geographical miles.  We were now a good way along the peninsula, the northern point of which Captain Scott named Cape Colbeck, and at the same time a good way to the east of the meridian in which he put land-shading on his chart.  Our height above the sea, which was now about 1,000 feet, was evidence enough that we had firm land under us, but it was still sheathed in ice.  In that respect the landscape offered no change from what we had learnt to know by the name of “Barrier.”  It cannot be denied that at this juncture I began to entertain a certain doubt of the existence of bare land in this quarter.

This doubt was not diminished when we had done another good day’s march to the eastward on November 30.  According to our observations we were then just below the point where the Alexandra Mountains should begin, but there was no sign of mountain ranges; the surface was a little rougher, perhaps.  However, it was still too soon to abandon the hope.  It would be unreasonable to expect any great degree of accuracy of the chart we had to go by; its scale was far too large for that.  It was, moreover, more than probable that our own determination of longitude was open to doubt.

Assuming the approximate accuracy of the chart, by holding on to the north-east we ought soon to come down to the seaboard, and with this object in view we continued our march.  On December 1, in the middle of the day, we saw that everything agreed.  From the top of an eminence the sea was visible due north, and on the east two domed summits were outlined, apparently high enough to be worthy of the name of mountains.  They were covered with snow, but on the north side of them there was an abrupt precipice, in which many black patches showed up sharply against the white background.  It was still too soon to form an idea as to whether they were bare rock or not; they might possibly be fissures in the mass of ice.  The appearance of the summits agreed exactly with Captain Scott’s description of what he saw from the deck of the Discovery in 1902.  He assumed that the black patches were rocks emerging from the snow-slopes.  As will be seen later, our respected precursor was right.

In order to examine the nature of the seaboard, we began by steering down towards it; but in the meantime the weather underwent an unfavourable change.  The sky clouded over and the light became as vile as it could be.  The point we were anxious to clear up was whether there was any Barrier wall here, or whether the land and sea-ice gradually passed into each other in an easy slope.  As the light was, there might well have been a drop of 100 feet without our seeing anything of it.  Securely roped together we made our way down, until our progress was stopped by a huge pressure-ridge, which, as far as could be made out, formed the boundary between land and sea-ice.  It was, however, impossible in the circumstances to get any clear view of the surroundings, and after trudging back to the sledges, which had been left