ON the sixth day’s march of the united northern and western parties from the ship, this sketch was outlined in pencil while the sledges passed across a floe, little if at all under one hundred and fifty feet in thickness. Like most heavy floes, its edges were piled with rubble ice, cemented and smoothed off with snow-drift, showing a perpendicular wall outside, but sloping inside to the general undulating surface. The easiest road lay right across it, and with the aid of picks a natural gap in its walls was soon converted into a practicable path. The united crews of the “Bulldog” and “Marco Polo” are hauling the latter sledge down through the gap, while the “Challenger’s” and “Poppie’s” have just reached the spot with the first of their sledges.

On the seventh day’s march we crossed a floe so much raised above its fellows that it got the name of “The Castle.” Its surface was about an acre in extent, and, judging from its height over the water, it could not be less than one hundred feet—perhaps one hundred and fifty—in thickness. It was walled in all round by lines of débris, piled upon its edges and cemented together with snow, perpendicular outside, but sloping inwards, so that the inside looked like a vast saucer. The easiest road for the sledges lay right across it. Several breaches occurred in its walls, and with the aid of picks they were soon made practicable. A sketch made as the boats passed across represents a scene familiar to many of our sledge parties, for “Castle Floe” was subsequently crossed on no less than thirteen separate occasions ([Plate No. 13]).

CREVASSE NEAR CAPE JOSEPH HENRY.

Sunlight amongst the ice is often very beautiful, but at the same time very inconvenient. It had already peeled our faces, now it attacked our eyes. Every crystal of snow reflected a miniature sun, and the path of the rays seemed literally sown with gems, topaz and sapphire generally, but here and there a ruby. Similar colours, but with a curious metallic lustre like oil on water, tinted the fleecy clouds overhead, and the sun itself was almost always surrounded by circles similar to those seen round the moon in winter, but exquisitely rich and brilliant in rainbow-hued colour. No painter could hope to produce the faintest resemblance to such effects. The light was in fact altogether too bright for mortals, and we could only face it with goggles on. The gem-like gleams especially produced a quick pain in the back of the eye that considerably lessened their æsthetic effect. The officers, who have to travel well in advance and climb hummocks to find a road for the sledges, cannot wear goggles continuously; vapour from the eye freezes on the inside of the glass, and it requires the keenest sight to detect differences of level and distance in the white blank of the prospect. On our eighth day’s journey a faint mist took away all shadow from the ice, and though a man might be seen several hundred yards off, it was quite impossible to tell whether the next step was up or down, into a hole, or against a hummock. That day, pioneering was done rather by touch than sight. When the fog lifted, we found ourselves close to Cape Joseph Henry, and next forenoon the depôt left there in the autumn was transferred to the advancing sledges.

Half-a-mile northward from the depôt, a bank of snow, evidently the accumulation of ages, sloped down from a small hill to the sea. In one place a great slice of the bank had broken bodily from the mass above, leaving a deep crevasse. This was bridged over and completely concealed, except in two places, where the roof had fallen in and exposed its perpendicular walls of green ice streaked with layers of earth and sand. The bank was in fact a miniature “discharging glacier,” the only one yet met with on this coast. A few yards below the openings, the bridge was strong enough to bear the heavily-laden sledges of the western parties. Their course lay through the valley to the left, for though the snow on shore was in many places soft and deep, a short cut across the isthmus promised better travelling than the crush of floes round the cape. The prospects of the northern party were less encouraging. Looking northward from the hill over the crevasse, an icy chaos spread to the horizon. Mirage every now and then raised lines and flakes of distant pack into view, but all as rough and rugged as the ice-floes at our feet.