But the slopes of Mount Terror do not all end in precipices. Farther to
the west they slope quietly into the sea, and the Adélie penguins have
taken advantage of this to found here one of their largest and most
smelly rookeries. When the Discovery arrived off this rookery she sent a
boat ashore and set up a post with a record upon it to guide the relief
ship in the following year. The post still stands. Later it became
desirable to bring the record left here more up to date, and so one of
the first sledging parties went to try and find a way by the Barrier to
this spot.

They were prevented from reaching the record by a series of most violent
blizzards, and indeed Cape Crozier is one of the windiest places on
earth, but they proved beyond doubt that a back-door to the Adélie
penguins' rookery existed by way of the slopes of Mount Terror behind the
Knoll. Early the next year another party reached the record all right,
and while exploring the neighbourhood looked down over the 800-feet
precipice which forms the snout of Cape Crozier. The sea was frozen over,
and in a small bay of ice formed by the cliffs of the Barrier below were
numerous little dots which resolved themselves into Emperor penguins.
Could this be the breeding-place of these wonderful birds? If so, they
must nurse their eggs in mid-winter, in unimagined cold and darkness.

Five days more elapsed before further investigation could be made, for a
violent blizzard kept the party in their tents. On October 18 they set
out to climb the high pressure ridges which lie between the level barrier
and the sea. They found that their conjectures were right: there was the
colony of Emperors. Several were nursing chicks, but all the ice in the
Ross Sea was gone; only the small bay of ice remained. The number of
adult birds was estimated at four hundred, the number of living chicks
was thirty, and there were some eighty dead ones. No eggs were found.[18]