SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [January 
of Cape Bird look like high cliffs as one gets south of them 
and form a most conspicuous landmark. We pushed 
past these cliffs into streams of heavy bay ice, making 
fair progress ; as we proceeded the lanes became scarcer 
the floes heavier, but the latter remain loose. 'Many 
of us spent the night on deck as we pushed through the 
pack.' We have passed some very large floes evidently 
frozen in the strait. This is curious, as all previous 
evidence has pointed to the clearance of ice sheets north 
of Cape Royds early in the spring. 
I have observed several floes with an entirely new 
type of surface. They are covered with scales, each scale 
consisting of a number of little flaky ice sheets super- 
imposed, and all ' dipping ' at the same angle. It suggests 
to me a surface with sastrugi and layers of fine dust on 
which the snow has taken hold. 
We are within 5 miles of Cape Royds and ought to get 
there. 
Wednesday, January 4, p.m. — This work is full of 
surprises. 
At 6 a.m. we came through the last of the Strait pack 
some three miles north of Cape Royds. We steered for 
the Cape, fully expecting to find the edge of the pack ice 
ranging westward from it. To our astonishment we ran 
on past the Cape with clear water or thin sludge ice on all 
sides of us. Past Cape Royds, past Cape Barne, past the 
glacier on its south side, and finally round and past In- 
accessible Island, a good z miles south of Cape Royds. 
'The Cape itself was cut off from the south.' We could 
have gone farther, but the last sludge ice seemed to be 
