and we supposed that the sun began to set on February 22, the day the Nimrod left us. The second year we experienced the entire long day, from about October 17 to about February 22. There was perpetual daylight on each side of the long day for several weeks, and similarly the long night was tempered by very good twilight during the day for some weeks at the beginning and end. Some of the most striking optical phenomena, as the earth shadows, iridescent clouds, &c., were only exhibited during the short periods when the sun rose and set each day. Others, like the prismatic sunrises and sunsets, con- tinued long into the night. In addition to the optical effects familiar in polar regions, such as mock suns and moons, halos and crosses, there were observed a number of optical phenomena which are not so well known. 370 OPTICS Several of these (the prismatic sunsets and sunrises, the curved earth-shadows, and the arched ice-bhnk of the Barrier) are characterised by their arched form, their upper boundary being an arc of a great circle. PeISMATIC SuNEISES and StTNSETS The phenomenon to which we gave this name consisted in a high arch, coloured in bands hke the solar sijcctrum, which appeared in the sky opposite to the sun, before sun- rise and after sunset. It was of daily occurrence in clear Diagram of Prismatic Arch, March 13 weather, during the whole of the two periods w-hen the sun was rising and setting. Even during the long night it was common at noon for nearly a month after the sun had set, and it recommenced a month before the sun reappeared. 371 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC It began instantly when the sun set and got higher as the sun sank further below the horizon, at least it appeared so, perhaps through the arch becoming more distinct as the darkness deepened. Some low arclies which were measured were 25° and 30" above the horizon, and it was estimated that at its highest the arch reached to 45°. Round the horizon it extended for about 90° or more. The accompanying figure gives an idea of its size and of the breadth of the bands of colour. Though the rainbow colours are unmistakable, the bands are very delicate, and their limits, as well as the boundary of the A\hole arch, are very obscure, though the latter is clearly a circular arc. The number of colours which can be distinguished by the eye varies with the distinctness of the display, and with the height of the arch. In a low arch usually only two bands were visible, a lower one of slaty blue (greenish quite close to the horizon), and a liigher one of purple. When the arch was high, other colours could be distinguished. The order of their arrangement is here given as they appeared, without bias as to the correct order in a solar spectnmi. On JNIarch 13, 1908, the colours noted were (reckoning from the horizon upwards) pale blue, violet, orange, yellow, fading at the outer edge with i^ale greenish blue. On April 7, at 7 a.m., the colours distinguished were slaty blue, purple, pink, red, orange, yellow, greenish-blue. Xo doubt these colours were affected by atmospheric conditions, and by the colour of clouds in the background, for the arch could often be seen against clouds. Apparently the colours were not concentric bands, but those near the horizon formed arcs of larger circles than the upper ones. If not so the blue and purple bands would be verv' small, but they have really the greatest horizontal extension. Sometimes the reds and yellows did 372 OPTICS not appear to form arched bands like the lower colours, but were limited to an elliptical area, as indicated by dotted lines in the diagram. On October 2 the blue zone rose to 15° above the horizon, and the purple zone to 25°. In all cases the whole arch, from the summit to the horizon, was filled with bands of colour, thereby differing from rainbows and halos. Simultaneously with the appearance of a prismatic arch, opposite to the sun there were frequently to be seen, over the sun's position, brilliant sunset colours, which also formed an arch in which the colours were in inverse order to those of the prismatic arch, ranging from orange at the horizon, through yellow and green to blue. The bands were less distinct than in the prismatic arch, but the colours were much brighter. Tlie prismatic arch often occurred without tliis complementary display being visible. Though not confined to the Antarctic region this phenomenon appears to be exceptionally distinct and frequent there. Ice-blink The ice-blink of the Great Barrier, viewed from some little distance, was alwaj-s in the form of a low arch. On January' 27 and 28, 1908, we coasted the Barrier all day long, but out of sight of it. All the time the arched ice- blink accompanied us, unvarying except in height as we receded or apiDroached, and apparently always bounded by a true circular arc. When close in to the Barrier the white glare seemed to penetrate to a very hmited distance through the air, which was unaffected at a higher level. THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Mock Suns and Moons, &c. No illustrations are available of the more complicated displays of this kind observed on the western plateau. There are some sketches of the simpler occurrences wit- nessed at Cape Royds. JNIost commonly there were simply two bright patches equi-distant on each side of the sun or moon. These were not round mock suns and moons, as Lunar Halo, Bright Patches and Beau, June 12 frequently reported in the arctic regions, but were bits of a ring concentric with the sun or moon. Less frequently a similar patch was visible right over the sun or moon. Generally the ring connecting these patches could not be seen, but occasionally it was visible, and on June 12 there was a complete ring round the moon, accompanied by the three bright patches, and the lower part of the ring was between the observers and IVIount Erebus. All these parts, 374 OPTICS which are associated alike with sun and moon, are shown in the figure. There is an additional vertical beam shown. After the lateral sun-dogs the commonest phenomenon was tliis vertical beam of light, wliich rose from the sun or moon, and passed beyond the ring, if one were present. In the case of the sun the beam of light was yellow, that from the moon was often decidedly red. It could not readily be seen when the whole disc was in sight, but often Inverted Rings Round the Scn, Februaht 7, 1909 the yellow beam was seen rising from behind a hill, the sun itself being entirely hidden. It could never be traced below the sun or moon, and we have no notes of a hori- zontal beam of the same kind. A complete halo round the sun or moon was usually of uniform brightness, without brighter spots or straight beams. On February 7, 1909, there were seen portions of convex towards the sun. The one over the 375 three rings THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC sun was nearly in the zenith, and more than an eigth part of the circle was visible. The lateral ones were quite short, and like the ordinary sun-dogs, but the centres of the circles away from the sun. Tliis display is here figured. The iridescent colours of these sun-dogs were not disposed in broad bands as in the rainbow, but in a succession of minute coloured streaks, each repeating all the colours, and concentric with the whole ring. Rainbow On December 22 the only rainbow was seen, that is to say there was a bow in the sky opposite to the sun, and rather less than a semicircle. It was visible from 10.30 P.M. to near mid-night, and was therefore approximately in the north. It was like a moon rainbow in the faintness of the colours. It looked simply like a lighter streak amid the slight haze wliich prevailed. Some of those who saw it could distinguish a faint red band on the outer side of the bow, others could only distinguish a pale yellow and a paler green towards the outside. There was a deep band on the inside, of pale bluish or purple. It appeared quite near, coming down in front of hills which were less than a quarter of a mile away. The essential difference be- tween such a bow as this, and the prismatic arch seen at sunrise and sunset, is that it is a band of narrow limits, while the spectrum of the other extends from the top of the arch down to the horizon. iRroEscENT Clouds The sketch is intended to show the bands of colour (vivid purple, orange, green, &c.) on the margins of the cloud, and the central patch. Each cloud has a broad 376 OPTICS central tract of deep clear blue, which looks exactly like a bit of ordinaiy blue sky, seen tlirough a gap in the cloud. A great bank of grey stratus passing behind the wisps of illuminated cloud, proved that there was no blue sky present. The colours of the iridescent clouds were brighter than in any of the other phenomena of the same class, such as the prismatic sunrises and sunsets. They were brighter than any rainbow and only to be compared with the spectrum of sunlight shown by a glass prism. Iridescent Clouds, August 22 Earth Shadows The name is that used by Captain Scott, though per- haps their appearance may be better suggested if they were called aerial shadows. These shadows appear to be generally from mountain peaks, but their source is often hidden. They most commonly take the form of straight 377 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Eabth Shadows, April 12 bands projected from the mountain into the clear atmo- sphere (their visibility in wliich may be associated with CtJRVED Line Joining Erebus Summit and its shadow on the Western Mountains, April 12 the presence of invisible particles of ice). These bands are in the beginning sufficiently darker than the sky to be called shadows, but they fade out upwards till there 378 OPTICS remains merely a fine line which cannot be called either lighter or darker than the sky. The figure shows one of the first of these shadows noticed on the western mountains, April 12, 1908. Two bands rose up at different angles. As the sun went round the band on the left became more nearly horizontal, the other went steeper, keeping the same relation to one Eartb Shadows, Octobeb 15 another. The hne on the left could be traced \\-ithout interruption to the summit of Erebus as shown in the next figure, that on the right died out altogether. The line on the left was curved, but the fact was not remarked upon at the time. Shadows feom Moxjnt Erebus The most remarkable " shadows " were those from Erebus. As early as April 12, 1908, we noticed that the 379 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC two shadows rising from JSlount Lister joined the ordinary shadow of Erebus cast upon the foot-hills of Lister. There was at that time no suggestion made as to the nature of these shadows, and it was not till later detected that some of them were not straight. On September 2 the curious curved " shadow " was first noticed, and was afterwards observed frequently. Earth SHAnowe, September 17 To illustrate this remarkable " shadow " it is necessary to make a diagram in which perspective is everj'Avhere violated. When looldng at the shadow on IMount Lister, Erebus was almost behind us, and the whole curve could only be seen by turning the head. In the picture both mountains are sho^Ti, Erebus on the left, Ijister on the right. The shadow of Erebus falls up on Lister, and the curved line joins them, broaden- ing out near each end. In the foreground is outlined 380 * A Photooraph of thk Ai'rora. Adstrvlis. The Lights in the Sky indicate the Position OF the Streamers OPTICS Flagstaff Point, Cape Royds, near which the observer stood. While the broad ends of these curved " shadows " are appreciably darker than the sky, the central portion is different. It is an exceedingly fine line, neither lighter nor darker than the sky above and below, yet perfectly well defined. In some instances the darker ends have a bright line outside, and a blue zone inside, which broadens at the ends. Usually the observer was in the shadow of Erebus when these effects were seen, but similar shadows could be detected from the outside, as on September 29, when a curved shadow crossed the Ferrar Glacier, low down, the sun being in the south-east. On the same day the curved shadow from Erebus was measured, 30° above the horizon (to the north). On this occasion it did not reach to the mountains, but ended on the sea ice. The two previous figures show shadows from Erebus. The following one shows three peaks of tlie western mountains, with shadows projected from them, the sun being behind them. Almost as puzzhng as the curved " shadows " are those instances when several of the shadows diverge from one point as shown in the figure below. On this occasion the sun was behind the observer. THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC MAGNETIC OBSERVATIONS THE MAGNETIC POLE AND THE AURORA Notes by DOUGLAS MAWSON, B.Sc, B.E. There are two* localities where the lines of magnetic force stand perpendicular to the earth's surface. One of these is situated in the Northern Hemisphere to the north- west of Hudson Bay and is called the North ^lagnetic Pole; the other, in the Southern Hemisphere, in the north- ern part of South Victoria Land, is known as the South Magnetic Pole. The lines of magnetic force are imaginary lines passing through any place in the direction along which a freely suspended magnet will align itself. In the vicinity of the magnetic poles such a magnet stands vertically and at intermediate positions assumes an angle intermediate be- tween a vertical and a horizontal position. The south- seeking end of the magnet dips do^^Tlwards and is attracted towards the South jNIagnetic Pole in the Southern Hemi- sj^here, whilst in the Northern Hemisphere it is the north- seeking end of the magnet which dips. JNIagnets mounted as compasses are balanced on a vertical pivot and consequently they are free to swing in a horizontal circle only. They are controlled by the horizontal components of the earth's magnetic force at the spot where any obsei-vations is made and consequently, if used at the magnetic poles, where the whole of the magnetic force is vertical, they are unaffected and useless. * Observations of dip in the Northern Hemisphere indicate the existence of two magnetic poles of unequal strength. The stronger of these is regarded as the North Magnetic Pole, the other is situated in Siberia and is generally referred to as the Asiatic focus. 382 MAGNETISM The dip circle is the instrument used for measuring the vertical component of magnetic force, and consequently it is a very important instrument in the polar regions. It consists of a magnetised needle swinging on a horizontal axis, and the readings are taken in degrees from the vertical. The magnetic poles, or ends of the magnetic axis of the earth, do not bear any necessary relation to the geographical poles, which are the extremities of the rota- tion axis of the earth. They are not diametral, but are unsymmetricaUy placed. In this connection one authority says : " In natural magnets the points at which attraction takes place, otherwise called poles, are generally unsym- metricaUy placed and depend entirely on the internal structure of the magnet as well as on the irregularities of its surface." The magnetic poles are not fixed spots but are con- stantly travelling onward, executing an unkno^Ti path and apparently completing a cycle in a period of many hundreds of years. Besides tliis onward movement of a few miles per year, there is a lesser daily oscillation. The North Magnetic Pole was reached in 1831 by Sir James Clark Ross, who afterwards visited the Antarctic in the hope of securing the double event, but he was successful only in locating the South Magnetic Pole by observations made on his sliip at a distance. In the interval between 1841, when these observations were made, and 1902, when the Discovery expedition again located the South ^Nlag- netic Pole, it had moved about two hundred geographical miles to the eastward. Observations of magnetic declination and dip were taken at intervals along the route to the South ^Magnetic Pole. Those taken on the coast, when compared with values determined by the Discovery expedition, indicate that the magnetic pole has, in the interval, moved in a 383 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC northerly and westerly direction. This fact was further ascertained by actually sledging inland f I'oni the Drygalski Barrier, following as nearly as possible the magnetic meridian, until the dip readings showed approximate verticality. Here the flag was hoisted. The determination of the exact centre of the magnetic polar area could not be made on the spot, as it would involve a large number of readings taken at positions surrounding the Pole. The execution of such observations under conditions of such low temperature and prevalent high winds is a matter of very great difficulty, and when it is borne in mind that many days would be necessary for the operations, the impossibility of such a course for sledging-parties such as ours is obvious. The Aurora Australis The aurora was first observed during the evening of March 26, 1908. Earlier in the season the daylight over- powered the light of the aurora, and therefore observa- tions were not possible. After October 4, 1908, hkewise, observations were not possible on account of the continu- ous daylight. Nevertheless, the aurora was probably in the heavens during the summer-time, as observations made b}" the ship's party in lower latitudes showed. As the Nimrod travelled north into regions where dark nights prevailed, auroral displays were observed both in the latter part of February 1908 and early in IMarch 1909. Between the dates of JNIarch 26 and October 4 scarcely twenty- four hours passed without some display. At times the auroral lights were present in the heavens for many days together, though of course at full moon the brilliancy of the hght obscured the more delicate auroral effects. Cer- tain hours of the day were attended by greater displays than others. About half-past seven in the evening' a 384 MAGNETISM brilliant display was to be expected and this continued with little reduction in intensity throughout the evening hours. The effect increased in brilliancy at about four o'clock in the morning, and died away towards 7 a.m. At one period of the year we experienced bright aurorEe frequently about three o'clock in the afternoon. Very little colour was observed in connection with these auror^e other than the usual yellowish-green tints, but at some times the luminosity showed yellower than at others. In some of the most brilUant displays tlie curtains were bordered below by a narrow zone of deep crimson colour. The displays were usually in the form of arches, which showed minor convolutions and appeared as beautifully draped curtains. These were sharply defined below but merged insensibly into the heavens above; their depth appears to have been many thousands of feet. Besides the curtain aurorje, diffused nebulous lights were fre- quently observed, often in connection with clouds. On still cold evenings a faintly luminous mist enveloped Ross Island, and tliis seemed to have some connection with the nebulous aurorje. In fact, very early in the winter a nebulous type of aurora was seen on one occasion to descend between us and the slopes of Erebus, apparently only about five or six thousand feet in height above us. When at their greatest brilliancy the displays were powerful enough to throw shadows but were yet insuffi- ciently strong to allow of their being photographed. We obtained impressions on photographic plates after about ten minutes' exposure, but as the curtains had altered their shape during the interval, the result was of httle value. With regard to the curtain aurors, when once outhned in the sky they experienced spasmodic kindling, the waves of light travelling usually in one definite direction. This has the effect of producing to the eye the appearance of Vol. U.— 25 385 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC ripples of luminescence traversing the curtain at a very rapid rate. The curtains, as a whole, slowly drift in a determined direction, generally towards the magnetic pole. The displays, however, were very seldom obser\ed in that part of the heavens situated towards the magnetic pole; they usually appeared in the north, through east to south. The arches sometimes travelled towards us from the south- east. Observations of electric potential showed nothing remarkable during displays of the aurora. I am informed by the Chief of the Telegraph Depart- ment of South Austraha that during September 12, 1908, the telegraph lines, both north and south and east and west across Australia, were much affected by earth cur- rents. At the same time we experienced considerable auroral displays. Since then, on May 14 and 15, 1909, the same authority reports further disturbed earth cur- rents, and it is interesting to note that brilliant auroral displays were observed in the Southern Indian Ocean by a passing steamer. NOTES ON THE AURORA AUSTRALIS By JAMES MURRAY The different forms exhibited by the aurora could be much better understood from a few pictures than from much description. To depict the delicate and evanescent beams of auroral light by harsh black lines is verj'^ un- satisfactory, but as some illustration is desirable, these sketches attempt to give the general forms. Marston's coloured picture gives a good idea of a curtain aurora. Curtain Aurora. — At Cape Royds this was by far the commonest type of aurora. It consists of broad ribbon-like bands made up of transverse parallel fibres. It hangs in folds like those assumed by heavy drapery, and looks very like the fringe of separate threads bordering 386 MAGNETISM a curtain. The folds and convolutions of these curtains are sometimes verj' complicated, as shown in the figure. The jjicture shows part of a magnificent display of curtain aurora, which was seen on April 28, 1908. The whole sky was covered by a series of curtains, from horizon to zenith, Avith very little blank space. The curtains were much folded and convoluted. Similar displays occurred on May 24, and on several other occasions. Part of Cuhtain Display, April 28 Sometimes a single curtain formed a complete band, more or less folded, which usually encircled the summit of IMount Erebus at some distance. Such a band is shown in the figure of the aurora of ISIay 26. Similar complete rings occurred which did not go behind the mountain. Curtains sometimes had the beams separated, or little groups of beams separated from one another. These were 387 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC spoken of as disjointed curtains. Some curtains were not folded at all, but stretched across the sky as simple bands, which Avere sometimes called arches. An entirely different kind of arch could, however, be distinguished. AucH AuRORxV. — This consists of a series of bright patches, arranged in a large arc or circle, and of long tapering beams going upwards from each patch. Exam- ined closely there is a sharp distinction between the narrow Cl-utain' Band Circling Erebus, May 2G tapering beam, and the brighter expanded portion. The arch in its typical form is much less conmion than the cur- tain. The rays are often seen coming from beyond the horizon, or from behind hills, while the basal arc is hidden. Similar beams often rise far apart, but still apparently radiating from a centre. Others are unconnected, and incline at various angles. These form a transition to the searchlight type. 388 MAGNETISM The figure shows a typical arch, with a bright curtain beneath it, witnessed on June 19, 1908. Searchlight Aurora. — Long bright expanding beams suggest a resemblance to searchlights, not only by their form, but by the rapidity of theii* movements. They swing about in the same manner, and shoot out suddenly from the horizon or from a patch of nebulous aurora, and as suddenly disappear. They often accompany other Arch and Curtain, June 19 forms of aurora. Some searchlight beams are shown in the figure of the very peculiar aurora of JNIay 23, 1908. Nebulous Aurora. — A nebulous auroral haze is con- stantly associated with clouds, occurring on the upper sur- face and showing at the edges. Sometimes the nebulous light accompanied haze so thin that it would not be seen without the illumination, and in such cases it might be seen di'ifting along with the wind. Other Auror.(E. — ^AU the definite types of aurorse 389 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC readily change into other types. Curtains lose their form and become nebulous; the hazy border of a cloud gives out beams like an arch or searchlights; any type will suddenly concentrate into a single beam or into a shapeless patch. Some aurorge occurred which could not be classed with any of the types recognised, but they were not common enough to get special names. Two of the most striking auroree are figured. \ \ X \ \ ''iaiii™^^ Great Uea.m of Light, Mat 23. 1908 On JNIaj^ 23 at 11 a.m. a great broad beam of light appeared from behind a stratus cloud in the west from Cape Royds, and grew upwards till it reached the zenith. It was at first accompanied bj^ some searchlight beams (shown inclined to the right) which soon disappeared. The broad beam illuminated some strips of cirrus in its path, which were scarcely visible to right and left of it. It swimg slowly down to the left, the lower end keep- ing in the same apparent position, till it made an angle of 390 MAGNETISM forty-five degrees with the horizon, when it faded. The whole display lasted twenty minutes. The dotted line in the fignre shows the last position of the beam. It differed from the ordinary searchlights in the great breadth and parallel sides of the beam as well as in its steady motion. This was one of the few auroree somewhat in the direc- tion of the Magnetic Pole, but it did not appear to be very distant, to judge from its illumination of cirrus clouds at a great height. Aurora ON August 31 On August 31 was seen the aurora figured below. Almost in the zenith there was a large tract of sigmoid shape. From near tliis there diverged very long faint streamers over the whole quarter of the sky from east to north. Though pretty close together the streamers were not joined as in a curtain, and were of unequal lengths. On several other occasions similar displays, converging on 391 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC bright tracts in the zenith were seen, which approached the corona type of aurora, as figured by Peters. i\Io^•EJIE^'TS OF AuROKA. — Is there any general direc- tion in wliich aurorjB move, or in which the shimmer or kindhng passes along the curtains, &c. ? Some notes bear- ing on the question are available. Those aurora associated with clouds must travel simply with the wind. Auroree not connected with clouds may have their motions determined by other causes. May 24. — An even arch appeared, trending from north-west to south-east, about 30° above the south-west horizon. The arch travelled towards the north-east till it reached the zenith, and passed 20° beyond it. One end now rested on ISIount Erebus, when the motion ceased and the arch faded. The motion was slow and intermittent. June 30. — A disjointed curtain over the summit of Erebus travelled southward, and at length concentrated in one reddish beam. June 4, 8.30 p.m. — An auroral glow appeared in the west. A curtain grew east from it to Erebus. A vivid green shimmer passed slowly along from west to east, and faded just over Erebus. Earlier on the same day Professor David reported an arch trending from north to south, and a shimmer passing along it from north to south. August 26, 6.15 P.M. — A typical curtain low down over Erebus, its ends bearing north-east and south-east. Waves of brighter light passed along it from north to south. TIDES AND CURRENTS By JAMES MURRAY The coast-line, always encumbered by the ice-foot, would render littoral tide observations in Antarctica difficult or impossible. Fortunately the fast ice, filling all 392 Thk -TinF CiAfCK MURRA-Y AND MaW^OX AT A HOLE MAOK IN ONE OF TRE FROZEN' LAKES TIDES AND CURRENTS confined waters during the winter and spring months, gives a unique opportunity for such obsei-vations, im- possible in open waters. The ice-surface affords a plat- form on which to erect any tide-obseming instiiiment, which, while rising and falling freely with the tides or other dishevelling agencies, is undisturbed by any lateral LOViu;r:':;.'''f'i!ii:!^:<'^;:ii«';''iii:!fi!K 'i.jii'!i.ii;/l A .'.lA niirroM Diagram showing the Principal Parts of the Tide-gauge W = the weights, the larger one as anchor, lying on the sea-bottom, the smaller one (the object of which is to keep the line taut at all times) on the free end of the line, below the lever ; L = the long bamboo lever for reducing the scale ; T = two legs of the bamboo tripod, supporting the pulley over which the wire passes ; D = the drum on which the record is made. The recording part of the apparatus is more complicated than the dia- gram indicates. It will be described in detail in the scientific publications. movements. By the combined efforts of most of the scientific staff, and the skilful hands of our engineer. Day, a form of tide-recording instnmient was de^^sed and made. It was set up on the ice of Backdoor Bay, about one hundred yards from shore, by Dr. Mackay and Professor David. 393 m H s o a 9 o THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC The recording part of the instrument was a modified barograph. A box weighted with stones was put down through a hole in the ice as an anchor. The wire from tliis anchor was taken over a pulley hung from a tripod of bamboo poles. It was then attached to one end of a long lever of bamboo, which was weighed to keep the wire taut. By the arrangement of the lever the record of the tide movement was reduced to one twentieth and thus brought within the limits of the barograph drum. The parts above the ice are shown in the i)hotograph. The wire in passing through the ice is enclosed in a tube wliich is kept filled with oil, as used for the same purpose on the Discovery expedition. The instnmient worked well, and a continuous record was got for about three months interrupted only for half an hour weekly, when the papers were changed. At the end of that time the wire broke from the box at the bottom of the sea, and the tripod was blown dov\7i during a severe blizzard. The ice was then so thick that it was found impossible to cut a hole to put down another anchor. The tide record obtained on the barograph drum was a simple undulating curve with one maximum per day, attaining the greatest amplitude at full and new moon, and diminishing almost to nothing at the quarters, when shorter waves of less amplitude could be seen. When the record was analj^sed it was resolved into two undulations, the larger one having the period equal to the lunar day, the smaller one having a period of half a day. As one maximum per day of the lesser tide coincides with the maximum of the greater tide, its effect on the original record is to increase the apparent amplitude in that phase, wliile the other maximum of the lesser tide causes a flattening in the opposite phase of the greater one. This figure shows the results of an analysis of the same portion of tide-record sho%vn in the previous figure. 396 TIDES AND CURRENTS The upper curve is the larger side, and shows how it diminishes at the first and third quarters (end of line to the left) and increases at new and full (to right). The lower curve is the smaller tide, and it is almost uniform through all phases of the moon, though it is not always so uniform as in the portion figured. Seiches. — The tide record shows what is known as a " festoonmg," due to lesser undulations. These are seen chiefly during blizzards, but they are known to occur also in cahns. The small scale on which the record is made prevents any analysis of these undulations, but they were more clearly seen on the first tide-measuring instrument which we used. Before the recording tide-guage was de- vised Dr. Mackay built an instrument for measuring tides. In this there was simply a weight shding on an inclined plane which was marked as a scale. A pencil working in a straight hne gave the amount of the tides, but to get the time of the different phases it had to be observed at regular intervals. It was noticed that over and above the steady rise and fall of the tide, the weight was constantly rising and falling at intervals of one or a few minutes, and sometimes to the extent of four inches or more. It would have been possible to plot a detailed curve of these oscillations by observing at intervals of half or quarter minutes, but the cold was too great to permit imcovering the hands to record the observations. These oscillations are considered to be of the nature of seiche waves. Seiche was the name given to certain free oscilla- tions of enclosed bodies of water, fii'st observed in Swiss lakes by Professor Forel. Whatever the origin of the inequalities of level which must precede the oscillation, that continues as a seiche, diminishing till a state of rest is again reached. The period of the seiche (i.e., the time between the recurrences of the same phase of the oscillation) has a 397 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC definite relation to the dimensions of the hody of water. Seiches are best observed in enclosed basins of water, where they are not interfered with by tides, but oscillations of the same nature are of frequent occurrence in deep bays on the sea coast. These may be set up by the ordinary lunar tides, but the recurring tidal waves maj^ often obscure them. The seiches at Cape Royds might originate in this Avay. The Ross Sea is a deep bay of large size in wliich secondary oscillations might be expected, and JMcIMurdo Sound is a similar bay of small dimensions. The seiches obsen^ed, with periods of only a few minutes, and small amplitude, might be supposed to be readily set up by Avdnds. Currents in McMurdo Sound There were many indications of a permanent current setting south j^ast Cape Bird towards CajDe Royds. About half a mile north of Cape Royds, at Black Sand Beach, it was by some influence deflected, and left the land, passing away southward for some miles. The readings of the current indicator set up near Cape Royds seem to show that the deflecting influence is another current coming from the southward. The first indication of the southward setting current was a prett}^ one. On ]March 16, ^vhen the Sound was entirely open and no large ice was in sight, a strong southerly Annd was blowing. This brought a quantity of fine broken ice with it which drifted along the shore from Cape Royds northwards, forming a zone about one hundred yards wide. In the figure the dark shading shows the band of ice fragments, the small arrows the direction of the wind, and the long arrow the currents from the north which stopped the drift of the ice. At Black Sand Beach the band of ice left the shore and SAATing round and went away across the Sound in a 398 TIDES AND CURRENTS direction south of west. The north edge of the ice band was as clean as if it had stopped against a sohd, while the spindrift flying northward showed that therq was no change in the wind. The line followed by this band of ice fragments became approximately the hmit of the fast ice later on. After the permanent ice formed in the Sound, its edge extending in a line south-west from Black Sand MACMURDO z^' WixD-DRiVEX Ice Stopped by Ccrrext from North, March 16 Beach, every gale cleared the ice out from the sea north of tliis hne. When cahn weather returned, pack ice and bergs floated doA\Ti the east side of the Sound, till they struck the fast ice, when they began to roll along its edge away south-westvvard. The drift of the Nimrod from January 7 to 16, 1909, when held in the pack, extended our knowledge of this current, and proved a vast eddy from Cape Bird rouzid 399 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Kddt or Pack in McMurdo Souxd, Januauy. 1909 Variation in Direction of Current, June 30 to July 23, Indicated BY THE Arrow 400 TIDES AND CURRENTS by Cape Roj^ds and Granite Harbour, to the Nordensk- jold Barrier. The arrows indicate roughly the drift of the ice. The cross ( + ) marks the spot where the Nimrod was caught in the pack, and the other cross ( X ) about where she was released. The line below the arrows is the edge of the fast ice. Ctjrkext Indicator. — This was devised by Shackle- ton, and set up on the ice a short distance off Cape Royds. It was put in charge of Brocklehurst, who visited it several times a day when practicable, from June 30 to August 18, A\hen it was finally out of action. Only the earher readings are taken into account, as it is suspected that latterly the vane beneath the ice became encumbered by the growth of the ice, and the readings are therefore not so trustworthy. These readings bring out two things: firsts a current nearly at right angles to that coming from Cape Bird; secondly, an absence of any indication of tidal influence. From June 30 to July 25, the current was steadily be- tween north and west, and most frequently north-west. The arrows show the amoimt of variation in the direction. Vol. n.-26 METEOROLOGY A SUMMARY OF RESULTS By Professor T. W. EDGEWORTH DAVID, B.A., F.R.S., AND Lieutenant ADAMS, R.N.R., Meteorologist to the Expedition, 1907-1909 SYSTEMATIC meteorological observations were kept on the voyage of the Nimrod, commencing on Januar)' 1, 1908, from Port Lyttelton do\\7i to winter quarters at Cape Royds. These obsen^ations were taken hourly. On the return voyage from Ross Island to Port Lyttelton observations were taken during everj'- watch. On the return voyage of the Nimrod from Lj'ttelton to Ross Island, on her cruises in the Antarctic, and the return voyage to Lyttelton, meteorological observations were taken at intervals of four hours. At winter quarters, Cajie Royds, systematic observa- tions were taken by one of us (Lieutenant Adams) dur- ing the da}% from ]March to October 1908, observations at night being taken bj' whoever happened at the time to be night watchman. These observations Avere two hourly. From October 1908 till February 1909, the biologist, J. INIurray, who had previous experience of meteorological work, was in charge of the meteorological obsen'ations and records. Attempts were made to ascertain the amount of annual snowfall in the Antarctic in the neighbourhood of Ross Island. This task was, of course, beset with the 402 METEOROLOGY same difficulty which the meteorologists of all other Ant- arctic expeditions experienced, viz., that of distinguishing between fresh falling snow and old snow drifted through the air by blizzards. We did our best to make this dis- crimination, but the results can only be set down as emi^irical and provisional. Our general conclusion is, that at CajDc Royds the snowfall from Febinaaiy 1908 to February 1909 was equal to about dy^ in. of rain, IMackintosh, when on the Southern Supporting-party's expedition, in charge of Joyce, in Januaiy 1909, found as the result of excavations made at the old Depot A of the Discovery expedition near Minna Bluff, that the snow- fall there for the past six years had been equal to an annual rainfall of 7^1/2 in. During the whole time of our residence in the Ant- arctic, from February 1908, till this beginning of jNIarch 1909, no rain whatever fell. The snow usually came with a bhzzard. These blizzards blew from a general southerly direction; at Cape Roj^ds they were mostly from the south-east. It is clear that the snow brought by the blizzards is in part drift snow, in part new falling snow. On several occasions we noticed that, whereas in the earlier part of the blizzard the snow was largely redis- tributed old snow in the form of drift, towards the end of a blizzard fresh new falling snow would be deposited. As, at the time of the blizzai-d, the udnd was travelhng very rapidly from the south at the rate of perhaps sixty to seventy miles an hour, we argued that this new falling snow was probably produced by moisture carried by the upper currents. The temperature of the atmosphere in- variably increased considerably from the beginning of a blizzard towards its end. This rise was very marked, for whereas the initial temperature, at the beginning of a blizzard, would be perhaps minus 30° Fahr., at the end of a blizzard, after a lapse of possibly twenty-four to 403 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC thii'ty hours, the temperature would have risen to plus 12° or plus 15° Fahr. This rise in temperature may have been due to causes of wliich the more important are: First, the usual fohn effect, the temperature of the air being raised through compression as the air descends from higher levels to lower. This compression effect ought theoretically to make itself strongly felt at the atmospheric South Polar vortex. Secondly, the latent heat set free when aqueous vapour in the atmosphere is passing into the form of snow which, of course, tends to raise the atmospheric tempera- ture. It might also be suggested that as the atmospheric circulation during a blizzard is immensely accelerated, probably the upper winds under these conditions may transfer relatively warm air from tropical regions pole- wards. If tliis be so, it is quite possible that some of the snow wliich falls towards the close of a blizzard was formed out of the moisture generated in warmer climates. The Southern Party specially studied the question of whether much snow fell far south, and the Northern Party, who went to the South JNIagnetic Pole, also paid special attention to this point of whether the snowfall increased in proportion as one receded from the South Pole. As the result of the observations of the Southern Party it was clear that \\ithin ninety-seven geographical miles of the South Pole there Avere still very strong south- south-east winds, bringing with them a quantity of snow. During the time the Southern Party were on the plateau no falls of fresh snow were observed; but there was nothing to suggest that the armual snowfall was less than at winter quarters. Temperature. — ^The lowest temperature we ex- perienced was minus 57° Fahr., near Wliite Island on the Great Ice Barrier, on August 14, 1908. We may refer to 401 Cloud Spikvus abovk Mouxt Erebcs Cloud Spirai-s rs Cpper CrRRFSTs or Ara near ERKRrs METEOROLOGY Mr. JMurray's notes for a comparison of the temperatures observed by us and by other Antarctic expeditions. Winds. — These may be divided into surface winds and high-level winds. As regards surface winds, we found in Ross Sea that these were controlled to a great extent by the presence or absence of ice over Ross Sea. Once McJMurdo Sound and the Ross Sea to the north of it became firmly frozen over, we found that we enjoyed calmer weather conditions than we did when the sea was open. Evidently the presence of a large surface of comparatively warm water at plus 28° Fahr. acts as a disturbing factor in the local atmospheric circulation. The surface winds at our winter quarters were either gentle northerly winds, whose speed seldom exceeded twelve miles an hour, or gentle winds from the south-south-east or south-east. If these latter winds become strongly developed they pass over into a definite bhzzard. One of the rarest winds at Cape Royds was a north-westerly. On the southern journey it was noted that south-south- east winds predominated on the surface of the Great Barrier. These sometimes s\\Tjng round to between south- south-west and west-south-west. The Southern Party ex- perienced a violent south-south-east blizzard at a point just beyond latitude 88° South. At the furthest point south attained by them, latitude 88° 23', the sastrugi were large and high, and trended from south-south-east to north-north-west. There was much soft snow on this part of the plateau at an altitude of over 10,000 ft. On the journey of the Northern Party to the South ISIagnetic Pole it was found that the chief winds on the coast, as well as on the high plateau, are from south-south- west to west, ^^^th occasional blizzard winds from the south-south-east and south-east. Both the Northern and Southern Party kept specially careful records of the direc- 405 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC tion of the dominant sastrugi. JNIaps of these will be published in the jNIeteorological JMemoir. It is certain that a good deal of the westerly wind experienced by the Northern Party in their journe}- along the sea-ice near the coast was practically a land breeze. It used to spring up soon after midnight, and keep on blowing pretty freshly mitil about 10 a.m. on the following day. It was observed that occasionalh' in the neighbourhood of jNIount Nansen a breeze would spring up from the noi-th-east off Ross Sea, carrying dense cumulus clouds inland. HiGH-LEM3L ATMOSPHERIC CuRREXTS. — On January 14, 1908, ]\Iessrs. Leo. Cotton, Douglas JNIawson and T. W. Edgeworth David were able to get some observations of the direction and rate of movement and height of the upper wind current, in latitude 69° 53' South, longitude 179" 47' \Vest. We estimated that the mean height of the mackerel sky which seemed to be formed at the base of the anti-trade wind was on this occasion between 13,000 and 14,000 ft., and we determined that the rate of move- ment of the mackerel clouds Mas about twenty-miles per hour in a south-easterly direction. This does not mean necessarily, of course, that the upper wind was not moving at a still more rapid rate, but the figure may be looked upon as the minimum speed for that current. At Mount Erebus our winter quarters were situated in an exceptionally favoured position for observing the upper cuiTents of the atmosphere. Not onh' had we the great cone of Erebus to serve as a graduated scale against which we could read off the heights of the various air currents as portrayed by the movements of the clouds belonging to tliem, but we also had the magnificent steam column in the mountain itself, which by its swaying from side to side indicated exactly the direction of movement of the higher atmosphere. IMoreover, during violent eruptions Uke that of June 14, 1908, the steam column 406 Di'MB-HF-i.t. ri.orn AROVF Erkbtts METEOROLOGY rose to an altitude of over 20,000 ft. above sea-level. Under these cii-cumstances it penetrated far above the level of a current of air from the pole northwards, so that its summit came well within the sweej^ of the higher wind blowing in a southerly direction, the result being that the steam-cloud in this region was dragged over powerfully towards the south-east. On such occasions one usually saw evidence of two high-level currents, the one coming from a northerly direction, its under limit being about 15,000 ft. above sea-level; and the other, or middle cur- rent from a southerly quarter, usually blowing towards the east-north-east, meeting its upper limit at 15,000 ft. normally while its lower limit was between 6000 and 7000 ft. above sea-level. While these two currents were blow- ing strongly, there would frequently be a surface current blowing gently from the north. This would bring up very dense masses of cumulus cloud from off Ross Sea. The cumulus would drift up to the 6000 or 7000 ft. level on the north-west slopes of Erebus, and then the tops of the cumulus would be cut off by the lower edge of the northward flowing middle current. Wisps of fleecy cloud would be swept along to the east-north-east torn from the tops of these cumulus clouds by the middle current. The whole appearance is illustrated in the accompanjdng diagram. It is of especial interest to note the effects of blizzards on the direction of movement of the high-level currents, as well as on their altitude. As the result of our ascent of Erebus we ascertained that the whole of the snowfall lying within the rim of the second great crater, at an altitude of from 11,500 to over 12,000 ft., is strongly ridged with sastrugi, which trend from about west-south- west to east-north-east in the du'ection of the prevalent middle-air current. The sharp points of these sastrugi 407 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC are directed towards the west-south-west, the quarter from which of course the prevalent wnd blows. Our actual experience of a hea\y blizzard, at a level of over 5000 ft. on Erebus, as well as our subsequent observations of the height to wliich the blizzard wind ex- tended, showed that during blizzards the whole atmosphere from sea-level up to at least 11,000 ft. moves, near Cape Royds, from south-east to north-west, and the speed of movement is from forty up to over sixt}' miles an hour. - S' ►- UJ X Z -10- u s I If •IS' m-20 Ui 111 K O -25' o -30- HEIGHT IN FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL 5500" 8500'^ 10650° M300" 13300" ^s£ape Royds ' t 1 ' ( \ ; ; ; : ; \ ! . i i ; ^ N^ i \ \r\ i The Cttrve of Atmosphebic Temperatche from Cape Rotds to Summit of Erebus The day that we reached the summit of Erebus, JNIarch 10, 1908, we found ourselves at the level of over 13,000 ft. within the lower limit of the upper wind. Subsequent observations by us of the point in the steam-cloud over Erebus, where the bend took place at the junction of the lower limit of tliis current, with the top limit of the middle current, showed that after and during the blizzard the middle-air current, normally blowing from the west-south- west, is temporarily abolished, being absorbed by the immense outrushing air stream of the south-east blizzard. We noticed that usually in winter time, especially when a bhzzard was imi^ending, strong cloud radiants were 408 METEOROLOGY developed towards the north-west. These radiants were produced by the apparent convergence, due to perspective, of long belts of cirro-stratus clouds; they could be observed s\vinging round for several hours from north- west to true north, and even east of north. When this was the case a blizzard was certain to be impending. Un- fortunately, during a blizzard, the air was generally so thick with snow that we were unable to see the top of Erebus. At the end of a blizzard the air current over Erebus became suddenly reversed, the steam-cloud swinging round from the south to the north. After a time, following on the conclusion of a blizzard, a high- level current was seen to be floating the cirrus clouds from the south-east towards the north-west, and the steam of Erebus would stream out towards the north-west. We could not account for this high-level south-easterly cur- rent. It looked like a reversal of the usual upper wind, and it appears to be a fact new to meteorological science. As regards the sequence of events during a blizzard, they would seem to be as follows: First, there would be gentle northerly winds at Cape Royds for perhaps one or two days; temperatures would be low, and it would appear as though the air flowing south was coming to supply the void which otherwise would be caused by the contraction of the atmosphere near the pole. Then would follow two or three days of absolute calm, the temperature meanwhile continually falling. We may suggest hj-po- thetically this meant that a great mass of air near the pole was constantly becoming heavier and denser as the result of the increasing cold. Sooner or later, perhaps a week after the northerly wind ceased to blow, this heavy mass of cold air would seem to force a passage for itself equatorwards. It would commence rushing out as a south-easterly blizzard, and as soon as this rapid current was started, and even before it had 409 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC got to the latitude of Cape Royds, 77° 32' South, an acceleration of the ujiper cun-ent above it had already set in. This led to the curving of the upper current into a direction more or less parallel to meridians as it rushed in to take the place of the cold wind escaping from the neighbourhood of the pole. The increased speed of circu- lation of the upper current increased the normal fohn effect at the pole, and this, combined with the more rapid transfer of warm air from the north to the south by the medium of the upper current, together with the latent heat from the snow formed combined to raise the polar atmospheric temperature, and so temporarilj'^ to make that region a region of relatively low pressure instead of rel- atively high, that is, relatively, as compared with the normal atmospheric pressure there. As soon, however, as this warming of the polar air had become general con- ditions for a blizzard wind ceased, and a period of calm supervened. At the moment of the cessation of the wind, conceivably, a species of hydraulic ram effect made itself felt in the suddenly checked anti-trade wind current above, which led to the stoppage of that great air stream tem- porarily, and its resurging back equatorwards, thus pro- ducing a curious high-level current frequently seen by us after a blizzard in the neighbourhood of Erebus. To return from this theoretical digression to observed facts, an occasional precursor of the cessation of a blizzard was the veering of the wind from south-east through east-south-east to east. That these blizzard winds occasionally blow right across the Antarctic Circle, and reach the shores of Australasia, is indicated by the experience of the Nimrod. When she left Cape Royds on February 23, 1908, she left us in a light south-easterly wnd, the survival of a previous blizzard, and the following four days it was still blo^\ang a blizzard. Then, after a partial cessation of the 410 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC wind for two days more, the blizzard freshened again on [March 1, continuing to blow on March 2. The Nimrod experienced these south-easterly winds all the way back, from Cape Royds to Port Lyttelton in New Zealand, arriving at the latter port wtliin twelve and a half days after she left Cape Royds. It is, of course, premature as j'et to generalise on the result of these observations. It is hoped that when the jNIeteorological IMemoir is completed that the observations, especially on the movements of the higher atmosphere, will contribute to our knowledge of meteorological con- ditions and the laws which control them in the Southern Hemisphere. Additional Notes By JAMES MURRAY In regard to the relation of barometric pressure and temperature to wind-storms, the accompanying diagram shows the curves traced by the daily means of barometric pressure, wind, and air temperature. The curv^es are drawn to such scales as will make them readily comparable. The uppermost cun'e is that of the daily means of the barometric readings, the middle curve is the wind, and the lowest one is the temperature. The dates are marked at the top, and each vertical line represents an interval of one day. The period selected includes the whole of May and June 1908. The scales are marked vertically at the left-hand side, the barometer in inches and tenths, the wind in miles per hour ( from zero up to 40 ) , the tem- perature in degrees Fahrenheit (from j^lus 20° to minus 20°). The midwinter period is selected because at that time two features characteristic of the Antarctic chmate are best developed. The first is the absence of constant and definite correspondence between barometric movement 412 METEOROLOGY and wind; the second is the constant relation of tem- perature and wind. It is not meant that wind-storms never accompany or follow great changes of pressure, but that the relation often fails, and is not constant and rehable. Severe wind- storms may occur when the barometer is steady or shows only gentle movements, as in the first few days of ]\Iay 1908. On the other hand, and more commonly, very great rises and falls of the barometer may occur in compara- tively calm weather, as between June 1 and 12, in which period there was only a few hours of moderately fresh breeze on the 4th. June 19 to 22 is a more striking example, when a very rapid rise of barometer occurred, without anj^ decided wind-storm. But the wind-storms between JSIay 5 and 15 accompanied considerable fluctu- ations of the barometer. The relation of wind and temperature is sho^^Ti in the remarkable parallelism of the two cun^es. A wind-storm is almost invariably followed by a rise of temperature, as indicated by the dotted lines. The only exception in the period illustrated is the moderate storm of ]May 20 to 21, when there was no appreciable rise of temperature. Cold blizzards have been noted. The worst of all was that of July 25 to 27, when the daily means ranged from minus 22.0° to minus 29.0°, and as low as minus 35.0° was recorded. The rise of temperature during a blizzard amounted to as much as 32° on July 9, and even greater rises have been noted. The intimate relation between wind and temperature continues throughout the cold weather, but almost disap- pears in the summer months. The relation of wind to barometric pressure (possibly on account of the proximity of open sea) is also much more regular in the summer. 413 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Antarctic Temperatures Tlie accompanying diagram was drawn while in the south in order to make a comparison of the temperatures experienced by all the Antarctic expeditions (of which records, giving monthly means for a period of one year or more, were available). The results of plotting the temperature curves were so curious and interesting that the diagram is here reproduced. The months read from left to right, and the tempera- tures, in degrees Fahrenheit, from above downwards. The tAvo uppermost cun'es are Dr. Bruce's records {Scotia expedition) dot and dash — . — = his first year (1903), dots . . . . = his second year (190-i). The thin plain line = Borschgrevinck's record (1899) . (This curve is taken from JNIr. Armytage's book.) The short dashes = the Discover jj records for the first year (1902), the long dashes — = the second year (1903). The thick plain line gives the curve for our expedition which onl)' covers ten months of the year 1908. Dr. BiTJce's temperatures were recorded much further north than any of the others and outside the Antarctic Circle. They are much higher throughout except in the summer months at which season all the records approxi- mate pretty closely. The remarkable feature in these two series is the alternating of higher and lower temperatures in the t^vo years so that the two curves when plotted together make a regular chain. Borschgrevinck's curve is much higher than those of the Discovery except in July and September which were equalled in the second year of the Discovery. The Discovery curves for the two years show a peculiarity similar to those of the Scotia. The second year was colder throughout, till October, after which it 414 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC was warmer. The two curves diverge in April, meet in ]\Iay and June, diverge in July, meet in August, diverge in September, meet and cross in October. Though there is only one crossing the chain is ahnost as distinct as in the Scotia records. Our curve for 1908 is first noticeable for the striking paralleUsm from ]March till August, with the Discovery second year. It lies between the two Discovery curves in JMarch and April, rises greatly in JNIay and equals Borschgrevinck's. In June it is well above Borschgrev- inck's, making the least cold June kno^v'n in Victoria Land. From August to November it is again the warmest season known in this region. In all the records for Victoria Land the trough form of the cun'es is very noticeable. The summer, as measured by temiDcrature, is very short: the approximate maximum is maintained only for two months (December and January), and the curve falls away steeply and steadily on each side. The temperature falls rapidly till the approximate winter mean is reached, after which it fluctuates about this mean for from four to six months, before the next summer's rise sets in. The -rtinter mean was reached approximately as early as April in the second year of the Discovery (1903) , and in 1908. In the Discovery first year (1902) it was reached in INIay, and in 1899 (Borschgrevinck) as late as June. The rise began in all cases in September, except in the second year of the Discovery (1903) , when it was a month later. In Dr. Bruce's records the summer is longer, lasting for five or six months, and the winter is much less marked, as far as temperature goes. The difference between the highest monthly mean for summer and the lowest for winter is only about 26° (Fahr.). In 1908 the difference was 47°. 416 METEOROLOGY An important characteristic of Antarctica is the cold summers, with the monthly mean rarely above freezing- point. The diagram brings out the close approximation (within 10') of all the means recorded for December and January, from regions so far apart in latitude as the wintering stations of the Discovery and the Scotia. NOTE ON THERMOMETERS FOR POLAR WORK By JAMES MURRAY For work in regions where temperatures below the freezmg point of mercury are to be expected it is custom- arj'^ to trust entirely to spirit thermometers. We had reason to regret doing so. Whatever may be their be- haviour in temperate climates, in polar regions the error of the spirit thermometers is apt to fluctuate in a puzzling and irritating manner, especially in thermometers which have to be carried about from place to place. For example, several thermometers were tested in the sea in winter, when the temperature was just a small fraction above the freezing-point of sea water. They showed errors varying from one or two to many degrees. When tested immediately afterwards in water from melt- ing fresh-water ice, they read quite correctly, that is to say, they showed errors no greater than those indicated on the Kew certificates. To make corrections in the readings only for the cer- tified error would be most misleading. To attempt to restore the thermometers by getting the displaced spirit back into the colurmi before beginning a series of obser- vations was of no avail, as the theiinometers might go WTong at any moment. The only means of giving the readings of spirit ther- voi. n.— 27 417 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC niometers any credibility at all was to test them constantly in comparison with a mercury thermometer, which was itself tested occasionally in melting fresh-water ice. Fortunately we had half a dozen mercury thermometers, taken for other than meteorological purposes. Unfortu- nately they were only graduated down to zero (Fahr.). Had the scale gone down to near the freezing-point of mercury, thej^ might have sei-\'ed for all our observations. Whenever a series of temperatures (as in a shaft sunk through the ice) came partly below and partly above zero (Fahr.), the whole series was taken with spirit ther- mometer, but eveiy one above zero was repeated with a mercury thermometer, and the whole series corrected in correspondence with its readings. This practice at least minimised the chance of change in the error of the spirit thermometer, bj^ allowing the least possible time for it. In the meteorological screen a mercury thermometer was hung beside the spirit one used for the dry-bulb read- ings. No variation was ever detected in this one, which was undisturbed. The maximum and minimum frequently went wrong, and had to be corrected by observing the position at which they rested when shaken down. Greely remarks on the unreliability of spirit ther- mometers. It is desirable for polar expeditions to be provided with mercury thermometers graduated down as low as possible. We have no reason to believe that our thermometers were not of excellent quality. The defect is inherent and largely due to climate. CLOUD FORMS Bt JAMES MURRAY Without treating them from the meteorological stand- point, some notes and sketches of the more striking forms of cloud associated with INIount Erebus may be of interest. 418 METEOROLOGY Stratified Cloud on Erebus, October 13 Spirax Cloud, Jult 23 419 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC This great isolated cone, standing between the open sea and the boundless frozen plain, had an immense effect on the moisture-laden currents of air, and gave rise to remarkable forms of clouds which we saw nowhere else. The Laminated Cloud. — ]Most characteristic of all the clouds of Erebus was the great bank of laminated cloud, resting on one flank or other of the mountain, and reaching to the summit and above it, often to the height Spiral Cloud, September 25 of many thousands of feet. The familiar shape of this cloud was given when two gentle currents of air going in opposite directions, met at some height above the crater. The lower current carried the cloud a little bit one way, then it was carried back in the opposite direction by the upper current, as shown in the illustration. The disposition of the clouds shown in this sketch is unusual, as there is a tliin stratified band (not the smoke- 420 METEOROLOGY cloud) trailing off to the south, while the great bank hangs on the north. Generally this great cloud rests on the north slope, but occasionally the position is reversed. Spiral Cloud. — A modification of the great cloud- bank, produced by the meeting of very gentle currents, resulted in the rolling up of the cloud into a spiral form. On July 23 a spiral was formed from a bank on the south side of the mountain, as figured below. The upper WOALE-BACKS, SEPTEMBER 10 current on this occasion was from the south. A similar spiral cloud is figured, right over the mountain, in the picture of saw-edged stratus, October 1. The most remarkable spiral cloud observed was that of September 25, 1908. The bank of cloud lay on the north flank. The upper current was from the south, as on July 23. Its action was so regular that the spiral could be traced for more than a complete turn. 421 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Wbale-back Clouds, Septeudeb 16 Umdulatb Stbips of Cloud, Jult 28 422 IVIETEOROLOGY Interlacing Clouds, Septeubeb Iti Saw-edged Stratus and other Clouds, October 1. 1908. 423 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Whale-back Clouds. — The most striking of all the cloud forms on Erebus were those to which we gave the name of whale-backs. They were small patches of cloud, isolated or two or three together, one over another, with very evenly rounded upper surfaces, the lower surfaces more indefinite, often rounded too. A very good develop- ment of them occured on September 16, 1908. The largest stratified group of them formed an object like a comet, the others were isolated. This display went through many changes, slowly and gradually. Two stages are figured. The first figure shows the clouds at an early stage, in which they appear imbricated in a characteristic manner, observed on many other occasions They were then strati- fied, showing generally three layers in each group. At a later stage, shown in the next figure, the whale- backs were isolated, except the one large comet-like mass. While usually evenly rounded, the curves were fre- quently reversed at the ends, as shown in the lower goup in the first figure. Whale-backs were usually seen after a blizzard, occa- sionally before one. During the blizzard the mountain was generally hidden, so that we could not tell if they were formed during the storm. Undulate Clouds. — Narrow lines of cloud were often arranged in regular or irregular undulations. The first figure shows fairly regular undulations, over the sum- mit of Erebus, on July 28, 1908. The second figure shows a modification of this form, in which the wisps of cloud are intricately interlaced. This occurred on the south side of Erebus, on September 16, at the same time as well-developed whale-backs on the north side. Sometimes, especially after storms, a great variety of clouds were piled up over and around Erebus, including whale-backs, cumulus undulate clouds, with perhaps a spiral cloud over all. 424 METEOROLOGY One such accumulation is figured, in which there were, cumulus, just below the summit, two banks of stratus at different levels, the upper one with deeply serrated edge, and a spiral cloud. Over all was a Noah's Ark of cirro- stratus, not figured, and beyond the influence of Erebus. Saw-edged stratus was seen on one or two other occasions, but was not common. REPORT ON THE HEALTH OF THE EXPEDITION By Dr. ERIC MARSHALL, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. T^HE fact that there was no case of scurvy during the •*• period of the expedition's residence in the Antarctic may be attributed to tlie fact that the utmost care had been taken in provisioning the expedition with foods of the best quahty obtainable, in that variety which is essential under polar conditions. Bottled and preserved fruits were used liberally during the long winter, and when the spring ap- proached and the preparations for the spring and summer sledging involved an increasing amount of physical work, the allowance of fresh meat (penguin, seal and mutton) was increased. When the spring depot party started south on September 22, 1908, all the members of the expe- dition had been on a liberal allowance of fresh meat for a month. During the whole winter all the men took daily exercise in the open air, this routine being interrupted only by the most severe blizzards. There was no case of sickness. We found, in the matter of clothing, that heav\- pilot- cloth garments and furs were not essential provided that wind-proof suits were worn, and that the body temperature was maintained by a full diet. On the southern journey, when the rations had been reduced to the minimum, and our clothing was worn and torn, so that it no longer kept out the biting wind, our temperatures were subnormal. At the end of a long day's march and in the face of a blizzard wind, when our altitude was about ten thousand 426 MEDICAL REPORT feet, our temperatures were on several occasions reduced to 94° Fahr., rising to 97° or 98° after we had eaten a hot though scanty meal. Frost-bites were more frequent at these times, and it was more difficult to restore the part attacked. It is an interesting fact that the members of the expe- dition did not suffer from colds during their stay in the Antarctic save in August 1908, when a bale of new cloth- ing was opened in the hut, and all the men were at once seized with acute nasal catarrh. The sj^mptoms were quickly dispelled when we took exercise in the open, and those who remained in the hut recovered after two or three days. On the return of the expedition to New Zealand the Nimrod laid up for one day at the mouth of Lord's river, Stewart's Island, and a number of the staff went ashore to bathe and fish, &c. All who went ashore suffered con- siderably from the inflammation caused by the bites of sand flies, yet it was only those members, who, on arrival at Lyttelton and Christchurch, New Zealand, who were not immediately seized with colds. The expedition was not entirely free from accidents, for on arrival at the ice in January 1909, A. L. A. jNIack- intosh was struck in the right eye by a hook while unload- ing cargo. The accident necessitated the immediate re- moval of the eye. His recovery was extremely satisfac- tory, so that on the fourth day he was able to get about. This, however, prevented him from remaining with the shore staff, as it was deemed necessary that he should re- turn to Australia. During the ascent of Mount Erebus, Brocklehurst, while wearing ski-boots, was frost-bitten in both feet, eight toes being affected. LTnder treatment seven re- covered, but the great toe of the left foot showed no signs of improvement, and ultimately, dry gangrene having set 427 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC in, I amputated the last joint a month after the accident. Recovery was slow owing to the hmited amount of healthy tissue for the posterior anterior flap. The ultimate result was satisfactory. B. Day, while tobogganing, fractured the base of the third metatarsal of his right foot. These accidents, together with a few septic fingers, were all that arose in the surgical line. Weights and measurements were taken regularly, but although shghtly on the increase during the winter, did not vary much from month to month, although one mem- ber has now well-marked linear albicantes on both upper arms as a memento of the adiposea of the south. During one time or another all the members of the Southern Party suffered more or less severely from dys- entery. Some of the pony meat was not wholesome, and as the supply of oil was small, it was either eaten raw or warmed to about 100° Fahr., with the result that we were unable to digest it. An acute enteritis resulted and pros- trated us from time to time. At tliis time we were almost entirely dependent on the pony meat, the starch food available being of the scantiest. A considerable quantity of Easton Syrup tabloids were used on the plateau and were found of assistance. Only on two or three occasions did any one suffer from snow-blindness, and on each occasion the snow goggles provided had not been worn. The deep amber glasses were a sufficient protection, as they cut out all the actinic rays, and had a very pleasing tone. A combined flash red and worked green glass, giv- ing an orange-brown tone, was also provided. The glasses themselves entirely eliminate the violet and ultra-violet rays and were an absolute protection against snow-blind- ness, but a more complete system of ventilation in the vul- canised fibre cylinders was required. 428 SOUTHERN JOURNEY DISTANCES ^r^HE following table gives detailed information regard- ■^ ing the distances travelled day by day on the southern journey. The geograpliical miles given in the first column cover the period from November 15, when the party left Depot A, until January 9, when the furthest south point was reached. The distances have been taken from the chart after all corrections have been made, and represent a direct line from camp to camp. In the second column will be found the noon latitudes, calculated from observations taken as opportunity offered. The observations have been checked by the officers of the Royal Geographical Society in London. The last column shows the distances travelled day by day according to sledge-meter, and these figures of course take into account all deviations and detours, so often rend- ered necessary by the condition of the surface. That the sledge-meter was reliable is proved by the fact that on the homeward journey we were able to calculate our positions without taking latitude observations. We took onlj-- one observation during the journey back to the coast (January 31, noon position 82° 58' South), and on that occasion the theodolite confirmed the record of the sledge-meter. Observations for variation were taken whenever we took a latitude observation, and the results will be found recorded on the chart. The latitude observations noted in this table were taken with a three-inch theodolite, which was earefuUy 429 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Date. Geographi- cal miles. Noon latitudes. statute mik'S. Yards. Relay. 1908 October 29 14 9 23 23 nomarch 12 16 9 nomarch 1 nomarch 14 15 15 15 15 15 12 17 16 15 15 15 15 15 17 17 17 16 16 15 14 12 19 11 20 10 5 10 880 October 30 (Hut Point) Oclobcr 31 (back to Royds) . . November 1 (to Hut Point) . November 2 (blizzard) November 3 ^ 880 300 500 1200 600 1550 1650 1550 100 1500 200 200 500 200 800 500 250 1650 680 1600 1700 1200 1500 900 150 200 1450 570 .... November 4 November 5 November 6 (blizzard) November 7 November 8 (blizzard) . . . . November 9 November 10 November 11 November 12 November 13 November 14 November 15 7.39 (from noon) 14.91 13.3 13 13.7 13.6 13.3 16 14 15.4 14.6 13.2 15.5 13.6 11.7 11 10.5 10.3 10.5 3.1 4 1 9 1 79°36'S. 82°12'S. ss'sg-s. 83''33'S. November 16 November 17 November 18 November 19 November 20 November 21 November 22 November 23 November 24 November 25 November 26 November 27 November 28 November 29 November 30 December 1 December 2 December 3 (Mount Hope) . December 4 December 5 4 December 6 3 December 7 430 SOUTHERN JOURNEY Date. Geographi- cal miles. NOOD latitudes. Statute miles. Yards. 12 150 11 1450 11 860 8 900 3 500 5 7 880 13 200 13 1650 12 250 6 600 10 11 950 6 .... 4 13 11 250 10 650 14 480 14 930 14 450 12 600 4 100 11 11 900 10 450 11 1680 14 660 15 480 15 313 no inarch no march 18 704 from camp 18 704 back [ * 40 to camp 21 308 Relay. 1908 December 8 December 9 December 10 December 11 December 12 December 13 December 14 December 15 December 16 December 17 December 18 December 19 December 20 December 21 December 22 December 23 December 24 December 25 December 26 December 27 December 28 December 29 December 30 December 31 1909 January 1 January 2 January 3 January 4 January 5 January 6 January 7 (blizzard) January 8 (blizzard) January 9 January 10 7.7 9.8 9.8 7.2 3.1 4.5 8 11.5 12 9.1 3 7.4 10 7 7 6.2 9.2 9.2 11.4 12 11.7 10.1 3.7 8.5 9.7 9.1 12.6 12.2 13.4 13.2 16.5 84° 2' S. 84' 85' 53 19 'S. 86°59'S. 87">22'S. (88° T camp) 88°23'S. (furthest south) 6 1000 6 2 1 12 1 880 1 3 6 431 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Date. Geographi- cal miles. Noon latitudes. Statute miles. Yards. Relay. 1909 January 11 Januar)' 12 January 13 January 14 January 15 January 16 January 17 January 18 January 19 January 20 January 21 January 22 January 23 Januarj' 24 January 25 Januarj' 26 January 27 January 28 January 29 (blizzard) January 30 January 31 February February February February February February February February February February 10 Februarj' 11 Februarj' 12 February 13 February 14 February 15 February 16 February 17 Februarj- 18 Februaiy 19 Februarj- 20 1 2 3 4 (dysentery) 5 6 7 8 9 82' 58 19 14 IS 20 20 18 22 26 29 15 17 15 14 16 26 16 14 2 13 13 13 13 5 no inarch 8 10 12 12 14 20 16 14 12 11 12 13 19 15 14 14 1580 100 1560 1600 800 850 900 800 900 100 890 850 1400 900 900 880 900 300 1320 450 1400 440 200 400 440 432 SOUTHERN JOURNEY Date. Geographi cal miles. Noon latitudes. Statute miles. Yards. Relay. 1909. February 21 February 22 February 23 February 24 February 25 (blizzard) February 26 (left A. and M.) February 27 February 28 March 1 March 2 March 3 March 4 20 20 14 15 no march 24 39 63 30 out 33 back 800 500 adjusted before the start for the southern journey. An observation taken on the return journey, in February, when the position was known from bearings, showed that the instrument was correct. The observations were only taken with the theodohte "face left," but as the instrument was in good adjustment this was sufficient. On the outward journey the last latitude observation was taken in latitude 87° 22' South. The remainder of the distance marched towards the south was calculated by sledge-meter and dead reckoning. The accuracy of the sledge-meters used was proved by the fact that on the return journey we were able to pick up the depots without taking observations. The " slip " was ascertained by care- ful tests before the start of the journey. The chronometer watches taken were rated before leaving and on the return, and the error was only eight seconds. All bearing, angles and azimuths were taken with the theodolite. Variation was ascertained by means of a compass attached to the theodolite, and the steering compasses were checked accordingly. At noon each day 433 Vol. U.— 28 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC the prismatic compasses were placed in the true meridian, and checked against the theodolite compass and the steer- ing compasses. The total distance marched, from October 29 to March 4, as recorded on the sledge-meters, was 1755 miles, 209 yards statute, this including relay work and back marches. CONSUMPTION OF STORES AT WINTER QUARTERS Fifteen ]Mex Week ending July 27, 1908 LBS. Mutton 30 Seal meat 15 Penguins (six Adelies) 12 Bacon (one side) 30 Tinned fish 5 Tinned meat g Tinned soups 36 Tinned and dried vegetables jg Sugar 20 Syrup 6 Honey 5 Jam 15 Chocolate 4 Crystallised fruits g Dried fruits 2 Tinned and bottled fruit 40 Dried milk 56 Coffee 1 Tea 6 Oatmeal and Quaker Oats 6 Eggs (fresh and dried) 6 Butter 20 Suet (tinned) 6 Cocoa 2 Rice 4 Biscuits 10 Flour 56 Currants and raisins 8 433 435 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC Such articles as salt and pepper were issued as re- quired, and on special occasions there were extra dishes such as tinned roast reindeer, roast black cock, marrow pudding, lobscouse and fish-cakes. The amount of food consumed per man per day in this week was about 4.12 lb. appettDijc 0int THE NIMEODS HOMEWARD VOYAGE. IN SEARCH OF DOUBTFUL ISLANDS rpHE homeward voyage of the Nimrod, after the mem- -*■ bers of the shore-party had been landed at Port Lyt- telton, was made interesting by a search for some charted islands, the existence of which was doubtful. J. K. Davis, who had been first officer, was in command at this time, and he had under liim the members of the ship's staff, all the members of the shore-party proceeding from New Zealand by the ordinary passenger routes. The Nimrod went first to Sydney, where the naval authorities very generously assisted in effecting certain necessary repairs. The ap- pended report by Captain Davis deals with the voyage from that point. "Monte Video, July 8, 1909. " Leaving Sydney on May 8, I steered south on the 151st meridian against moderate southerly winds. On May 12, when the position was latitude 43" South, longi- tude 151° East, the wind came away fresh from the south- east, and as I did not consider that I was far enough to windward of Macquarie Island to allow me to stand east in that latitude, I stood west and decided to carry out your instructions regarding the Royal Company Island if the wind continued south-easterly. This was a fortunate decision, for the wind continued from the south and east for four days, so that on jMay 17 1 was only ninety-seven miles from the position of the islands as given on the chart. At noon, after ascertaining our position, I took a 437 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC sounding in 2430 fathoms. The bottom si)ecinien was lost through the wire parting while heaving in. On JNlay 18, at 2 P.M., in fine clear weather, we sailed over the posi- tion assigned to the Royal Company Island, with notliing in sight. I stood east till 4 p.m., and then south, but saw nothing to indicate the existence of land in the vicinity, " On ]May 24, when 190 miles off Macquarie Island, we encountered a heavy north-west gale, wliich the vessel weathered with very little damage, though deeply loaded. This was followed on the 25th by a heavy gale from the south-west, but at 11.45 p.m. of this day we sighted the island and managed to get to leeward of it till daylight, when the wind and sea were less violent. ]\Iy instruc- tions were to visit Macquarie Island for the purpose of making zoological and geological collections to connect those already obtained in the Antarctic with the life and rocks of Australia and New Zealand, and also of observ- ing whether any Antarctic birds or penguins migrated there in the winter months, as they (the penguins particu- larly) leave the far south when the sea freezes over in April, and do not return until the following sunmier; where they migrate to has so far not been discovered. We sighted the island on the night of ]May 26, and stood off till daylight, when we were soon able to make out its distinctive features. Approaching from the eastward one is at once stnick by the rugged boldness of the coast-line, which rises sheer out of the water to a height of nearly 1500 ft. in places. At the south-east extremity there is a reef of dangerous ragged rocks on which the sea breaks heavily, and as we got nearer we were able to see that the mountain slopes were green, and to trace the course of several waterfalls. A wide bay or rather curve in the coast-line forms the southern ancliorage called Lusitania 438 NIMROD'S VOYAGE Road; close inshore is a line of rocks, and it is tlirough a break in these rocks that the landing-place is reached. " At 10 A.M. we anchored in eight fathoms about a quarter of a mile from the shore. From the sliip we could see two huts situated on the lower ground at the foot of the hill. A large rookery of penguins and some sea elephants appeared the only life visible. A boat was soon lowered and sent ashore in charge of the cliief officer ; the party succeeded in landing through the heavy surf and the boat was hauled up into a bed of kelp. The men scattered to collect specimens, &c. They found the slopes of the hills covered with a long coarse grass. There are no trees or even shrubs on the island. A small river running down a valley formed by the hills made the low ground swampy. Of the two huts the larger was evidently a boiler-house for rendering down the blubber of the sea elephants, and the smaller was the one in which the sealers lived while engaged in this work during the season. Both wore a veiy neglected and forlorn appearance. The sea elephant, wliich is like a big seal and in some cases over thirty feet long, is an awkward, clumsy animal and appar- ently spends most of its time asleep in the long grass near the water. It has large teeth which somewhat resemble tusks, but although it appears very fierce is not dangerous. The penguins, of Avhich there were a great number, were of the King genus, and they keep up a continuous squeak- ing. The young birds were just fledged and were nearly ready to take to the water. " We remained at anchor here for the night and at day-break, which was not till eight o'clock, we steamed along the coast northwards. There was a fresh north- west wind, and it came down the hill-sides in violent gusts, called by the whalers ' willywaws,' raising a sheet of foam on the water. About six miles up the coast there is a 439 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC break in the hills at a place called Green Gorge, which is a wide valley running across the island. Further on we could make out Nugget Point, from which extends a reef of rocks for some distance seaward. As we drew nearer to this point we could make out two huts on the shore and also the Mreck of a vessel high and dry on the beach. Suddenly, to our surprise, a column of smoke rose from the smaller of the two huts. As we had heard noth- ing of any one hving on the island this was extraordinary. Presently with the glass we could make out the figure of a man standing at the door of the smaller of the two huts watching our approach. ^Ve came to an anchor, and the boat was lowered and headed for the shore. The man who had been watching us from the hut now walked down to the beach accompanied by two little dogs. There was a heavy surf, but our CiTisoe-like friend, after point- ing out the best landing-place, walked into the water and assisted in beaching the boat. Every one at once wanted to know what he was doing there, was he alone, how long had he been there, &c., and the following information was gathered in less time than it takes to write. Mr. W. JNIcKibbon had arrived at the island last JNIarch in a small vessel called the Jessie Nicoll, belonging to a company that has the lease of the island for the purposes of obtain- ing sea elephant and penguin oil. This vessel brings down a number of men to work on the island during the short season trying down blubber on shore, &:c. When the previous season was over and the ship filled with barrels of oil, instead of returning with the other men, our friend had elected to remain behind on the island for the winter by himself, and to collect oil for the next season. " The next day I went ashore myself; we were met by our friend of the day before who escorted me to his little 440 NIMROD'S VOYAGE hut, which was very warm and comfortable and scrupu- lously clean. It consisted of two rooms, both of which had fires ; one of them was used as a work-room and store, the other as a sleeping-place. I learnt, as I sat in front of a comfortable little fu'e, that JNIcKibbon Avas a native of Carrick-on- Shannon, and had been in the navy for twenty years; he was a typical sailor, clean-shaven, and despite of his fifty years of active hfe was as keen and alert as a boy. ' I never had an illness in my life,' he said when I asked him what would happen to him if he fell ill. He was nearly as surprised to see us as we were to see him. ' I thought at first it was the New Zealand Government light-house tender; then when you came closer I saw you were a wooden vessel and put you down as a sui"veying ship.' When he heard that we had just returned from the Antarctic he told us that he had been in the Arctic in the paddle frigate Valorus, which vessel took up stores for the expedition under Xares and JSIarkham. " We spent four days at Macquarie Island, and obtained a good collection of specimens. We left the island on May 30, and as soon as we got from under its lee encountered a fresh westerly gale with high seas. Running before this we passed over the charted position of Emerald Island at 8 p.m. on the 31st. It was a clear night, three days from full moon, and if there had been even low land in the A^cinity we should have seen it. I decided to stand on, as it was blowing hard, and a high westerlj' sea made soundings impracticable. On June 9 we arrived in the vicinity of the position assigned to the Nimrod Islands, and at 1.15 a.m., in fine clear weather, passed over tliis spot with nothing in sight. The weather here again was much against us, a very liigh sea, with fresh westerly wind and squally, and the barometer at 28.20. After steaming east sixteen miles from the posi- 441 THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC tion, it being now dark, I hove to and attempted to sound. This operation, being performed in a kind of bUzzard by lamplight, with the ship rolling heavilj' all the time, was not a great success. ^Ve slacked out 1140 fathoms but obtained no bottom, so hove in again as the wind was coming away in fierce squalls from the south-west. I found that we were setting fast to leeward, so decided to continue our voyage. " At noon on June 17 we were up by dead reckoning to the position of Dougherty Island, as given by Captain Dougherty, but as the weather was overcast could not be sure of our position. Captain Keates places the island in the same latitude tliirty-four miles further east. I there- fore continued eastward on the parallel over this position (by dead reckoning) . As it was now dark and the weather moderate, I stood back again to the westward, hoping to get sights at daylight and did so. Good star observations were confirmed at noon, when the island, according to Captain Dougherty's position, should have borne west distance four miles. No land was in sight from the mast- head in clear weather. I stood east again, and at 4 p.m., when darkness was just setting in, the island according to Captain Keates' position should have borne east four miles; nothing in sight. At 4.30 we passed over this position and continued eastward along the parallel of 59° 21' South, but saw no indication of land. It is just here that we met with ice during our passage, and I am inclined to think Dougherty Island has melted. The darkness was sixteen hours out of the twenty- four; it was, in fact, to quote from the ' Directory,' one long star- less desolate night, a perpetual gloom which the sun seems never to penetrate, and the conditions made a search of this kind more or less doubtful. Although I will not say these islands do not exist, I can with confidence say they 442 NIMROD'S VOYAGE do not exist in the locality laid down or anywhere near it. When in latitude 59° 31' South, longitude 107° West, we encountered north-easterly winds, which drove us into 61 J/2 ° South, where we met moderately warm weather and continual rain. As the sun had only an altitude of S"" at noon there was almost constant darkness. At 10.45 P.M. on June 27 we sighted the Diego Ramirez Island right ahead at a distance of fourteen miles. We made an extremely good landfall, and this satisfied me that our clironometers, despite the changes of temi^erature to wliich they had been subjected, were rehable. It was a cloudy moonhght night, and the fact that we saw these islands, or rather rocks, for the highest point is only 587 ft. above sea-level, so far off convinces me that if the other islands had existed anywhere near the localities laid down for them we could not have failed to see them." The Nimrod touched at ]Monte Video and arrived at Falmouth on August 26. Four days later she was berthed in the Thames, thus comjDleting the most adventurous cruise of her eventful career. She had been away from the Thames for nearly twenty-five months. ^\ COMPASS CARD 3 COMPASS CARD TIDE GAUGE appcnMr Cen 2540 4 8 490 6 7 18'il 6 11 5161 3 3 ESTIMATED COST OF THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION 1907 UP TO AUGUST, 1909 £, s. d. £ a. d. Purchase price of Nimrod 5000 Cost of improvements, alterations, and repairs in drj- dock, London 2550 Cost of improvements, alterations, additions and repairs at Lyttelton, New Zealand 740 19 9 Cost of repairs at Lyttelton, New Zealand, after her return from the Antarctic on her first voyage when she was damaged during heavy weather 957 3 3 9248 3 Equipment for ship, engine, carpenters, deck and galley stores, &c Relief equipment ship Food-supplies, ship Wages: captain's, officers', and crew of ship Coal account for ship at London, Torquay, St. Vincent, Cape Town, Lyttelton, New Zealand (three sup- plies) and Monte Video 1520 8 8 General expenses of ship, including labour, pilotage, shipbrokers' charges, &c Insurance on ship, &c Equipment shore-party for sixteen men for two years Relief equipment shore-party Food-supplies shore-party, sixteen men for two years Relief food-supplies for whole expedition, forty men for one year Salaries shore-party Cost of fifteen ilanchurian ponies, including purchase price, freight from China to New Zealand, harness, two years' forage, &c Cost of nine Esquimau dogs and food Interest account at bank on guarantees, &c., and bank charges Passage of shore-party and manager of expedition to New Zealand and back Travelling expenses General expenses: manager's salary, office rent, tele- grams, postages, typewriting correspondence, exhibition of equipment, wages district messenger- boy, telephone, rent, &c., &c 1484 19 7 Cost of cablegrams between London and Australia, and New Zealand before the expedition sailed and on its return 264 14 7 1365 15 1 863 12 4296 18 4 328 16 11 2005 14 7 1807 10 7 6055 10 4 1517 17 8 126 2021 11 5 1016 15 10 443 4 9 i44,380 14 9 445 INDEX Acetylene Gas, 19, 139 Adams, 6, 7, 29, 140, 168, 177. 211, 244, 288, 366; ii. 20 Adare, Cape, ii. 228 Adelie Land, ii. 226, 229 Adineta, ii. 242 grandis, ii. 243 Admiralty, 24 Albatross, 47, 51, 59; ii. 233 Alga;, 205; ii. 236 Anatina, ii. 273 Ansel], 54 Armitage, Cape, 227, 363; ii. 59 Lieutenant, ii. 36 Armytage, 27, 29, 142, 209, 223, 252; ii. 61 Aurora Australis, 199, 217; ii. 384-92 "Aurora Australis" (book), 212-14; ii. 28 Australia, 3, 34 Back Door Bay, 108, 119, 123, 159 Backstairs Passage, ii. 193 Balleny Islands, ii. 229, 230 Balloon Bight {see Barrier Inlet) Barne, Cape, 93, 94, 130, 231; ii. 70, Inlet, 284 Barrier, Great Ice, 2, 40, 67, 70, 71, 226, 227, 283; ii. 42, 285 movement, 74, 230, 272; ii. 55, 287, 298 Barrier Inlet, 67, 73-75, 79 Origin, ii. 298-301 Beacon sandstone, ii. 63, 67, 97, 100, 276, 313, 321, 332, 333 Beardmore Glacier, 318; ii. 13 Beaufort Island, 82; ii. 42 Bellingshausen, Mount, ii. 149, 159, 169, 220 Bernacchi, Cape, ii. 94, 218 "Billy," 35 Biological laboratorj-, 142 Biology, 215, 217; ii. 233-75 Bird, Cape, 82, 123, 132; ii. 42 Mount, 103; ii. 45, 326 Bjorn, 16 Black-back (Dominican) gull, ii. 233 Black Island, 84 Blubber, 208 Blue Lake, 131, 159 BluS Depot, 252, 357, 359, 360; ii. 50. 52-60. 223 Borchgrevink, 71, 74; ii. 280 Brocklehurst, 27, 30, 127, 142, 168, 177, 181, 191, 218, 229. 252, 258; ii. 22, 28, 61 Brown Island, 84 Buckley, 27, 40, 58, 60, 359 Burberry material, 20, 154, 336 Butter Point, ii. 35, 37, 74, 86, 88 C.\^LLiDixA Constricta, ii. 243 Cameras, 25 Cape pigeon, 60; ii. 233 Castle Rock, 84, 132, 225, 259. 364 "Castle," the, 330 "Cavalry Club," 45, 53, 56 Charcot Bay, ii. 123 Cheatham, 28, 114 Cheese, 246-47, 336 Chemistry, ii. 365 "Chinaman," 35, 108, 159, 281, 285 Chinaman Depot (Depot B), 286. 354 Chocolate, 246-47, 336 Cinematograph, 21-5 Clear Lake, 132 Cliff Point, 115 Clothing. 20 447 INDEX "Cloudmaker," the. 304, 309, 314, 320; ii. 16 Coal. 125-26. 207 (Southern Journey), 322; ii. 314 Coast Lake, 132 Colbeck, Cape, 78 Compressed fodder, 36, 252 Cooker, 19, 27, 151 Cooking range, 19, 124, 146 Cost of expedition, ii. 445 Cotton, L., 26-7 Crab-eater seal, 65; ii. 267, 269 Crater Hill, 226, 366 Crozicr, Cape, 82; ii. 55. 56 Crustacea, ii. 237, 273 Currents, ii. 392-401 Dark Room, 139 David, 27, 30, 40, 44. 138. 144. 176. 198, 211, 223, 242, 243; ii. 37 Davis, 28, 114, 123; ii. 69, 212, 224, 437 Day, 27, 30, 86, 141, 229, 258; ii. 25, 36, 52 Delbridge Islands, 83 Depot A, 230-41, 278, 357 Nunatak, ii. 36, 62 Island, ii. 97, 104, 115, 228 Derrick Point. 107, 110, 128 Diatoms, 216 Discovery expedition, 1, 26, 45, 80, 84, 88, 93, 148, 157, 170, 223, 225, 247, .302; ii. 36, 55, 66, 118, 177, 179 Depot, ii. 55, 298 Mount, 84, 276, 356; ii. 54 "Doctor," 35, 50 Dogs, 21, 23, 36, 39, 99, 137, 162-66, 234, 237, 241; ii. 53, 59, 269-272 Dougherty Island, ii. 442 Drygalski Barrier, 253; ii. 107, 130, 133, 137, 140, 141, 143, 148, 154, 197, 219, 283, 297 Drygalski Depot, ii. 147, 200, 201, 208 Dry Valley, ii, 36. 62. 74 Dunlop, 28, 114 Dysentery, 350, 352, 353. 362; ii. 9. 428 Eakth shadows, 219; ii. 369. 377-80 Emerald Island, 441 England, Captain, 28, 38, 86, 110, 112, 115, 118, 125; ii. 40 Equipment, 5, 25, 98 Erebus, Mount, 81, 82, 130, 132. 133, 167, 197, 218, 276, 357; ii. 28, 35, 55, 224-31 Evans, Captain, 37, 48, 361; ii. 40, 71, 213 Felspar Crystals. 182. 193. 195; ii 29 Ferrar Glacier, ii. 36. 37, 61, 88 Finnesko, 14, 154, 248, 249, 339 Flagstaff Point, 94, 106, 110, 119, 125, 131 Fossils, ii. 62, 65 Fossil wood (southern journey); ii. 276, 314 Front Door Bay, 106, 115, 119, 125, 127 Frost-bite, 181, 328, 336, 339, 341; ii. 11, 35 Fumaroles, 180, 182 Fungi, 205, 220; ii. 348 Furs, 13-15 Geikie Inlet, ii. 129 Geographical Journal, 3 Society, 21-3 Geological summary, ii. 322-23 Geology, general ii. 276-314 Western mountains, ii. 332-53 Gerlaclie Inlet, ii. 148 Glacier Tongue, 112, 125, 171, 224, 230. 252,258, 364; ii. 70, 295 Glaciology, ii. 288-307. 351-53 Gneiss Point, ii. 99 Goggles, 249, 265, 269, 274 Granite Harbour, 253; ii. 101, 110, 111 Green Park, 130, 159 Lake, 132 "Grisi," 35. 100, 1.35, 159, 258, 357, 358; ii. 10 Grisi Depot (Depot C), 295, 352; ii. 19 448 INDEX Handcock, 54 Harbord, 28, 114, 117, 121, 123; ii. 49, 224 Head-gear, 154 Health of expedition, ii, 426-28 Hope, Mount, 302-304 Horseshoe Bay, 132; ii. 19 Hut, 18-19, 95, 96, 105, 133, 138-47; ii. 38, 227, 228 Point, 83, 88, 92, 97, 111, 132, 167, 223, 233, 252, 259, 366; ii. 22, 59, 227 Hydatina, ii. 237 Ice-birds, 60 Ice-flowers, 216 Ice-forms, ii. 354-62 Ice-temperatures (in lakes), ii. 362-65 Inaccessible Island, 91, 93, 230; ii. 24 Infusoria, ii. 237 Instruments, 23-25 Irizar, Cape, ii. 125, 126, 129 Jaeger clothing, 20, 154 Joyce, 26, 27, 30, 144, 211, 253, 277, 358, 360; ii. 22, 28, 52 Kentte, 195; ii. 25, 29, 37, 343 King Edward VII Land, 73, 74, 75, 78, 80, ii. 42, 281 Killer-whales, 87, 217; ii. 68, 234 Kinsey, J. J., 37 Knob Head, Mount; ii. 64 Koonya, 37, 41, 47, 50, 61 Kukri Hills, ii. 64 Larsen Depot, ii. 168, 188, 191 Mount, ii. 139, 148, 169, 189 Lichen, 205; ii. 26, 64, 235 Longstaff, Mount, 289, 293, 300 Lower Glacier Depot, 349 Lyttelton, Port, 33, 34, 37, 38; ii. 40, 231 "Mac," 35 Mackay, 27, 31, 35, 88, 142, 168, 179, 242, 243, 365; ii. 73 Mackintosh, 28, 31, 88, 114, 302; ii, 42, 52, 225 Macquarie Island, ii. 438-40 Macrohiotus ardicus, ii. 243 Magnetic Pole, 4, 242, 364; ii. 73, 119, 136, 170, 177, 179-181, 221, 382-84 Magnetism, ii. 382-92 Marine biology, 204, 216 Maize, 36, 236, 239, 252, 266, 297, 328, 333 Markham, Mount, 284 Marshall, 27, 31, 88, 140, 168, 179, 211, 244, 362, 363; ii. 21 Marston, 27, 31, 141, 239; ii. 27, 28, 36 Maujee ration, 36, 252, 266, 297, 331 Mawson, 27, 31, 138, 144, 168, 212, 242, 365; ii. 71, 73, 155, 203, 354 McGillan, 365; ii. 42 McMurdo Sound, 80, 83, 119, 123, 131, 198; ii. 88, 282, 398 Michell, 28, 44, 88 Microscopic life, ii. 236-45 Minna Bluff, 239, 277; ii. 12, 50 Mineralogy, ii. 365 Mirabilite, ii. 319 Mirage, ii. 367 Mils, 15, 155, 248, 249 Meteorological .station, 137, 199-203 Meteorology, ii. 402-425 Montague, 54 Moss, 205; ii. 235 Motor-car, 21, 22, 86, 89, 98, 166, 229, 234-36, 242, 245, 261; ii. 23, 25, 36, 76 Mount A. Markham, 292 Murray, 27, 32, 144. 199, 204, 205, 211, 252; ii. 28, 48, 233 Nansen, Mount, ii. 139, 148, 154, 171, 188, 221, 284 Neobuccinum, ii. 273 New coast line, ii. 229, 284 New Harbour, ii. 90 New Zealand, 2, 3, 11, 33, 34, 37; ii. 230 Nimrod, 16-17, 36, 37, 86, 115, 119, 125, 253, 365, 366,; ii. 38, 40, 48, 69, 110, 200, 210, 223, 232, 437 449 INDEX Ximrod Islands, ii. 411 Mount, ii. 170, 174 Nordenskjold Ice Barrier, ii. 50, 118, 120, 218, 283, 298 North, Cape, ii. 181, 229 Northern party, 241, 242, 253; ii. 35, 37, 66, 69, 71, 73-222 Nototheia, ii. 273 Obelisk, Mount, ii. 62 Observation Hill, 83, 230, 363; ii. 59 Optics, Meteorolof;ical, ii. 367-81 "Oyster Alley," 36, 39, 46, 51, 119 P.tnsELENE, ii. 367 I'aton, ii. 43 Peat, ii. 319 Pecten Colhecki, ii. 66, 273 Pcmmican, 9, 156 Penguins, Adclie, 67, 87, 94, 116, 216, 274, 276; ii. 23, 39, 235, 250- 263 Emperor, 73; ii. 234, 246-250 Ringed, ii. 264 Petrel, Antarctic, 67; ii. 233 Giant, ii. 234 Snowy, ii. 233 Wilson's, ii. 234 Petroleum, 151, 223, 227 Philodina gregaria, ii. 242 Physics, ii. 354-65 Plasmon biscuit, 156 Plateau, Antarctic, ii. 303-06 Plateau depot, 338, 344 Ponies, 21, 22, 35, 36, 38, 45, 49, 99. 101, 158-62, 233, 244, 283, 286 Pony Lake, 130 meat, 288, 298 "Possum," 56, 124, 162 Pram Point, 363 Priestley, 27, 32, 143, 198, 211, 229, 252, 258; ii. 24, 25, 28, 37, 61, 276, 332 Protozoa, ii. 237 Provisions, 6-12 Pteropods, ii. 273 Pycnogonida, ii. 274 QcAiL Island, 22, 35 "Quan," 35, 159, 257, 258, 261, 281, 295, 297 Queen Alexandra's Flag, 34, 249, 257, 262, 330, 343 Raised beaches, ii. 285, 316-319 Reid, 6, 34, 38 Rhizopods, ii, 237 Riches, ii. 43 Roberts, 27, 32. 54, 143 Ross Island, 91, 133, 217; ii. 49, 282 Sea, 62, 63, 67; ii. 41, 281 Seal. ii. 209, 227, 267 Sir James, 79, 169. 171; ii. 41, 181 Royal Company Island, ii. 437 Society, 23 Royds, Cape, 84, 94, 131, 133, 198; ii. 42 Rotifers, 215; ii. 237-45 "Sa.vdy," 35 Sandy Beach, 131, 159 Sastrugi, 174 Scott, Captain, 90, 291, 302, 329, 361; ii. 36, 62, 122 Sea leopards, 219; ii. 267 spiders, ii. 274 weed, 220 Sennegrass, 15 Shackleton, 29 Inlet, 289, 291 Ski, 15 boots, 14 Skua gulls, 90, 94, 216; ii. 61. 265-66 "Socks," 35, 159, 257, 261, 296, 305, 310 Sledges, 12, 13, 148-51, 251 Sledging foods, 155-57 Sleeping-bags, 14, 153, 223, 237 Snow-blindness, 269, 274, 276, 294, 296, .301, 307, 309; ii. 37, 44, 96, 143, 101 Snow Cape, 292 Solitary Rocks, ii, 62, 04 Southern party, 222, 244, 253, 256-67, ii. 1-21, 50, 56, 223 Journey distances, ii. 429-434 450 INDEX Southern Journey equipment, 245-52 Staff, 26-32 Stamps, 35, 60 Stewart Island, ii. 230 Stranded moraines, ii. 66, 86, 341 Temperatures, subnormal, 331, 335, 338; ii. 426 Tent Island, 224 Tents, 19, 152 Tide-crack, 101 Tides, ii. 392-401 Titanium, ii. 105 Terra Nova Bay, ii. 144 Terrace Island, ii. 97 Terror, Mount, 82 Tubman, 35 Turk's Head, 224 Upper Glacier Depot, 322, 347; ii. 11,19 Victoria Land; ii. 73, 76, 94 Volcanic Rocks, ii. 308 W.4SHINGTOX, Cape, ii. 75, 141 Water-bears, ii. 237-245 Weddell Seals, 65, 91, 216; ii. 26, 85, 86, 95, 98, 234, 267-68 Western party, 253; ii. 35, 37. 61-9 Bight, 69. 81 Whales, 69; ii. 234, 266 Bay of, 73, 74, 77, 78; ii. 234 White Island, 84, 238, 263, 363; ii. 55 Wild, 26, 27, 32, 144, 211, 229, 244; ii. 21 Wilkes Land, ii. 229, 230 Wilson, Cape, 291 Dr. 96, 361 Windy Gully, ii. 64 "Zulu," 35, 58, 88 1^07 --, -3. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. IUaCAPR 141975.^ Series 9482 i/ w« I % ri t ■•^*,