1902] PRELIMINARY TRIPS 377 



This glacier tongue is worthy of a short description, 

 because it is typical of other ice formations in the Ross 

 Sea, and has puzzling characteristics for which, even to this 

 day, we have not been able to account. It consisted of a thin 

 tongue of ice, about five miles long, which shot out directly 

 into the bay and thus into a position where the sea-ice annually 

 formed and broke up on each side of it. It was little broader 

 at its base than at its end, but both sides of the tongue were 

 deeply serrated, so that a man walking along the top would 

 find it might narrow to a quarter of a mile, or broaden out to 

 nearly three-quarters. Moreover, thus pursuing his way along 

 the top he would gradually rise and fall in level perhaps as 

 much as ten or twenty feet, the outer higher parts being 

 separated by many valleys from the inner. If the reader 

 considers this shape, he will see that it suggests itself as an 

 impossible form for an active ice-stream to take, and though 

 it led directly away from the higher southern snow-slopes of 

 Mount Erebus, one could not conceive that it had been 

 actually formed by those snow-slopes in their present condition. 



Later on we sounded around the end and for some way on 

 each side of this glacier ; we found that the ice-tongue, or at 

 least the end of it, regularly rose and fell with the tide, and 

 nowhere about it could we get anything but deep soundings. 

 Now, not far to the north were some rugged volcanic islets, 

 showing that the bottom of the bay may be very irregular ; but 

 if some irregularity kept this long fragile tongue in position, 

 why should it rise and fall with the tide ? To all intents and 

 purposes we seemed to have a peninsula of ice floating in the 

 sea, and yet for year after year failing to break away from its 

 source. For this phenomenon we could never find a reason, 

 but for the general shape of this ice-formation I shall hope to 

 advance an explanation in a later chapter. Before we left our 

 winter quarters we spent a long time camped in its vicinity, 

 and in consequence had many an argument concerning it. 



On September 5 we crossed this glacier tongue and ex- 

 plored the islets beyond. They were of little interest, being 

 merely masses of volcanic rubble, but as we crossed we noticed 



