124 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Jan. 



and heaving lustily on the painter and thwarts we soon had the 

 boat high and dry. 



We proposed at this place to complete our chain of records, 

 and had brought with us a post, a tin cylinder containing an 

 account of our doings, and the necessary implements for erect- 

 ing them. A spot was chosen in the centre of the penguin 

 rookery on a small cliff overlooking the sea, and here our post 

 was set up and firmly anchored with numerous boulders. In 

 spite of all our efforts to mark the place at a few hundred 

 yards it was almost impossible to distinguish it, and one could 

 not help thinking that, should disaster come to the expedition, 

 what a poor reed was this on which alone we could trust to 

 afford our friends a clue to our whereabouts. Yet it was this 

 small post on the side of a vast mountain, in the midst of the 

 most extensive penguin rookery we had seen, that eventually 

 brought the ' Morning' to our side. 



Whilst Bernacchi and Barne set up their magnetic instru- 

 ments and started on their chilly task of taking observations 

 we others set off in twos and threes to climb the hillside in 

 various directions ; it was long before we could get clear of 

 the innumerable penguin colonies and the all-pervading odour 

 which they emit ; and as they occupy every inch of available 

 land we found ourselves clambering up steep screes of loose 

 stones, and climbing still steeper friable rock faces, getting 

 what hold we could on the deeply weathered surface. With 

 Royds and Wilson I at length reached the summit of the 

 highest of the adjacent volcanic cones, for which our aneroids 

 gave a height of 1,350 feet ; there we were rewarded by a first 

 view of the Great Ice Barrier. Perhaps of all the problems 

 w'hich lay before us in the south we were most keenly interested 

 in solving the mysteries of this great ice-mass. Sixty years 

 before Ross's triumphant voyage to the south had been 

 abruptly terminated by a frowning cliff of ice, which he traced 

 nearly 400 miles to the east ; such a phenomenon was unique, 

 and for sixty years it had been discussed and rediscussed, and 

 many a theory had been built on the slender foundation of 

 fact which alone the meagre information concerning it could 



