ern limits.

This vast block of ice originates fundamentally from the glacial
flow over the southern hinterland. Every year an additional layer of
consolidated snow is added to its surface by the frequent blizzards.
These annual additions are clearly marked in the section exposed on the
dazzling white face near the brink of the ice-cliff. There is a limit,
however, to the increase in thickness, for the whole mass is ever moving
slowly to the north, driven by the irresistible pressure of the land-ice
behind it. Thus the northern face crumbles down into brash or floats
away as part of a berg severed from the main body of the shelf-ice.

On the morning of January 30 we had the unique experience of witnessing
this crumbling action at work--a cataclysm of snow, ice and water! The
ship was steaming along within three hundred yards of a cliff, when some
loose drifts slid off from its edge, followed by a slice of the face
extending for many hundreds of feet and weighing perhaps one million
tons. It plunged into the sea with a deep booming roar and then rose
majestically, shedding great masses of snow, to roll onwards exposing
its blue, swaying bulk shivering into lumpy masses which pushed towards
the ship in an ever-widening field of ice. It was a grand scene enacted
in the subdued limelight of an overcast day.

During the afternoon the 'Aurora' changed her north-westerly course
round to north-east, winding through a wonderful sea of bergs grounded
in about one hundred and twenty fathoms of water. At times we would pass
through narrow lanes between towering walls and emerge into a straight
wide avenue along which these mountains of ice were ranged. Several were
rather remarkable; one for its exquisite series of stratification
lines, another for its facade in stucco, and a third for its overhanging
cornice fringed with slender icicles.

On January 31 a trawling was made in one hundred and twelve fathoms.
Half a ton of life emptied on the deck gave the biologists occupation
for several days. Included in the catch were a large number of monstrous
gelatinous ascidians or "sea-squirts." Fragments of coal were once more
found; an indication that coaly strata must be very widely distributed
in the Antarctic.

The pack was dense and in massive array at the extremity of Termination
Ice-Tongue. Davis drove the ship through some of it and entered an open
lead which ran like a dark streak away to the east amid ice which grew
heavier a