i9l 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 moutonnee, 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 



