a mile from the
end of Cape Evans and is called Inaccessible Island, owing to the
inhospitality of its steep lava side, even when the sea is frozen; we
found a way up, but it is not a very interesting place. Tent Island lies
farther out and to the south-west. The remaining two, which are more
islets than islands, rise in front of us in South Bay. They are called
Great and Little Razorback, being ribs of rock with a sharp divide in the
centre. The latter of these is the refuge upon which Scott's party
returning to Cape Evans pitched their camp when overtaken by a blizzard
some weeks ago. All these islands are of volcanic origin and black in
general colour, but I believe there is evidence to show that the lava
stream which created them flowed from McMurdo Sound rather than from the
more obvious craters of Erebus. Their importance in this story is the
indirect help they gave in holding in sea-ice against southerly
blizzards, and in forming landmarks which proved useful more than once to
men who had lost their bearings in darkness and thick weather. In this
respect also several icebergs which sailed in from the Ross Sea and
grounded on the shallows which run between Inaccessible Island and the
cape, as well as in South Bay, were most useful as well as being
interesting and beautiful. For two years we watched the weathering of
these great towers and bastions of ice by sea and sun and wind, and left
them still lying in the same positions, but mere tumbled ruins of their
former selves.

Many places in the panorama we have examined show black rock, and the
cape on which we stand exposes at times more black than white. This fact
always puzzles those who naturally conclude that all the Antarctic is
covered with ice and snow. The explanation is simple, that winds of the
great velocity which prevails in this region will not only prevent snow
resting to windward of out-cropping rocks and cliffs, but will even wear
away the rocks themselves. The fact that these winds always blow from the
south, or southerly, causes a tendency for this aspect of any projecting
rock to be blown free from snow, while the north or lee side is drifted
up by a marbled and extremely hard tongue of snow, which disappears into
a point at a distance which depends upon the size of the rock.

Of course for the most part the land is covered to such a depth by
glaciers and snow that no wind will do more than pack the snow or expose
the ice beneath. At the same t