38o THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Sept. 



their favour, but that is natural with any novelty, and however 

 this party may have got on later in the day, their starting pace 

 was very slow. 



' I was thinking to-day as I looked up at our masts and 

 yards that my preconceived notion of a polar winter always 

 pictured them covered with snow, and perhaps with long icicles 

 depending ; as a matter of fact, they have been generally quite 

 free from snow, and throughout the long night nearly always 

 looked black and grim. But, curiously enough, this afternoon, 

 when ice-crystals were falling, they became frosted over, though 

 a strong wind was blowing ; and, oddly too, the wind seemed 

 to have quite a different note as it blew through the frosted 



rigging- 



'■September 12. — Hodgson has made quite a discovery ; he 

 finds that his ropes and nets whilst under water become coated 

 with ice-crystals. He tells me he noticed this fact some time 

 ago, and that the effect has been gradually growing, presumably 

 as the water has become colder. This morning I went out to 

 see some lines which he was hauling up. It is certainly a very 

 curious phenomenon, and one that is difficult to describe ; 

 one small line only an inch in circumference came up covered 

 with a cylinder of flaky ice nearly a foot in diameter, and this 

 cylinder extended five or six fathoms below the surface, after 

 which it gradually dwindled away. The formation is very 

 delicate, and in the flaky structure the axes of the leaves are 

 at right angles to the rope, whilst their planes are inclined and 

 intersect at the angle of crystallisation, 60°. The whole thing 

 looks like some beautiful lace fabric, and held up to the light 

 one can see through it the most gorgeous prismatic colouring. 

 It falls to pieces at a touch, and each leaf can be split to the 

 thinnest layers. Shackleton took some photographs and 

 Wilson attempted a sketch, but I doubt if either will produce 

 a picture which is anything like the delicate original. 



' Somewhat similar crystals are formed on the tow-nets, but 

 here each minute fibre which stands out from the fabric has 

 formed a nucleus for the ice to form, and the net, with its 

 hanging icicles, looks like nothing so much as an old-time 



