and weaker.  There was nothing but white on every side, not a single consolatory little black patch, however carefully we looked.  And to think that we had been dreaming of great mountain masses in the style of McMurdo Sound, with sunny slopes, penguins by the thousand, seals and all the rest!  All these visions were slowly but surely sunk in an endless sea of snow, and when at last we stood on the highest point, we certainly thought there could be no chance of a revival of our hopes.

But the unexpected happened after all.  On the precipitous northern side of the adjacent hill our eyes fell upon bare rock —­ the first glimpse we had had of positive land during the year we had been in Antarctica.  Our next thought was of how to get to it and take specimens, and with this object we at once began to scale the neighbouring hill, which was a trifle higher than the one we had first ascended.  The precipice was, however, perpendicular, with a huge snow cornice over-hanging it.  Lowering a man on the rope would be rather too hazardous a proceeding; besides which, a length of thirty yards would not go very far.  If we were to get at the rock, it would have to be from below.  In the meantime we availed ourselves of the opportunity offered by the clear weather to make a closer examination of our surroundings.  From the isolated summit, 1,700 feet high, on which we stood, the view was fairly extensive.  Down to the sea on the north the distance was about five geographical miles.  The surface descended in terraces towards the edge of the water, where there was quite a low Barrier wall.  As might be expected, this stretch of the ice-field was broken by innumerable crevasses, rendering any passage across it impossible.

On the east extended a well-marked mountain-ridge, about twenty geographical miles in length, and somewhat lower than the summit on which we stood.  This was the Alexandra Mountains.  It could not be called an imposing range, and it was snow-clad from one end to the other.  Only on the most easterly spur was the rock just visible.

On the south and south-west nothing was to be seen but the usual undulating Barrier surface.  Biscoe Bay, as Captain Scott has named it, was for the moment a gathering-place for numerous icebergs; one or two of these seemed to be aground.  The inmost corner of the bay was covered with sea-ice.  On its eastern side the Barrier edge could be seen to continue northward, as marked in Captain Scott’s chart; but no indication of bare land was visible in that quarter.

Having built a snow beacon, 6 feet high, on the summit, we put on our ski again and went down the eastern slope of the hill at a whizzing pace.  On this side there was an approach to the level on the north of the precipice, and we availed ourselves of it.  Seen from below the mountain crest looked quite grand, with a perpendicular drop of about 1,000 feet.  The cliff was covered with ice up to a height of about 100 feet, and this circumstance threatened to be a serious obstacle to our obtaining specimens of the rocks.  But in one place a nunatak about 250 feet high stood out in front of the precipice, and the ascent of this offered no great difficulty.