EXPLORATION OF ANTARCTIC LANDS. 485 
a channel which narrowed as we proceeded. The mountains on the 
right became lower and their profiles sharper, while on the island to 
the east of us I saw the snow-fields on the summits merging one into 
the other, and forming plateaux of ice. A little sierra, composed of 
five or six peaks in a row, ran in a north-east and south-west direction, 
and, as we were abreast of the first mountain, it presented itself to us 
as an abrupt wall of rock, the screes at its base partly buried by snow. 
The other summits further south were much higher. The channel 
itself had the appearance of a fjord, but there were no mountains at 
the end, only a low snow-field, and signs of a passage towards the west. 
As we advanced, the mountain chain on the right became clearer; in 
the west there was only one high mountain,* and beyond it doubtless 
the ocean. The sierra on the left showed no trace of stratification. At 
7 p.m. we found that the channel curved towards the west almost at 
right angles, and we entered another channel parallel to the first. 
There was very little floating ice, and not one iceberg was to be seen. 
The channel we had entered continued as a great valley into the 
interior of the island, a glacier descending along its gentle slope from 
the north. The chain which formed the mass of the island culminated 
in a high summit entirely snow-covered in the north, and gradually 
fell off to the south. It would 
really take years to work out 
this complex of channels, in- 
lets, and islands, and many 
facts of general interest would 
be elicited if the archipelago 
were to be thoroughly mapped. 
At eight o’clock we passed some 25 \ 
of the flat Suspended glaciers Ws \ 
characteristic of the island on 
our left, and a diagrammatic FIG. 9.—SECTION OF SUSPENDED GLACIER. 
section of one of these is given 
in Fig. 9. They have always the long crevasses, sometimes slightly 
curved, with detached berg splinters. The general appearance of these 
coastal glaciers is a great mass of snow heavily heaped against the 
mountain. The surface has a slope far too gentle to produce the effect 
of a suspended glacier of the Alps, or even of the channels of Tierra 
del Fuego. The sun set in an orange-tinted horizon, the sky above 
being intensely blue, with little golden clouds, and the mountains 
facing the sunset flushed pink and changed to red. It would be 
difficult to imagine any place more beautiful in such perfect weather ; 
the everlasting ice, the grim mountains, and the majestic silence com- 
bined to impress the mind with an overmastering sense of the calm 
* Biscoe’s Mount William. 
