250 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [Marcu 
This was the last we saw of the land, the pack not being finally 
cleared till in Lat. 64° 23’ S. Many times false hopes were 
raised by the ship running into clear water and being able to turn 
west and even south of west towards where C. Hudson is marked 
on the charts, but invariably it was only a few hours before she 
would be turned and, as a general rule, each noon position was 
east of the previous one. On the whole, after leaving the coast, 
the floes were of a less formidable character than those found off 
the north shore of Victoria Land, but the interspaces were filled 
with slush or else frozen over with new ice. This made pack 
that earlier in the season would have been easily negotiable now 
absolutely impassable. The nights also were drawing out, and 
after dark the first appearance of pack had to be the signal to 
heave to till daylight, which often meant till 6 A.M., as the morn- 
ing twilight was found very bad for picking a way through the 
pack. 
The sea was now frozen over in the sort of large lakes or 
pools of still, open water that were found in this sea, and though 
this ice was never more than a few inches thick, it made a con- 
siderable difference to our speed. 
On March 2, while working through fairly loose pack, the 
wind that had been light westerly turned to E.N.E., with the 
an immediate effect of closing the floes in, and the ship 
rorr, 67° 35’ Was completely held up. During that night the wind 
S., 160° 16" shifted again to the southward and so topsails and 
i foresail were set. It was merely waste of coal to try 
and steam through this ice, but the steady pressure of the ship 
under sail let her gradually, though very slowly, work through; 
often held up by a floe for an hour or more, in the end she would 
manage to turn it and run ahead half a ship’s length or so. This 
meant that in her wake was generally to be found a small pool 
of water clear of ice. 
A number of whales (Lesser Rorquals) were in this pack, 
and they soon discovered this clear water and took advantage 
of it to come and blow; as there was not room for them to come 
up in the ordinary way, they had to thrust their heads up ver- 
tically and blow in a sort of standing-on-their-tails position. Sev- 
eral times one rested its head on a floe, not twenty feet from the 
ship, with its nostrils just on the water-line; raising itself a few 
inches, it would blow and then subside again for a few minutes 
