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Updated: May 21, 2025
Wilson had not only been busy with the penguins at Cape Crozier, but had also made a complete examination of the enormous and interesting pressure ridges which form the junction of the Great Barrier ice-mass with the land, and subsequently had spent much time in studying the windless area to the south of Ross Island.
"On some of the bergs are masses of earth, gravel and stone, proving that they must lately have been connected with the land; for owing to the old bergs becoming undermined by the waves, they soon turn over, and so of course send their load to the bottom. An examination of the sides of the ice-mass also shows to the eye some other peculiarities.
After a short stop for landing the mails, the vessel was soon traversing Wrangel Strait, just under some splendid glaciers and snowy mountains, the water perfectly smooth, though full of small icebergs, which glittered in the sunshine and had broken off from the descending ice-mass.
'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.
Our guides held a consultation. Each of them examined with a spy-glass the fissure which had been formed between the mountain and this alarming ice-mass. The sharp and clear edges of the cleft betrayed a recent breaking off, evidently caused by the fall of the avalanche.
Crevasses warned us that we were on another glacier, and soon we looked down almost to the seaward edge of the great riven ice-mass. I knew there was no glacier in Stromness and realized that this must be Fortuna Glacier. The disappointment was severe. Back we turned and tramped up the glacier again, not directly tracing our steps but working at a tangent to the south-east. We were very tired.
Some distance below the town it jammed, building with incredible quickness a barrier twenty feet high. The people waited breathless. Again the ice-mass trembled. But the watchers lifted their eyes to the heights above. Was that thunder in the hills? No, the ice again; again crushing, grinding, to the low accompaniment of thunder that seemed to come from far away.
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