THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



of bergs through which we had threaded our way for 

 more than eighty miles from north to south, and which 

 stretched east and west for an unknown distance, but far 

 enough for me to say without exaggeration that there 

 must have been thousands of these floating masses of ice. 

 Whence they had come was open to conjecture; it 

 was possible for them to have drifted from a barrier edge 

 to the eastward of King Edward the Seventh Land. If 

 that were so, the barrier must be much lower than the 

 Great Ice Barrier, and also much more even in height, 

 for the vast majority of the bergs we passed were not 

 more than one hundred and thirty feet high, and seemed 

 to be of a fairly uniform thickness. The lights and 

 shadows on the bergs to the eastward at times almost 

 gave them the appearance of land, but as they were 

 congregated most thickly in this direction, we did not 

 venture to make closer acquaintance with them. Of one 

 thing I am certain, this ice had not long left the parent 

 barrier or coast-line, for there was no sign of weathering 

 or wind action on the sides; and if they had been afloat 

 for even a short period they must infallibly have shown 

 some traces -of weathering, as the soft snow was at least 

 fifteen to twenty feet thick. This was apparent when 

 pieces broke off from the bergs, and in one or two cases, 

 where sections had been sheared off the top of particular 

 bergs, evidently by collision with their fellows. There 

 were no indications or signs of embedded rocks or earthly 

 material on the bergs, so I am led to believe that this 

 great mass of ice must have been set free only a short time 

 previously from some barrier edge at no great distance. 

 Our latitude at noon on the 16th was 68° 6' South, and 

 the longitude 179° 21' West. 



Before we entered the actual line of bergs a couple 

 of seals appeared on the floe ice. I did not see them 

 myself, but from descriptions I gathered that one was a 



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