westward of Cape Crozier, where it was proposed to erect a post
and leave a cylinder containing an account of their doings, so
that the chain of records might be completed. After a landing had
[Page 53]
been made with some difficulty, a spot was chosen in the center
of the penguin rookery on a small cliff overlooking the sea, and
here the post was set up and anchored with numerous boulders. In
spite of every effort to mark the place, at a few hundred yards it
was almost impossible to distinguish it; but although this small
post on the side of a vast mountain looked a hopeless clue, it
eventually brought the _Morning_ into McMurdo Sound.

While Bernacchi and Barne set up their magnetic instruments and
began the chilly task of taking observations, the others set off
in twos and threes to climb the hillside. Scott, Royds and Wilson
scrambled on until at last they reached the summit of the highest
of the adjacent volcanic cones, and were rewarded by a first view
of the Great Ice Barrier.[1]

[Footnote 1: The immense sheet of ice, over 400 miles wide and of
still greater length.]

'Perhaps,' Scott says, 'of all the problems which lay before us in
the south we were most keenly interested in solving the mysteries
of this great ice-mass.... For sixty years it had been discussed
and rediscussed, and many a theory had been built on the slender
foundation of fact which alone the meager information concerning it
could afford. Now for the first time this extraordinary ice-formation
was seen from above.... It was an impressive sight and the very
vastness of what lay at our feet seemed to add to our sense of