FIRST WESTERN EXPEDITION 177 



cook had tried to poison them in 1902. We used safety pins 

 as forks, and my bowie knife to turn it over. A vote of 

 thanks to Deb was passed by the company ! 



" With luck we shall camp in the middle of the Dailey 

 Isles to-morrow (Monday). On Wednesday get to Hut 

 Point, and then two days to Cape Evans." 



This prophecy was rather feeble ! We took nine days to 

 reach Hut Point, and five weeks elapsed before we saw our 

 own headquarters ! 



March 6, 191 1 (Monday). — A fairly sunny morning with 

 a temperature of — 8° at 9.30. We spent some time in packing 

 all our depoted goods. I carried an empty biscuit tin to the 

 nearest large moraine heap, and buried it halfway in the gravel 

 with a note of our journey. The sun, glancing on the bright 

 metal surface, made this a very distinct landmark some distance 

 from the moraines. 



We had now two sledges to pull, but the surface was very 

 good. We made for the nearest Dailey Island. After one 

 and a half hours we reached old ice at a higher level than the 

 sea-ice we had just left. Here I mounted a hummock and 

 saw that open water extended to Davis Bay, and was practically 

 within one mile of our track. We were rather astonished, for 

 this ice (around Blue Glacier) had not been out for several 

 years. We pushed on and camped two and a half miles from 

 West Dailey Isle for lunch. Another two miles brought us 

 to a most interesting locality. All around us were heaps of 

 large sponges half buried in snow and ice. The three largest 

 heaps were about 8 feet long and one and a half feet high. 

 The sponges were a foot in diameter, and among the long 

 spicules we found Bryozoa, Brachiopoda, Serpulae, Molluscs, 

 and a fine solitary coral. 



How did these marine animals come to be entangled in 

 the old ice on which we found them ? The ice was apparently 

 normal fresh-water glacier-ice, but may have been originally 

 sea-ice from which the salt had drained out. At any rate, it 

 was floating — for half a mile further east was a succession of 

 grinding ice-cracks. 1 believe the sponges were pushed up 

 (from a depth of twenty feet or so below water) by the edge 

 of the Koettlitz glacier, in some palaeocrystic age when its snout 

 was much less advanced. 



We pushed on about a quarter of a mile, and reached 



N 



