2 T. V. HODGSON. 



most part rectangular, massed so thickly together that it was not deemed desirable 

 to force the ship through them, so the voyage was continued to the eastward. 

 Returning on February 7, the ' Discovery ' found the Sound full of loose ice on the 

 eastern side, but the western side was clear. New Harbour was examined and also 

 the " rough " surface of the old or permanent ice further to the southward. Then, 

 crossing the Sound, the ship arrived at the site of our future Winter Quarters on the 

 8th of February, anchoring just north of Hut Point in what is now called Arrival 

 Bay. Winter Harbour, to the south of Hut Point, was then full of ice, but the 

 position of the ship not being considered satisfactory, she was taken into it, and for 

 a few days lay alongside the ice face with only just enough room for her length. 

 At that time open water existed for some eight or nine miles to the westward of Hut 

 Point, but only for a few hundred yards to the southward. During the next few 

 days the ice went out in instalments, and on the 17th of February the harbour was 

 quite clear. 



Cape Armitage lies a mile to the S.S.E. of Hut Point, and may be said to form the 

 southern boundary of the harbour. After the ice went out, open water extended for a 

 distance of about four miles to the south, and for about a mile and a half to the 

 eastward round Cape Armitage. This, we afterwards learnt, might be taken as the 

 approximate boundary between the fluctuating sea ice and the permanent or barrier 

 ice which had forced its way into the Sound from the southward, as already stated. 

 In proof of this it may be mentioned that on February 12th several diminutive bergs 

 of very irregular shape passed the mouth of the harbour on their way northward ; these 

 were obviously fragments from the barrier ice, and in later days, when sledging 

 expeditions were undertaken, it was found that the difference in level between the 

 barrier and sea ice was from two to ten feet, the difference increasing from east to 

 west, but not with any regularity. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the whole 

 of the ice, with the exception of the bergs already alluded to, that went out of the 

 Sound in the early part of 1902, was " one-year ice," a fact proved by the condition of 

 the drifts against the shore, and the complete absence of pressure ridges at Pram Point. 

 We were not frozen in till near the end of March, and during the six weeks that we 

 were waiting for that event some shallow water dredging and trawling took place when- 

 ever a boat was available. Winter Harbour was a small bay about half a mile wide 

 across the mouth, and about a quarter of a mile deep. It lay at the extremity of a 

 spur from Mount Erebus termed the Ridgway, but this name is not an official one. This 

 spur was some ten miles long, and from one to three miles across ; at Winter Harbour 

 it was about a couple of miles wide. Within a radius of three miles round Hut Point 

 lay the scene of our more active operations, the whole of the western side of the Sound 

 being closed by reason of the ice conditions, the distance from Winter Quarters, or botli 

 combined. The following report therefore refers more particularly to the eastern side, 

 which became fairly accurately known. One prominent feature of the Sound was the 

 so-called " Glacier Snout," an undulating tongue of ice connected with the Ridgway 



