168 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Oct. 



1 The most curious feature about us is the great mass of 

 rock immediately in front. It appears to form two islands, for 

 the great body of ice which occupies the basin seems to join 

 again beyond it. Armitage called these islands the " Solitary 

 Rocks " ; they are comparatively flat on top, and rich brown 

 in colour, save where two broad bands of yellow run horizontally 

 through them. These bands are so regular and uniform in 

 thickness that one might almost imagine they had been painted 

 on. Geologically all this should be of immense interest, for 

 the bands which are broken off so sharply at the cliffs of these 

 islands can be seen to appear again in the high hills beyond, 

 and no doubt would appear everywhere if many of the hill- 

 sides were not covered with loose rubble. The whole structure 

 of the country seems to be horizontal, but exactly what the 

 rocks are, we have not yet ascertained ; the brown is probably 

 basalt, and the yellow, Ferrar hopes, is the sedimentary rock 

 which he has found in the moraines.' 



As Mr. Ferrar has added an appendix to this volume 

 dealing with the geological formation of this interesting region, 

 I shall in future omit all remarks of mine which bear on the 

 subject. I have only included the foregoing to give some 

 idea of the task which Ferrar had before him. Both before 

 and after this he found in the various moraines a large variety 

 of rocks — granites, gneisses, sandstone, quartz, &c. — but as 

 this was all transported material it told very little. It was 

 only as we ascended this great glacier and saw the curious 

 horizontal stratification of the hills that the problem gradually 

 unfolded itself before him, and he arrived at some notion of 

 the places to be visited when he commenced his investigations. 



It was on the night of the 17th, whilst we were still 

 absorbed in the beauty and novelty of the scene about us, 

 that the first cloud of trouble loomed above our horizon, for 

 it was on this night the carpenter reported that the German 

 silver had split under the runners of two of our sledges. As 

 this matter was of the gravest import to us, it perhaps needs 

 a little explanation. I have pointed out before that the wood 

 runners of our sledges were quite capable of running on snow 



