of Cape Bird look like high cliffs as one gets south of them and form a most conspicuous landmark. We pushed past these cliffs into streams of heavy bay ice, making fair progress; as we proceeded the lanes became scarcer the floes heavier, but the latter remain loose. ‘Many of us spent the night on deck as we pushed through the pack.’ We have passed some very large floes evidently frozen in the strait. This is curious, as all previous evidence has pointed to the clearance of ice sheets north of Cape Royds early in the spring.
I have observed several floes with an entirely new type of surface. They are covered with scales, each scale consisting of a number of little flaky ice sheets superimposed, and all ‘dipping’ at the same angle. It suggests to me a surface with sastrugi and layers of fine dust on which the snow has taken hold.
We are within 5 miles of Cape Royds and ought to get there.
Wednesday, January 4, p.m.—This work is full of surprises.
At 6 a.m. 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 2 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
