144 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [FEBRUARY 
streams had formed a well-defined if narrow avenue of smooth 
ice, which promised us an easier return. 
On these slopes I found an ice-scratched block—the only 
specimen I had seen in a hundred miles of moraine débris! 
I returned to the tent along the margin of the glacier and 
was amazed to see seal-tracks in the fresh snow. We were 
over twenty miles from the sea and had not seen any possible 
route for seals on our outward journey. Yet here were two 
seals—asleep as usual—on the old glacier ice. I disturbed one 
of them to see what it would do. He sneezed and grunted at 
me. When I teased him further he began to warble! I heaved 
a lump of ice at him, whereupon he lolloped twenty yards to 
a wet patch, lay over on his side, and produced a whole octave 
of musical notes from his chest, ranging up to a canary-like 
chirrup. Finally he crawled under a deep ledge, and vigorously 
butting with his shoulders, opened out a hole and flopped under 
the avenue ice. 
I soon reached camp and found that Wright and Debenham 
had both met parties of seals. We all thought of the constant 
stream along the tide crack by our last depot and came to the 
conclusion that this was largely fresh water and formed the main 
drainage of the Upper Koettlitz. By this sub-glacial stream 
the seals penetrated nearly thirty miles inland up the Koettlitz 
Glacier. 
On the 26th we crossed the glacier to Heald Island—which 
projected a thousand feet above the glacier and separated it into 
two streams of ice. While Debenham collected garnets and 
other interesting minerals, I climbed the island and sketched 
the topography up the glacier. 
In the silts amid the ice we found large sponges and a 
fungus-like alga. The sponge must have been brought up by 
the ice from marine waters at some period far back in history. 
The alga had probably grown in a glacier pond, since drained 
away. 
Next day we marched twelve miles west to explore a large 
tributary glacier which we could see across the the low-level 
lateral moraine. After crossing two miles of moraine we sud- 
denly came on a steep gully about 100 feet deep, at the bottom 
of which was a strongly flowing stream. This originated in 
a lake three-quarters of a mile long, but for a considerable dis- 
