196 SCOTT’S LAST EXPEDITION [FEBRUARY 
held up here all next day by a snowstorm, which we spent reading 
and sewing. 
On the 12th we rounded the Kukri Hills, and when the ice- 
foot petered out we were luckily able to continue on the sea ice. 
We had lunch amid a colony of over forty seals, and then reached 
the southern side of the Ferrar Glacier, where we camped on a 
rather wet and muddy heap of ‘ road metal’ moraine. 
We were now safely round New Harbour, and curiously 
enough crossed the sea ice at the mouth of the Ferrar on the 
same day of the year as when we nearly went out to sea on our 
first sledge journey. Henceforward we knew our route. We had 
plenty of food at the Butter Point depot which we reached that 
evening, and knew we could reach the old Discovery hut before 
the end of the month. 
This depot had been blown over and wrecked generally. We 
took some pemmican, butter, and chocolate, and next day pro- 
ceeded south along the Butter Point piedmont, leaving another 
note for Pennell. ‘The surface was much better than the preced- 
ing year, but curiously enough we found quite a number of small 
crevasses. Debenham and Forde fell in together in one of these, 
and the burly Irishman jammed so tightly, it was quite a business 
pulling him out of it! In the evening we reached the Strand 
Moraines. These are great piles of ancient silt, gravel, and 
erratic blocks which were dropped here by the ancestor of the 
present Koettlitz Glacier. At the southern end of these moraines 
—which were several miles long—was quite a large lake. We 
tobogganed down to this and across to a nice little gravelly delta 
just made for the tent. We found that the open water reached 
just to this point, the sound still being frozen to south’ard, 
though obviously breaking away in great sheets. I wrote that 
night: ‘No Terra Nova. We should have been picked up at 
Evans Coves (Terra Nova Bay) to-morrow.’ We had the 
choice of two routes now. Either to cross the snout of the Blue 
Glacier, or to take to the sea ice and coast round the latter. We 
had done the former and knew it would only take a day. The 
latter might be quicker, though a great calved berg blocked the 
route about two miles ahead. Debenham preferred the glacier, 
the other two the sea ice. I made a bet with Gran that we 
couldn’t get the sledge between the calved berg and the glacier 
without unloading it. This had a rather interesting outcome. 
