9 
Sketched by U. M'Coi-mieJc, B.N'. 
M'Cormick Bay. 
[JVamed hy the Hydrographer of the Admiralty .) 
It was 2.30 A.M. before we turned into our felt-bags for the night ; mine was, 
however, still wet, and I lay down on the buifalo rug as on the preceding night, 
Sunday, 22d. — Having retired to rest late last night, or rather early this 
morning, we did not rise until 10.30 a.m. It was still blowing a hard north- 
westerly gale, with snow-drift and overcast thick weather; so bitingly cold 
was the air within the tent, that sleeping, as I always do, at the weather 
end, where the wind blows in under the canvas, my hands felt quite benumbed 
throughout the night, from their having been exposed, in the absence of my felt- 
bag covering. I shaved for the first time since leaving the ship, and made my 
toilet under the lee of the boat. After our customary breakfast of chocolate, 
cold bacon, and biscuit, I took from my pocket a little prayer book, which had 
been my companion years gone by to both the Poles, North and South, and 
round the world, from which I read to my boat's crew part of the morning 
service, finishing with a short extemporary prayer, which suggested itself at 
the moment, as best fitting the occasion. 
At 12.30 I left the tent, accompanied by three of my men, for the summit of 
Rogier Head, — which I named after an old friend who had been engaged in 
African discovery, — a bold craggy promontory, above five hundred feet in height, 
overhanging the sea, and about three miles distant from our encampment. Our 
course lay over some snow-clad ridges up a gradual ascent. At 1.45 p.m. we 
reached the summit, from which a wide and wild scene of desolation met the 
gaze ; whichever way the eye was directed a grand and sublime spectacle 
presented itself, to which the fury of the tempest lent an awful interest. 
Beneath the precipitous face of the overhanging crag on which I was seated, 
the surf was furiously lashing the narrow strip of black shhigle beach at its base, 
margined by a belt of shallow water, the limits of which were well defined by a 
turbid greenish appearance, contrasting strongly with the dark, very dark, blue 
colour of the water beyond. Along the edge of this zone of shoal water, countless 
white whales were swimming down chaimel, literally speaking, in a continuous 
stream. Amongst them, here and there, one of a pie-bald colour ; and sometimes 
the back of a straggler or two appearing in the discoloured Avatcr itself; all, 
B 
