1912] A MIRAGE 195 
However, Forde was pretty right next day and my eyes soon 
stopped aching, though everything appeared double for many 
hours! 
On the 8th we reached the land near Cape Bernacchi. There 
was a steep ice slope 200 feet high at an angle of 30°. Luckily 
it was much honeycombed and sun-eaten. We put grummets 
(rope brakes on the sledge and managed to get it down by 
1.30 P.M. We had a very cheerful lunch, for we knew the 
depot was only a few miles south. Then we found an ice-foot 
all the way along the edge of the rocks and moraine which led 
us right to the Bernacchi cairn. This was a regular ice pathway 
about 20 yards wide. It was due to sea ice which had become 
cemented to the shore, the tide crack being farther away from 
the rocks and defining that part of the floe which had lately 
drifted away to sea. 
No one had visited our depot. New Harbour was full of 
new broken floe, but a fine ice-foot seemed to promise well for 
our next march. 
We stayed a day at Cape Bernacchi, for I wished to get a 
good station for the triangulation of this coast. Gran and I 
took the theodolite to the top of a hill 2900 feet high at the 
north-east end of Dry Valley. We named this Hjort’s Hill in 
honour of the maker of our trusty primus lamp. As we were 
climbing this hill Gran swore he could see the ship off Cape 
Evans through the binoculars. It seemed clear to me also— 
smoke, cross-trees, hull, and 3 masts, but after an hour or so we 
decided it was only a miraged crack in the Barne glacier. Our 
disappointment was very keen, though I am now not so sure that 
we did not really see the ship, some forty miles away. We could 
see the twenty-foot débris cones behind the hut quite easily on 
a clear day. 
I wrote the usual letter to Pennell. I had left two in Granite 
Harbour and two on the piedmont now, though it did not look 
as if any would ever be read. All through the roth we skirted 
New Harbour, finding a fairly feasible ice-foot between the 
granite-strewn slopes and the open water. We came across a 
Spratt’s biscuit box here—which was evidently left by the 1902 
expedition. We saved a considerable détour by crossing the head 
of the harbour on the sea ice and camped below the Kukri Hills, 
where I halted rather early to get a round of angles. We were 
