nto them were not uncommon. One large lid fell in just as a
sledge had cleared it, leaving a hole twelve feet wide, and at least a
hundred feet deep. Once over this zone, the sledges were worked along
the slope leading to the mainland where we were continually worried by
their slipping sideways.

Ahead was a vast sea of crushed ice, tossed and piled in every
direction. On the northern horizon rose what we concluded to be a
flat-topped, castellated berg. Ten days later, it resolved itself into a
tract of heavy pressure ridges.

Camping after nine and a half miles, we were surprised, on moving
east in the morning, to sight clearly the point--Cape Gerlache--of
a peninsula running inland to the southwest. A glacier from the
hinterland, pushing out from its valley, had broken up the shelf-ice on
which we were travelling to such an extent that nothing without wings
could cross it. Our object was to map in the coastline as far east as
possible, and the problem, now, was whether to go north or south. From
our position the former looked the best, the tumbled shelf-ice appearing
to smooth out sufficiently, about ten miles away, to afford a passage
east, while, to the south, we scanned the Denman Glacier, as it was
named, rolling in magnificent cascades, twelve miles in breadth, from a
height of more than three thousand feet. To get round the head of this
ice-stream would mean travelling inland for at least thirty miles.

So north we went, getting back to our old surface over a heavy "cross
sea," honeycombed with pits and chasms; many of them with no visible
bottom. There was half a mile to safety, but the area had to be crossed
five times; the load on the twelve-foot sledge being so much, that half
the weight was taken off and the empty sledges brought back for the
other half. Last of all came the dogs' sledge. Kennedy remarked during
the afternoon that he felt like a fly walking on wire-netting.

The camp was pitched in a line of pressure, with wide crevasses and
"hell-holes" within a few yards on every side. Altogether the day's
march had been a miserable four miles. On several occasions, during the
night, while in this disturbed area, sounds of movement were distinctly
heard; cracks like rifle shots and others similar to distant heavy guns,
accompanied by a weird, moaning noise as of the glacier moving over
rocks.

November 18 was a fine, bright day: temperature 8 degrees to 20 degrees
F. Until lunch, the course was mainl