160 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
Up into the clouds, and occasionally appears both above 
and below them ; about one-third of the mountains, which 
are about 4 miles in extent from north to south, have 
only a thin scattering of snow over their summits. 
Towards the base the other two-thirds are buried in a 
field of snow and ice of the most dazzling brightness. 
This bed of snow and ice is about 4 miles in extent, 
sloping gradually down to its termination; a cliff, ten 
or twelve feet high, which is split in every direction for 
at least two or three hundred yards from its edge 
inwards, and which appears to form icebergs only wait- 
ing for some severe gales or other cause to break them 
adrift and put them in motion. From the great depth of 
water, I consider this island to have been originally a 
cluster of perpendicular rocks, and I am thoroughly of 
opinion that the land I before saw last year, could I have 
got to it, would have proved to be in the same state as 
this, and likewise all land found in high southern 
latitudes/’ 
Here Biscoe reveals the unrelenting grip that his 
theory of the sea-origin of all Antarctic ice had taken of 
his mind. He doubtless remembered Weddell’s sugges- 
tion as to the origin of the mythical Aurora Islands from 
icebergs entangled amongst the Shag Rocks (though as 
we have seen, he resolutely shut his eyes to Weddell’s 
discovery of an earth-saturated iceberg), and now with 
the genesis of miniature icebergs from the glaciers of a 
mountainous island before his eyes, he refused to believe 
his own senses, and preferred to think that it was only 
the escape of sea-ice previously icaged between the bars 
of perpendicular rocks. 
Next day was particularly clear, and high mountains 
were seen to the southward at a distance estimated at 
