76 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
rays of light reflected from the ice to a considerable 
height. Ninety-seven ice hills were distinctly seen within 
the field, besides those on the outside — many of them very 
large, and looking like a ridge of mountains rising one 
above another till they were lost in the clouds. The 
outer or northern edge of this immense field was com- 
posed of loose or broken ice close packed together, so 
that it was not possible for anything to enter it. This 
was about a mile broad, within which was solid ice in 
one continued compact body. It was rather low and flat 
(except the hills), but seemed to increase in height as 
you traced it to the south, in which direction it extended 
beyond our sight. Such mountains of ice as these, I 
think, were never seen in the Greenland seas, at least not 
that I ever heard or read of, so that we cannot draw a 
comparison between the ice here and there. It must be 
allowed that these prodigious ice mountains must add 
such additional weight to the ice fields which enclose 
them as cannot but make a great difference between the 
navigating this icy sea and that of Greenland. 
“ I will not say that it was impossible anywhere to get 
farther to the south ; but attempting it would have been 
a dangerous and rash enterprise, and which, I believe, 
no man in my situation would have thought of. It was, 
indeed, my opinion, as well as the opinion of most on 
board, that this ice extended quite to the pole, or perhaps 
joined on some land to which it had been fixed from the 
earliest time, and that it is here, that is, to the south of 
this parallel, where all the ice we find scattered up and 
down to the north is first formed, and afterwards broken 
off by gales of wind or other causes and brought to the 
north by the currents, which are always found to set in 
that direction in high latitudes. As we drew near this 
