Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/316

222 to an indefinite extent in an E.S.E. direction. We were at this time in lat. 77° 47′ S., long. 176° 43′ E. The magnetic dip had diminished to 87° 22′ S., and the variation amounted to 104° 25′ E. The wind fell light shortly before noon, but we fortunately had time to increase our distance from the barrier before it fell calm; for the northerly swell, though by no means of any great height, drifted us gradually towards it without our being able to make any effort to avoid the serious consequences that must have resulted had we been carried against it. We had gained a distance of twelve or fourteen miles from it, and as the Terror was getting short of water, I made the signal to Commander Crozier to collect some of the numerous fragments of the barrier that were about us; whilst in the Erebus we were engaged making observations on the depth and temperature of the sea. We sounded in four hundred and ten fathoms, the leads having sunk fully two feet into a soft green mud, of which a considerable quantity still adhered to them. The temperature of three hundred fathoms was 34° 2′, and at one hundred and fifty fathoms, 33°; that of the surface being 31°, and the air 28°. So great a depth of water seemed to remove the supposition that had been suggested, of this great mass of ice being formed upon a ledge of rock, and to show that its outer edge at any rate could not be resting on the ground.