On the afternoon of January 6 the wind abated and the fog began to clear. At 5 P.M. a line of ice confronted us and, an hour later, the 'Aurora' was in calm water under another mighty ice face trending across our course. This wall was precisely similar to the one seen on the previous evening, and might well have been a continuation of it. It is scarcely credible that when the 'Aurora' came south the following year, the glacier-tongue first discovered had entirely disappeared. It was apparently nothing more than a huge iceberg measuring forty miles in length. Specially valuable, as clearing up any doubt that may have remained, was its re-discovery the following year some fifty miles to the north-west. Close to the face of the new ice-wall, which proved to be a true glacier-tongue, a mud bottom was found at a depth of three hundred and ninety-five fathoms.
While we were steaming in calm water to the south-west, the massive front, serrated by shallow bays and capes, passed in magnificent review. Its height attained a maximum of one hundred and fifty feet. In places the sea had eaten out enormous blue grottoes. At one spot, several of these had broken into each other to form a huge domed cavern, the roof of which hung one hundred feet above the sea. The noble portico was flanked by giant pillars.
The glacier-tongue bore all the characters of shelf-ice, by which is meant a floating extension of the land-ice.** A table-topped berg in the act of formation was seen, separated from the parent body of shelf-ice by a deep fissure several yards in width.
** Subsequently this shelf-ice formation was found to be a floating
glacier-tongue sixty miles in length, the seaward extension of a large
glacier which we named the Mertz Glacier.
At 11 P.M. the 'Aurora' entered a bay, ten miles wide, bounded on the east by the shelf-ice wall and on the west by a steep snow-covered promontory rising approximately two thousand feet in height, as yet seen dimly in hazy outline through the mist. No rock was visible, but the contour of the ridge was clearly that of ice-capped land.
There was much jubilation among the watchers on deck at the prospect. Every available field-glass and telescope was brought to bear upon it. It was almost certainly the Antarctic continent, though, at that time, its extension to the east, west and south remained to be proved. The shelf-ice was seen to be securely attached to it and, near its point of junction with the undulating land-ice, we beheld the mountains of this mysterious land haloed in ghostly mist.
While passing the extremity of the western promontory, we observed an exposure of rock, jutting out of the ice near sea-level, in the face of a scar left by an avalanche. Later, when passing within half a cable's length of several berg-like masses of ice lying off the coast, rock was again visible in black relief against the water's edge, forming a pedestal for the ice. The ship was kept farther offshore, after this warning, for though she was designed to buffet with the ice, we had no desire to test her resistance to rock.
The bottom was very irregular, and as an extra precaution, soundings were taken every few minutes. Through a light fog all that could be seen landwards was a steep, sloping, icy surface descending from the interior, and terminating abruptly in a seaward cliff fifty to two hundred feet in height.
The ice-sheet terminating in this wall presented a more broken surface than the floating shelf-ice. It was riven and distorted by gaping crevasses; an indication of the rough bed over which it had travelled.
Towards midnight another bay was entered and many rocky islets appeared on its western side. The engines were stopped for a few hours, and the voyage was resumed in clearer weather on the following morning.