1911] THE SOUND OF THE SEA ICE 205 
containing many seals, where jostling ice pancakes were 
surging about, so there was obviously no time to lose. 
We pushed gaily south and camped that night in a little 
gravelly dell among the moraines. 
All night long we could hear tlic groaning of the sea 
ice as it ground on the coast : a most melancholy sound, 
composed of varying notes of which I wrote an analysis in 
the by no means stilly watches of the night as follows : ' A 
tiger's growling purr, plus the sough and whistle of the 
wind through a draughty house, witli an undercurrent 
of the creak due to hard breeches rubbing on a new leather 
saddle.' 
On February 17 we arrived at the lower reaches of the 
Koettlitz Glacier. For the lower twenty-five miles this 
great ice-river rises but little above sea level. But what a 
river ! South of the Dailey Isles, where it merges with the 
Great Ice Barrier, it is ten miles wide. A region of icy 
pinnacles and bastions, of lakes and winding gullies, as if a 
storm-lashed sea had suddenly been clutched in the grip 
of King Frost. Most picturesque in appearance, but as a 
sledging proposition it can only be described as infernal ! 
Soon after leaving the sea ice we plunged into a maze 
of ' glass-house ' and ' bottle-glass ' ice, whose names 
almost explain themselves. The former were great curved 
platforms often thirty feet wide, which threw us all 
together in the middle and then dropped us several feet 
through the ' glass ' into a pool of water beneath. The 
' bottle-glass ' was due to the sun melting the ice ripples 
into a thousand spikes and edges which received us when 
we fell — which happened every few minutes. 
