136 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Jan. 



first there had been the shallow soundings, and the sight of 

 gently rising snow slopes, of which, in the nature of things, 

 one is obliged to retain a doubt ; then the steeper broken 

 slopes of snow, giving a contrast to convey a surer evidence to 

 the eye ; and, finally, the indubitable land itself, but even then 

 surrounded with such mystery as to leave us far from complete 

 satisfaction with our discovery. 



As we continued our course to the N.E. we held close 

 along the fast ice which prevented us from approaching to the 

 land. The weather was still dull and overcast, but we could 

 see that the fast ice on our right was no longer plain sea-ice ; 

 at the edge it stood seven or eight feet above the water, and 

 seemed to rise to fifteen feet or more on the slope of the 

 cornice that overhung the edge, after which the surface ran 

 back on the level for many miles. We could see hazily the 

 extent of this plateau and the rocky exposure of the land 

 which lay beyond. It is difficult to account for this ice-sheet ; 

 it was too thick to be considered sea-ice, and yet was far 

 thinner than any land-ice or barrier formation that we saw 

 elsewhere. Both before and after this we passed at sea very 

 low tabular bergs, which must have come from such a sheet as 

 this. Our soundings running along this edge gradually in- 

 creased from 88 fathoms at 8 p.m. to 265 fathoms at midnight ; 

 but later we came to several more of the curious ice islands 

 which I have described, and close to these we again got 

 100 fathoms. During the night some more patches of exposed 

 rock had been sighted, but we seemed in the uncertain light to 

 be increasing our distance from them. 



On the morning of the 31st the weather outlook was as 

 dismal as ever, and all outward and visible signs of the land 

 had vanished ; we could only guess its proximity by the con- 

 tinuously shallow soundings as we circumnavigated the over- 

 hanging capes of occasional ice islands. As the fog lifted 

 slightly in the forenoon we found ourselves surrounded by 

 mighty masses of ice. On the right the ice islands showed 

 more clearly, and on the left were numerous lofty bergs, some 

 of very great extent ; one, indeed, we estimated as at least six 



