Bird, the N.W. extremity of Ross Island, we carried out a detailed
running survey.

When we neared Cape Bird and Beaufort Island we could see that there was
much pack in the mouth of the Strait. By keeping close in to the land we
avoided the worst of the trouble, and "as we rounded Cape Bird we came in
sight of the old well-remembered landmarks--Mount Discovery and the
Western Mountains--seen dimly through a hazy atmosphere. It was good to
see them again, and perhaps after all we are better this side of the
Island. It gives one a homely feeling to see such a familiar scene."[89]

Right round from Cape Crozier to Cape Royds the coast is cold and
forbidding, and for the most part heavily crevassed. West of Cape Bird
are some small penguin rookeries, and high up on the ice slopes could be
seen some grey granite boulders. These are erratics, brought by ice from
the Western Mountains, and are evidence of a warmer past when the Barrier
rose some two thousand feet higher than it does now, and stretched many
hundreds of miles farther out to sea. But now the Antarctic is becoming
colder, the deposition of snow is therefore farther north, and the
formation of ice correspondingly less.

[Illustration: SOUNDING--E. A. Wilson, del.]

[Illustration: KRISRAVITZA]

Many watched all night, as this new world unfolded itself, cape by cape
and mountain by mountain. We pushed through some heavy floes and "at 6
A.M. (on January 4) 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