Our days grew shorter rapidly. In the fading light we made haste to examine our surroundings with care, and to make sure that we could not find a still better location for the long winter ahead. When the water outside was clear of ice we cruised in the launch along the barrier to make what Chauncey Gale called “scientific developments.” We became convinced, soon, that our warm river formed at its mouth the only available retreat for the Billowcrest, and further, that this river, following up the coast of Victoria Land, was without doubt the current noted by Borchgrevink, who seems not to have thought of tasting as well as testing its waters. Just outside the harbor this river is met by the slow-moving, southward flowing salt current, and forced aside. The ice-wall to the left, or westward, angles somewhat to the north, and the deflected current naturally follows this coast, diffusing itself gradually over the opposite-flowing, sluggish ocean current.

147Examining our river at the point where it emerged from the ice, we found that at low tide there was a space of several feet between its normal surface and the massy barrier above, and in this we recognized a possible entrance to the inland continent, had there been any assurance that we should reach the other side, or, at least, a point above highwater mark before the tide’s return. Chauncey Gale peered into the blackness, and shook his head.

“I don’t like to go into a hole and pull the hole in after me,” he said, “and it seems to me that’s about what we’d do in this case.”

We decided therefore not to attempt this, at most not until the return of summer, and after we had tested the efficiency of our balloon.

The river, we concluded, had been one day open to the sky throughout, but at some far-off period the ice and snows of winter had formed so deeply upon it that the summer warmth could not entirely dissolve them. Each year and century had added thickness and strength to this crystal bridge, until were it not for the widening harbor at the mouth, above which the ice appears never to have remained throughout the year, there would be little to mark the point of en............