THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



expedition. Castle Rock, towering above other local 

 heights, seemed like an old friend, and White Island 

 was dimly seen beneath the rising pall of cloud. To the 

 south-west Black Island and Brown Island showed up 

 distinctly, and behind the former we could trace the 

 rounded lines of Mount Discovery. To the west were 

 the gigantic peaks of the western mountains with their 

 huge amphitheatres and immense glaciers. About seven 

 miles to the eastward lay a dark mass of rock, Cape 

 Royds, named after the first lieutenant of the Discovery. 

 So familiar were they that it seemed as though it were 

 only yesterday that I had looked on the scene, and yet 

 six years had gone by. 



During the day we had occasional falls of light, dry 

 snow, and the air temperature at times went down to 

 11° Fahr., although this was the height of summer. The 

 wind continued southerly but with no great force, and 

 now we would have welcomed even a heavy blizzard to 

 break up the ice. A northerly swell would have been 

 better still, for a few hours of this would make short 

 work of the miles of ice that now formed an impenetrable 

 bar to our ship. When the s. Y. Morning, the first relief 

 ship to the Discovery, arrived about January 23, 1902, 

 there was a similar amount of ice in the sound, and it 

 was not till February 28 that she got within five miles 

 of Hut Point, and the ice did not break out up to the 

 Point at all during that year. The following year both 

 the Terra Nova and the Morning arrived at the ice-face 

 about January 4, and found that the sound was frozen 

 over for twenty miles out from Hut Point. Yet by 

 February 15, the ice had broken away to the south of 

 Hut Point, and the Discovery was free. With only these 

 two diverse experiences on which to base any theory as 

 to the probable action of the ice, it will easily be seen 

 that the problem was a difficult one for me. If I kept 



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