ENDERBY BROTHERS 
iS3 
be; the appearance of it was, I think, nearly similar to 
the North Foreland, and I should think the cliffs of it, 
which bore the marks of icebergs having been broken 
from off it, and which was exactly similar to their sides 
in every respect, was as high, or nearly so, as the North 
Foreland; it then ran away to the southward with a 
gradual ascent, with a perfectly smooth surface, and I 
could trace it in extent to at least from 30 to 40 
miles from the foretop with a good telescope ; it was then 
lost in the general glow of the atmosphere. As I ob- 
served some two or three lumps, which had the appear- 
ance of land from the irregularity of their surface, I low- 
ered a boat, and went myself to ascertain whether or not 
there was any appearance of land on a nearer view, 
judging myself to be about 3 miles at his time from 
the main body; but after pulling about half an hour or 
more, I found we were rather more than half a mile 
from it still, with the ice so thick we could at times 
scarcely get the boat through it, and as both vessels 
were hull down, and entirely at times hid from us by the 
ice, the weather also having a black appearance from the 
northward with a heavy N. E. swell, I deemed it most 
prudent to return after having fully convinced myself 
this was nothing more than a solid body of ice.” 
This barrier of solid ice rising like a wall 100 feet or 
so above the sea might very probably have been part of a 
great ice-barrier similar to that found by Ross ten years 
later, and believed by him to be the edge of confluent 
glaciers or of an ice-cap completely covering an exten- 
sive land. Biscoe, however, had persuaded himself that 
all Antarctic ice was sea-ice and he states boldly: 
“ I have not the least doubt that the whole spaces, from 
the latitudes I have visited to the Pole, are one solid 
