214 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
the fog was too thick ; so the first land we can see now is 
Joinville Land, or the small islands that lie to the N.E. of it. 
We passed a large berg this afternoon, probably a little 
more than a hundred feet high. I guessed it was eight 
miles long, and by compass bearings we made it seven and 
three-quarters. To our Arctic sailors this was an extraor- 
dinary sight, as a berg a mile long in the north is consi- 
dered huge. But the impression of size is not received 
from enlargement of an object in one direction, so this ice 
cliff, eight miles long by a hundred feet, was not particu- 
larly impressive. The most imposing effect I have yet seen 
was a mere chip off one of these bergs ; it loomed out of a 
bank of mist, and grey surges climbed up its ice cliffs and 
burst, and the spray vanished in the mist above. 
The melancholy of this grey Sabbath amongst the 
bergs was broken this afternoon by the cry of ' A sail ! ' 
Though we expected every hour to fall in with one of our 
consorts, it came as a great surprise to us. It seemed so 
improbable, at first hearing, to see another vessel here. Just 
for a few moments we saw it during a lift in the mist ; it 
was a mile or two astern of us. Then the north wind 
brought the fog down again and hid it, before we could do 
more than guess which of our consorts it might be. 
Monday, lgt/i Dec. — The weather has been so thick 
that it has not been possible to shoot the sun for the last 
two or three days, so we trust to dead reckoning. Last 
night the fog fell so thickly that we could not see the end 
of the jibboom — a nice position to be in with bergs to 
windward and bergs to leeward, drifting goodness knows 
