240 THE EASTERN SLEDGE JOURNEY 



another good day's march to the eastward on Novem- 

 ber 30. According to our observations v^e were then 

 just below the point where the Alexandra Mountains 

 should begin, but there was no sign of mountain ranges ; 

 the surface was a little rougher, perhaps. However, it 

 was still too soon to abandon the hope. It would be un- 

 reasonable to expect any great degree of accuracy of the 

 chart we had to go by; its scale was far too large for 

 that. It was, moreover, more than probable that our 

 own determination of longitude was open to doubt. 



Assuming the approximate accm'acy of the chart, by 

 holding on to the north-east we ought soon to come 

 down to the seaboard, and with this object in view we 

 continued our march. On December 1, in the middle 

 of the day, we saw that everything agreed. From the 

 top of an eminence the sea was visible due north, 

 and on the east two domed summits were outlined, 

 apparently high enough to be worthy of the name of 

 mountains. They were covered with snow, but on the 

 north side of them there was an abrupt precipice, in 

 which many black patches showed up sharply against 

 the white background. It was still too soon to form an 

 idea as to whether they were bare rock or not; they 

 might possibly be fissures in the mass of ice. The 

 appearance of the summits agreed exactly with Captain 

 Scott's description of what he saw from the deck of 

 the Discover u in 1902. He assumed that the black 

 patches were rocks emerging from the snow-slopes. 



