When we neared Cape Bird and Beaufort Island we could see that there was much pack in the mouth of the Strait.  By keeping close in to the land we avoided the worst of the trouble, and “as we rounded Cape Bird we came in sight of the old well-remembered landmarks—­Mount Discovery and the Western Mountains—­seen dimly through a hazy atmosphere.  It was good to see them again, and perhaps after all we are better this side of the Island.  It gives one a homely feeling to see such a familiar scene."[89]

Right round from Cape Crozier to Cape Royds the coast is cold and forbidding, and for the most part heavily crevassed.  West of Cape Bird are some small penguin rookeries, and high up on the ice slopes could be seen some grey granite boulders.  These are erratics, brought by ice from the Western Mountains, and are evidence of a warmer past when the Barrier rose some two thousand feet higher than it does now, and stretched many hundreds of miles farther out to sea.  But now the Antarctic is becoming colder, the deposition of snow is therefore farther north, and the formation of ice correspondingly less.

[Illustration:  SOUNDING—­E.  A. Wilson, del.]

[Illustration:  KRISRAVITZA]

Many watched all night, as this new world unfolded itself, cape by cape and mountain by mountain.  We pushed through some heavy floes and “at 6 A.M. (on January 4) we came through the last of the Strait pack some three miles north of Cape Royds.  We steered for the Cape, fully expecting to find the edge of the pack-ice ranging westward from it.  To our astonishment we ran on past the Cape with clear water or thin sludge ice on all sides of us.  Past Cape Royds, past Cape Barne, past the glacier on its south side, and finally round and past Inaccessible Island, a good two miles south of Cape Royds.  The Cape itself was cut off from the south.  We could have gone farther, but the last sludge ice seemed to be increasing in thickness, and there was no wintering spot to aim for but Cape Armitage.[90] I have never seen the ice of the Sound in such a condition or the land so free from snow.  Taking these facts in conjunction with the exceptional warmth of the air, I came to the conclusion that it had been an exceptionally warm summer.  At this point it was evident that we had a considerable choice of wintering spots.  We could have gone to either of the small islands, to the mainland, the Glacier Tongue, or pretty well anywhere except Hut Point.  My main wish was to choose a place that would not be easily cut off from the Barrier, and my eye fell on a cape which we used to call the Skuary, a little behind us.  It was separated from the old Discovery quarters by two deep bays on either side of the Glacier Tongue, and I thought that these bays would remain frozen until late in the season, and that when they froze over again the ice would soon become firm.  I called a council and put these propositions.  To push on to the Glacier Tongue and winter there; to push west to the