I 4 4 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 debris! 



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- 



