have resolved themselves into icebergs. On clear days we could get an
extended view in all directions from the mast-head, and the line of the
pack was broken only by familiar bergs. About one hundred bergs were in
view on a fine day, and they seemed practically the same as when they
started their drift with us nearly seven months earlier. The
scientists wished to inspect some of the neighbouring bergs at close
quarters, but sledge travelling outside the well-trodden area
immediately around the ship proved difficult and occasionally
dangerous. On August 20, for example, Worsley, Hurley, and Greenstreet
started off for the Rampart Berg and got on to a lead of young ice that
undulated perilously beneath their feet. A quick turn saved them.

A wonderful mirage of the Fata Morgana type was visible on August 20.
The day was clear and bright, with a blue sky overhead and some rime
aloft.

"The distant pack is thrown up into towering barrier-like cliffs,
which are reflected in blue lakes and lanes of water at their base.
Great white and golden cities of Oriental appearance at close intervals
along these clifftops indicate distant bergs, some not previously known
to us. Floating above these are wavering violet and creamy lines of
still more remote bergs and pack. The lines rise and fall, tremble,
dissipate, and reappear in an endless transformation scene. The
southern pack and bergs, catching the sun's rays, are golden, but to
the north the ice-masses are purple. Here the bergs assume changing
forms, first a castle, then a balloon just clear of the horizon, that
changes swiftly into an immense mushroom, a mosque, or a cathedral.
The principal characteristic is the vertical lengthening of the object,
a small pressure-ridge being given the appearance of a line of
battlements or towering cliffs. The mirage is produced by refraction