to the west. We were now
approaching the longitude of D'Urville's landfall, and still the pack
showed no signs of slackening. I was beginning to feel very anxious, and
had decided not to pass that longitude without resorting to desperate
measures.

The change in our fortunes occurred at five o'clock next morning, when
the Chief Officer, Toucher, came down from the bridge to report that the
atmosphere was clearing and that there appeared to be land-ice near
by. Sure enough, on the port side, within a quarter of a mile, rose a
massive barrier of ice extending far into the mist and separated from
the ship by a little loose pack-ice. The problem to be solved was,
whether it was the seaward face of an ice-covered continent, the
ice-capping of a low island or only a flat-topped iceberg of immense
proportions.

By 7 A.M. a corner was reached where the ice-wall trended southward,
limned on the horizon in a series of bays and headlands. An El Dorado
had opened before us, for the winds coming from the east of south had
cleared the pack away from the lee of the ice-wall, so that in the
distance a comparatively clear sea was visible, closed by a bar of ice,
a few miles in extent. Into this we steered, hugging the ice-wall, and
were soon in the open, speeding along in glorious sunshine, bringing new
sights into view every moment.

The wall, along the northern face, was low--from thirty to seventy feet
in height--but the face along which we were now progressing gradually
rose in altitude to the south. It was obviously a shelf-ice formation
(or a glacier-tongue projection of it), exactly similar in build, for
instance, to the Great Ross Barrier so well described by Ross, Scott,
and others. At the north-west corner, at half a dozen places within
a few miles of each other, the wall was puckered up and surmounted by
semi-conical eminences, half as high as the face itself. These peculiar
elevations were unlike anything previously recorded and remained
unexplained for a while, until closer inspection showed them to be the
result of impact with other ice-masses--a curious but conceivable cause.

On pieces of broken floe Weddell seals were noted. They were the first
seen on the voyage and a sure indication of land, for their habitat
ranges over the coastal waters of Antarctic lands.

A large, low, dome-topped elevation, about one mile in diameter, was
passed on the starboard side, at a distance of two miles from the long
ice-cliff. Th