262 
SCOTPS LAST EXPEDITION [January 
had a beautiful bluish lustre, and there were bits of wood 
in the shale also. (They are very like the armour-plates 
of certain mesozoic fish, but they have not yet been 
submitted to a specialist.) 
A heavy cloud-fog descended over us next morning, 
but in the afternoon cleared off a little. The dark pall 
shrouded Gondola Mountain, but hung about 3000 feet up 
for the most part. Gran and I explored the Gondola 
Ridge behind the tent. Some of the fine-grained boulders 
were beautifully polished by the friction of the glacier 
ice. I thought I saw a skua egg here, but it was a piece 
of mottled sandstone exactly the same size and shape. 
All the crags were roche moutonnee^ i.e. rounded by the 
ancient glacier, the lower eastern face being almost 
mirror-like in places from the scour of the ice. Here 
and there we came on large perched blocks, sometimes 
precariously poised on three or four small pebbles. 
During the night we found it rather cold. Con- 
sequently I slept with my head right in the bag and 
awoke rather late from an exciting railway accident ! 
However, nothing was lost thereby, for the heavens still 
encompassed us. Forde put in some good work with 
wax ends on my boot, and I searched the shales near 
the tent and found more ' sarpent critters,' as Seaman 
Evans christened all our fossils. 
Debenham made another discovery; this time of 
some lumps of coal, and we got many specimens later 
of the same material. All these were in the moraine 
just north-east of Gondola Nunatak and I was anxious 
to find their original home. The 3rd was a more pro- 
