1911] F COAL 179 
in Victoria Land! Just below was a little lake dammed by the 
embankment, and when I cut through three inches of ice near 
a big black boulder, a bountiful supply of water welled up in the 
hole. On the bank was some dark shale, by far the most prom- 
ising rock for fossils that we had yet seen. Before the day was 
over Debenham had found some, and we examined all the shale 
carefully and obtained many specimens. ‘They were vesicular 
horny plates shaped like the tiles capping a roof ridge. Some 
were about two inches long and had a well-marked keel. Others 
had a beautiful bluish lustre, and there were bits of wood in the 
shale also. (They are very like the armour-plates of certain 
mesozoic fish, but they have not yet been submitted to a specialist. ) 
A heavy cloud-fog descended over us next morning, but in 
the afternoon cleared off a little. The dark pall shrouded Gon- 
dola Mountain, but hung about 3000 feet up for the most part. 
Gran and I explored the Gondola Ridge behind the tent. Some 
of the fine-grained boulders were beautifully polished by the fric- 
tion of the glacier ice. I thought I saw a skua egg here, but it 
was a piece of mottled sandstone exactly the same size and shape. 
All the crags were roche moutonnée, i.e. rounded by the ancient 
glacier, the lower eastern face being almost mirror-like in places 
from the scour of the ice. Here and there we came on large 
perched blocks, sometimes precariously poised on three or four 
small pebbles. 
During the night we found it rather cold. Consequently I 
slept with my head right in the bag and awoke rather late from 
an exciting railway accident! However, nothing was lost 
thereby, for the heavens still encompassed us. Forde put in some 
good work with wax ends on my boot, and I searched the shales 
near the tent and found more‘ sarpent critters,’ as Seaman Evans 
christened all our fossils. 
Debenham made another discovery; this time of some lumps 
of coal, and we got many specimens later of the same material. 
All these were in the moraine just north-east of Gondola Nuna- 
tak and I was anxious to find their original home. The 3rd was 
a more promising day, and Gran and I determined to circumnavi- 
gate the nunatak if possible. We walked along to the south over 
the great moraine which fringed the granite ridge. There were 
some large blocks of granite in this, some twenty feet across. 
There was of course much of the basic rock (dolerite) also, for 
