POSSIBLE NEW LAND 



came into view as the ship moved on. In some places 

 a cornice of snow overhung the Barrier top, and again 

 in others the vertical cracks had widened so that some 

 portions of the ice-wall seemed in immediate danger of 

 falling. The vagaries of light and shadow made appear- 

 ances very deceptive. One inlet we passed had the sides 

 thrown up in little hummocks, not more than ten or fifteen 

 feet high, but until we were fairly close, these irregulari- 

 ties had the appearance of hills. 



The weather continued fine and calm. During the 

 voyage of the Discovery we always encountered a strong 

 westerly current along the Barrier, but there was abso- 

 lutely no sign of this here, and the ship was making a 

 good five knots. To the northward of us lay a very 

 heavy pack, interspersed with large ice-bergs, one of 

 which was over two miles long and one hundred and fifty 

 feet high. This pack-ice was much heavier and more 

 rugged than any we had encountered on the previous 

 expedition. Evidently there must have been an enor- 

 mous breaking away of ice to the eastward, for as far as 

 we could see from the crow's-nest, to the north and east, 

 this ice continued. 



About mid-night we suddenly came to the end of a 

 very high portion of the Barrier, and found as we fol- 

 lowed round that we were entering a wide shallow bay. 

 This must have been the inlet where Borchgrevink 

 landed in 1900, but it had greatly changed since that time. 

 He describes the bay as being a fairly narrow inlet. On 

 our way east in the Discovery in 1902 we passed an inlet 

 somewhat similar, but we did not see the western end as 

 it was obscured by fog at the time. There seems to be no 

 doubt that the Barrier had broken away at the entrance of 

 this bay or inlet, and so had made it much wider and less 

 deep than it was in previous years. About half a mile 



71 



