THE GRANITE HARBOUR EXPEDITION 409 



On the 8 th we reached the land near Cape Bernacchi. 

 There was a steep ice-slope two hundred feet high, at an angle 

 of 30 . Luckily it was much honeycombed and sun-eaten. 

 We put grummets (rope brakes) on the sledge, and managed 

 to get it down about 130 feet. We had a very cheerful lunch, 

 for we knew the depot was only a few miles south. Then 

 we found an ice-foot all the way along the edge of the rocks 

 and moraine which led us right to the Bernacchi cairn. This 

 was a regular ice pathway about twenty yards wide. It was 

 due to sea-ice which had become cemented to the shore, the 

 tide crack being further away from the rocks, and defining 

 that part of the floe which had lately drifted away to sea. 



No one had visited our depot. New Harbour was full of 

 new broken floe, but a fine ice-foot seemed to promise well for 

 our next march. 



We stayed a day at Cape Bernacchi, for I wished to get a 

 good station for the triangulation of this coast. Gran and I 

 took the theodolite to the top of a hill 2900 feet high, at the 

 north-east end of Dry Valley. We named this Hjort's Hill, 

 in honour of the maker of our trusty Primus lamp. As we 

 were climbing this hill, Gran swore he could see the ship off 

 Cape Evans through the binoculars. It seemed clear to me 

 also — smoke, crosstrees, hull, and three masts ; but after an 

 hour or so we decided it was only a mirage crack in the Barne 

 Glacier. The disappointment was rather keen, though I am 

 now not so sure that we did not really see the ship, some forty 

 miles away. We could see the forty-foot debris cones behind 

 the hut quite easily on a clear day. 



I wrote the usual letter to Pennell. I had left two in 

 Granite Harbour and two on the Piedmont now, and it did 

 not look as if any would ever be read. 



All through the 10th we skirted New Harbour, finding a 

 fairly feasible ice-foot between the granite-strewn slopes and 

 the open water. We came across a Spratt's biscuit box here, 

 which was evidently left by the 1902 expedition. We saved 

 a considerable detour by crossing the head of the harbour on 

 the sea-ice, and camped below the Kukri Hills, where I halted 

 rather early to get a round of angles. We were held up 

 here all next day by the snow, which we spent reading and 

 sewing. 



On the 1 2th we rounded the Kukri Hills, and when the 



