186 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
so now we see the same line of mountains running south, 
with many miles of sea or Barrier between us and them. On 
the far southern horizon, almost in transit with Hut Point, 
stands Minna Bluff,some ninety miles away, beyond which 
we have laid the One Ton Depdt, and from this point, as 
our eyes move round to the right, we see peak after peak of 
these great mountain ranges—Discovery, Morning, Lister, 
Hooker, and the glaciers which divide them one from 
another. ‘They rise almost without a break to a height of 
thirteen thousand feet. Between us and them is the Barrier 
to the south, and the sea to the north. Unless a blizzard is 
impending or blowing, they are clearly visible, a gigantic 
wall of snow and ice and rock, which bounds our view to 
the west, constantly varied by the ever-changing colour of 
the Antarctic. Beyond is the plateau. 
We have not yet mentioned four islands which lie 
within a radius of about three miles from where we stand. 
The most important is a mile from the end of Cape Evans 
and is called Inaccessible Island, owing to the inhospitality 
of its steep lava side,“even when the sea is frozen ; we 
found a way up, but it is not a very interesting place. Tent 
Island lies farther out and to the south-west. The re- 
maining two, which are more islets than islands, rise in 
front of us in South Bay. They are called Great and Little 
Razorback, being ribs of rock with a sharp divide in the — 
centre. The latter of these is the refuge upon which Scott’s 
party returning to Cape Evans pitched their camp when 
overtaken by a blizzard some weeks ago. All these islands 
are of volcanic origin and black in general colour, but 
I believe there is evidence to show that the lava stream. 
which created them flowed from McMurdo Sound rather 
than from the more obvious craters of Erebus. Their im- 
portance in this story is the indirect help they gave in 
holding in sea-ice against southerly blizzards, and in form- 
ing landmarks which proved useful more than once to men 
who had lost their bearings in darkness and thick weather. 
In this respect also several icebergs which sailed in from 
the Ross Sea and grounded on the shallows which run 
between Inaccessible Island and the cape, as well as in 
