Over the starboard bow rose two beautiful headlands, mountains of moderate height, perhaps two thousand feet; the first (Mount Pierre) having around it a circular cloak of ice extending from a black crown of rocks at the summit to the sea-line, where it terminated in a perpendicular wall of ice of about one hundred and twenty feet in height. The second (Mount Allo) had a similar form but was much more heavily laden with snow. In front of these remarkable headlands there was a bay, and beyond a long series of mountains, clothed in the same sheet of perennial ice. Eastward there were a number of small islands, mostly free of ice, and beyond, low under the south-eastern sky, was the dim outline of an extensive white country. We set our course somewhat east of south to examine the interruption between the high mountainous land before us and the more even country eastward.
That the reader may better understand the positions I will give the names, which have since been affixed to the discoveries, as we steam along through the undiscovered country.
We headed for a small island (Auguste Island), steaming slowly; for with the ordinary lead we found no bottom to the sea, and being in absolutely unknown water we might at any moment strike a reef, as we had done twice before. It was ten o’clock at night before we were near enough to make a landing. Then a boat was lowered, and into it we piled, eagerly seizing the first opportunity of our mission to study the antarctic lands and life. It was a curious night. Everything about us had an other-world appearance. The scenery, the life, the clouds, the atmosphere, the water—everything wore an air of mystery. There was nothing in our surroundings which resembled the part of the antipodes with which I was familiar. Greenland and antarctic landscapes are apparently as widely different as the distance between them.
Though the sun was sliding eastward just under the high mountains to the south-west it seemed perfectly dark. Nevertheless, on the water, as we paddled over it, there was a curious luminous gray light, by which it was possible to read coarse print even at midnight. This light rested on the new lands to the east and west, and brought out the snowy outlines so perfectly that it was possible to take photographs throughout the night. The sky, however, continued black, made so by the sooty clouds which ceaselessly rose out of the Pacific to drop their white cargoes of snow on the neighbouring lands. There was at this time no wind. The water was smooth and glassy, the land far off and restful; but the life was otherwise. Awe-inspiring and strangely interesting were the curious noises of the cormorants, the penetrating voices of the gulls, the coarse gha-a-ah, gha-a-ah of the penguins, the sudden and unexpected spouts of whales, the splash of seals and penguins, and the babyish cries of the young animals on the rocks before us.
There was nothing remarkable in the appearance of this land upon which we were about to embark. It was a heap of hard rocks, mostly granite. The northern exposure was bare, the ravines were still levelled with winter ice, and the southern point had on it a small ice-cap. We afterwards saw a hundred others of a similar nature, and all will pass under the same description. We landed in a small bight, upon a ledge of rocks. I think Arctowski, with his hammer and geological bag, was the first to step ashore, and he was followed by Racovitza, with his paraphernalia to capture natural history specimens. Gerlache and I next stumbled over fragments of ice, and stones and impertinent penguins, who disputed our landing. We wished to get a view of the new land, but the force of the swell was such that we were compelled to return to the boat and push away from the rocks to save it from being smashed.
We rested on the oars while Racovitza and Arctowski did the honours of the expedition; we tried to follow them with our glasses as we rocked about in the boat, but soon lost sight of their movements in the darkness. We were able to locate Arctowski by the dull echo of his hammer, and we were able to trace Racovitza by the chorus of penguins which greeted him from rock to rock. The alternate interchange of the music of the hammer and the war song of the penguins was an entertainment which to Gerlache and myself, will be a long and weird remembrance. At about midnight we returned to the rocky ledge to pick up our companions with their loads of rocks and bags of game. The inhabitants did not like their visitors. The penguins assembled about us, picking at our feet; the gulls hovered threateningly about our heads; and even the harmless cormorants dashed to and fro over us, stretching their long necks to ask our mission. Worst of all the sea-leopards clambered over the rocks near us, snorting and defiantly showing their teeth and rolling their large, glassy eyes. As we left it was too dark to see the movement of an animal one hundred yards from shore, but the peculiar whiteness which rested on the scene made it possible to take a photograph of the island with good details.
During the few hours of night we rested under easy steam, and in the morning we found ourselves well into the bight (Hughes Inlet) which we had entered. The land before us retreated and offered even greater hopes of a passage southward. At five o’clock the sun had already risen over the snowy heights of the east and was under the banks of black clouds which sailed out of the west. There was a solitude and restfulness about this sunburst, and the new world of ice under it which is difficult to describe. Our position at this time was in the centre of a wide waste of water, about twelve miles away from the nearest land. We were too far from the rocks to see birds, and except for an occasional spout of a whale there was nothing to mar the dead silence. A strange pang of loneliness came over us as we paced the deck. There were indications of channels to the south and west, but from the distance at which we reviewed the lands every projection seemed a continuous mass of impenetrable crystal solitude. Could there be a place more desperately silent or more hopelessly deserted?
CHAPTER X
DISCOVERIES IN A NEW WORLD OF ICE
(CONTINUED)
Before going south it was determined to examine a large bay to the eastward for a possible opening into the Weddell Sea (Brialmont Bay). The morning was foggy; but by noon the mist raised a little and we found ourselves off a bold, black cliff (Cape von Sterneck), with an altitude of about fifteen hundred feet, on a projecting point of land, with a few islands to the north and one to the south of it. This bluff forms the eastern headland to the entrance of what we later discovered was a strait opening into the Pacific, (Belgica Strait). Passing within a few miles of the shore we examined carefully the glacial wall which everywhere offered a check to our passage eastward. The interior of the land was covered with a cloud which did not lift during the day, but the coastal edge was distinctly visible, and offered us excellent opportunities for surveying.
During the night of the 24th we steamed leisurely across the channel and in the morning we found ourselves under a clear sky before a series of icy walls from_60_to_150_feet_in_height_From_the_sloping_snows_over_these">walls from 60 to 150 feet in height. From the sloping snows over these cliffs there was showered upon us a light which was perfectly dazzling to the eye. We selected here two points, where the ice had been partly melted, offering a footing and a place for making observations. The boat which took us ashore was loaded with men and instruments: Lecointe, with his nautical instruments; Danco, with his magnetic outfit; Racovitza, with guns and knives and what not, to take specimens of life; Arctowski, with his big hammer and dozens of bags for stones; Amundsen and the writer with snowshoes and camera, and the sailors with boat-hooks and guns to keep off and capture seals. If we had started out to make a month’s siege on the new lands and life we could not have been better supplied. The cove in which we landed (Harry Island) was a slope of rounded ice-worn granite rocks, upon which Lecointe and Danco fixed their tripods. Racovitza turned up the stones along the shore where he found mysterious crawling things which he hailed with as much delight as if he had found nuggets of gold. Amundsen remained in the boat and sought to secure a few Weddell sea-leopards asleep on a pan of ice, while Arctowski and I mounted the inland ice to study its character.