TOPOGRAPHY OF SOUTH VICTORIA LAND (ANTARCTIC). 509 
sighted Cape Crozier and Cape Bird and the foot of Mount Erebus 
and Terror, but the dense masses of clouds wholly obscured all but the 
immediate coast-line. At the foot of Mount Terror we lay to for some hours 
in the hope of getting a glimpse of the summit of Mount Erebus, and 
procuring a photograph. But as the pall of clouds showed no sign of 
breaking, we waited no longer, and steamed on towards Cape Crozier, 
which we passed a little before midnight. I must mention, however, 
that on the afternoon of the following day the mist lifted for a short 
time, and enabled us to see Mount Erebus from the deck. Smoke could 
be easily distinguished arising from its snow-clad summit, so that it 
was evidently not quiescent ; but whether it was in a state of eruption, 
as at the time of the visit of Sir James Ross, we could not distinguish, 
being too far away. It was a most cursory and imperfect glance that 
we got, for the dense mist soon closed down again. The light was too 
bad and the distance too great to procure a photograph of the volcano. 
Soon after passing Cape Crozier, the mist rose from Mount Terror, 
and we obtained a fairly good view of it from base to summit. It is, 
of course, very lofty, but scarcely looks the height (10,884 feet) that 
Ross assigns to it. Strange to say, its eastern side was almost free from 
snow, and on the same side were numerous knolls, some having crater 
mouths, and which at one time were the monticules of the parent 
voleano, now apparently extinct. Even stranger than the absence of 
snow on Mount Terror was the presence of an exceedingly large penguin 
rookery at its foot. This rookery was occupied by millions of penguins, 
and was far and away larger than any we had previously seen. 
The foot of Mount Terror is low, and at the spot occupied by the 
penguins there is a kind of miniature plateau upon which a party could 
possibly spend a winter, although, I believe, it would be an extremely 
severe one. One of the greatest difficulties, if not the greatest, would be the 
excessive cold to be contended with, for even in the middle of summer, 
with a wind from the south, the temperature sinks considerably below 
zero; thus, on February 19, with a light wind from the south, the 
temperature fell to —12°°5 Fahr. What, then, must we expect in the 
depths of winter with the wind from the same direction ? 
After having passed Cape Crozier, Ross’s great ice-barrier came 
in view, stretching away out of sight towards the east. Scarcely any 
natural feature of the antarctic world has so stirred the imagination 
and so roused scientific interest as the discovery of this great ice- 
barrier. The most surprising characteristics of the great ice-barrier 
are its unbroken uniformity, its vast extent, and the entire absence 
of visible land from its edge. Imagine a perpendicular wall of ice, 
from 100 to 200 feet high, suddenly rising up before you out of the 
ocean, where the depth of that ocean is measured by hundreds of 
fathoms, and hundreds of miles distant from any visible land, for you 
soon lose sight of Cape Crozier and Mount Terror. There are no breaks 
