2IO 
FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
deck to-day and slung out on to wooden davits that are 
fixed to the outside of the bulwarks. 
The mist still hangs over us, and we expect to meet the 
ice every hour. The growlers are more frequent, and we 
hear the surge rolling over them ; now and then they 
show through the mist, faint pearly-grey and white and 
dull green, with the swell spuming white down their 
worn sides. They are slowly drifting, on their funereal 
voyage to the warm waters of the north. . . . 
All day we steamed southwards through the black, 
smooth water, with the mist hanging round us brown and 
damp. At two o'clock it grew a little lighter, and the 
folds of the mist curtain were drawn up a little, as if by 
hands from above, and beneath the veil we saw the edge 
of the Antarctic ice close to us, white against a dark 
sky beyond. 
I felt as if the weariness and the fret of many years of 
voyaging would be repaid by the first glimpse of this 
strange white land, by the sensation of quietly stealing 
under the mist veil into this secret white chamber of great 
Nature. The blocks of ice and snow that formed the 
floating shore were varied with many faint tints, pale 
violets, creamy whites, and silky greens ; and the shapes 
were as beautiful and unexpected by me as the delicacy 
and variety of the colours. It was as if a Doric temple 
built in dreamland of Carrara marble had been thrown 
down, and lay floating calmly on the dark, still water. 
Yet with all the strangeness of the fantastic shapes, of 
capitols, columns, and shattered carvings, there was still a 
decision in the sculpture of the blocks and masses, and a 
