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the margin, and from each streamed the evanescent, azure vapour. Each
puncture and tiny grotto was filled with it, and a sloping cap of
shimmering snow spread over the summit. The profile-view was an exact
replica of a battleship, grounded astern. The bold contour of the
bow was perfect, and the massive flank had been torn and shattered
by shell-fire in a desperate naval battle. This berg had heeled over
considerably, and the original water-line ran as a definite rim, thirty
feet above the green water. From this rim shelved down a smooth and
polished base, marked with fine vertical striae.

Soundings varied from twenty to two hundred fathoms, and, accordingly,
the navigation was particularly anxious work.

Extending along about fifteen miles of coast, where the inland ice came
down steeply to the sea, was a marginal belt of sea, about two or three
miles in width, thickly strewn with rocky islets. Of these some were
flat and others peaked, but all were thickly populated by penguins,
petrels and seals. The rocks appeared all to be gneisses and schists.

Later that night we lay off a possible landing-place for one of our
bases, but, on more closely inspecting it in the morning, we decided to
proceed farther west into a wide sweeping bay which opened ahead. About
fifty miles ahead, on the far side of Commonwealth Bay, as we named it,
was a cape which roughly represented in position Cape Decouverte, the
most easterly extension of Adelie Land seen by D'Urville in 1840.
Though Commonwealth Bay and the land already seen had never before been
sighted, all was placed under the territorial name of Adelie Land.

The land was so overwhelmed with ice that, even at sea-level, the rock
was all but entirely hidden. Here was an ice age in all earnestness; a
picture of Northern Europe during the Great Ice Age some fifty thousand
years ago. It was evident that the glaciation of Adelie Land was much
more severe than that in higher Antarctic latitudes, as exampled on the
borders of the Ross Sea; the arena of Scott's, Shackleton's and other
expeditions. The temperature could not be colder, so we were led to
surmise that the snowfall must be excessive. The full truth was to be
ascertained by bitter experience, after spending a year on the spot.

I had hoped to find the Antarctic continent in these latitudes bounded
by a rocky and attractive coast like that in the vicinity of Cape Adare;
the nearest well-explored region. It had proved oth