SIGHTING THE FIRST ICEBERG 



the weather kept fine and we set some square sail. Occa- 

 sionally during the bad weather of the previous week we 

 had put " fore and afters " on to try and steady the ship, 

 but the wind had carried them away. The Koonya had 

 done the same, with a similar result. Our dinner that 

 night was a great success, and it was early in the morning 

 before we turned in. 



Next morning, January 14, we sighted our first ice- 

 berg, and passed it at a distance of about two and a half 

 miles. It had all the usual characteristics of the Ant- 

 arctic bergs, being practically tabular in form, and its 

 sides being of a dead white colour. The sight of this, the 

 first sentinel of the frozen south, increased Buckley's desire 

 to stay with us, and it was evident that the thought of 

 leaving our little company was not a pleasant one to him. 

 There was a remarkable belt of clouds across the sky 

 during the morning, and their direction indicated the 

 movement of the upper air, so the Professor and Cotton 

 made several estimates of the height of this belt of 

 cloud to try to determine the lower limit of the higher 

 current. The mean measurements were taken, partly 

 with a sextant and partly with an Abney level, to the 

 edge of the belt of mackerel sky. The result of the obser- 

 vations was that the height of this belt was fixed at about 

 thirteen thousand feet. The belt of cloud was travelling 

 in an east-north-east direction at the rate of about four- 

 teen miles an hour. The surface wind, at this time, was 

 blowing lightly from the west. Our latitude at noon was 

 63° 59' South and the longitude 179° 47' West, so we 

 had crossed the 180th meridian. 



During the afternoon we passed two more icebergs 

 with their usual tails of brash ice floating out to leeward. 

 The sea had changed colour from a leaden blue to a 

 greenish grey. Albatrosses were not nearly so numer- 

 ous, and of those following the ship the majority were 



59 



