THE TERRA NOVA GOES SOUTH 71 



looked like the lights of a great city." The pack was very- 

 heavy hereabouts, but we made some progress along lanes of 

 more or less open water. A berg along which we skirted, 

 instead of presenting clean-cut vertical cliffs, was corrugated 

 on its sides, and very rugged on its upper surface. Probably 

 it was derived from a glacier. A stage of planks was thrust 

 out from the starboard bow, and on this Ponting perched his 

 cinematograph, and photographed our progress through the 

 heavy pack. 



Later in the day every one was called up on deck to see 

 the magnificent avenue we were traversing. Each side of the 

 lane was bounded by immense sheets of iceberg, with low 

 cliffs, fifteen feet high, so strikingly vertical that they might 

 have been cut to a set square. The bergs were six in 

 number, and were probably fragments of one huge slab of 

 the Great Barrier, over a square mile in extent, which had 

 been driven north before the winter gales. (We novices 

 did not appreciate the danger involved if these bergs 

 happened to press together, but our leaders had an anxious 

 time here.) 



An Emperor penguin was sitting on one of the floes near 

 the low bergs, and we tried to stalk him in the Terra Nova. 

 Surely with no other game in the world could one manoeuvre 

 for half an hour in full view of the victim with some hope 

 of success. However, the Emperor did not wait quite long 

 enough, but dived just when the ship had backed to his floe, 

 which looks as if he had a sense of humour. 



Dr. Wilson carefully preserved the contents of the stomachs 

 of the penguins. Among biological specimens, such as shrimps 

 and the like, he found about a dozen small pebbles. These, 

 when carefully examined with a lens, were readily identifiable 

 by the geologists. There were three eruptive rocks repre- 

 sented — a dark basalt ash, a denser stuff with little augite 

 crystals, and, most abundant, a hard felspar porphyry, with 

 numerous little twin felspar crystals. What geologist would 

 have expected to have such a fine collection of Antarctic rocks 

 carried to him in mid-ocean ? 



We were now collecting penguins also — for our Christmas 

 dinner. Three were seen alongside on a somewhat thin floe, 

 and Dr. Wilson gallantly undertook to augment our larder. 

 Meanwhile the afterguard ranged themselves on the poop, and 



