haze and snow, and after proceeding for two hours the ‘Endurance’ was stopped again by heavy floes.  It was impossible to manoeuvre the ship in the ice owing to the strong wind, which kept the floes in movement and caused lanes to open and close with dangerous rapidity.  The noon observation showed that we had made six miles to the south-east in the previous twenty-four hours.  All hands were engaged during the day in rubbing shoots off our potatoes, which were found to be sprouting freely.  We remained moored to a floe over the following day, the wind not having moderated; indeed, it freshened to a gale in the afternoon, and the members of the staff and crew took advantage of the pause to enjoy a vigorously contested game of football on the level surface of the floe alongside the ship.  Twelve bergs were in sight at this time.  The noon position was lat. 62° 42´ S., long. 17° 54´ W., showing that we had drifted about six miles in a north-easterly direction.

Monday, December 21, was beautifully fine, with a gentle west-north-westerly breeze.  We made a start at 3 a.m. and proceeded through the pack in a south-westerly direction.  At noon we had gained seven miles almost due east, the northerly drift of the pack having continued while the ship was apparently moving to the south.  Petrels of several species, penguins, and seals were plentiful, and we saw four small blue whales.  At noon we entered a long lead to the southward and passed around and between nine splendid bergs.  One mighty specimen was shaped like the Rock of Gibraltar but with steeper cliffs, and another had a natural dock that would have contained the ‘Aquitania’.  A spur of ice closed the entrance to the huge blue pool.  Hurley brought out his kinematograph-camera, in order to make a record of these bergs.  Fine long leads running east and south-east among bergs were found during the afternoon, but at midnight the ship was stopped by small, heavy ice-floes, tightly packed against an unbroken plain of ice.  The outlook from the mast-head was not encouraging.  The big floe was at least 15 miles long and 10 miles wide.  The edge could not be seen at the widest part, and the area of the floe must have been not less than 150 square miles.  It appeared to be formed of year-old ice, not very thick and with very few hummocks or ridges in it.  We thought it must have been formed at sea in very calm weather and drifted up from the south-east.  I had never seen such a large area of unbroken ice in the Ross Sea.

We waited with banked fires for the strong easterly breeze to moderate or the pack to open.  At 6.30 p.m. on December 22 some lanes opened and we were able to move towards the south again.  The following morning found us working slowly through the pack, and the noon observation gave us a gain of 19 miles S. 41° W. for the seventeen and a half hours under steam.  Many year-old adelies, three crab-eaters, six sea-leopards, one Weddell and two blue whales