Before we entered the actual line of bergs a couple of seals, probably a crabeater and a Weddell seal, appeared on the floe-ice, and a few Adelie penguins were also seen. The quaint walk and insatiable curiosity of these birds greatly amused us, and Marston, our artist, whose sense of the ludicrous is very fully developed, was in ecstasies at their genuine surprise and profound concern when they saw the ship. It was fortunate that we cleared the ice during that afternoon, for shortly afterwards the wind increased, and the weather thickened with falling snow. CHAPTER VII THE ATTEMPT TO REACH KING EDWARD VII LAND We were now in the Ross Sea, and evidently had avoided the main pack. Our position at noon (Jan. 17) was 70° 43′ South latitude, and 178° 58′ East longitude, and we were steering a little more westerly so as to strike the Barrier well to the east of Barrier Inlet, and also to avoid the heavy pack that previous expeditions had encountered to the east of meridian 160° West. The snow had now become hard and dry, like sago--the true Antarctic type, and numbers of Antarctic petrels circled round and round the ship. We were now revelling in the indescribable freshness of the Antarctic that seems to permeate one's being, and which must be responsible for that longing to go again which assails each returned explorer from polar regions. On the morning of the 23rd we saw some very large icebergs, which were evidently great masses broken off the Barrier, and we were keeping a sharp look-out for the Barrier itself. The thermometer registered some twelve degrees of frost, but the wind was so dry that we scarcely felt the cold. [Illustration: Flight of Antarctic Petrels] At 9.30 A.M. on the 23rd a low straight line appeared ahead of the ship. It was the Barrier. After half an hour it disappeared, but by eleven o'clock the straight line stretching east and west was in full view and we rapidly approached it. I had hoped to make the Barrier about the position of what we call the Western Bight, and at noon we could see a point which was obviously the eastern limit of the Western Bight. Soon afterwards we were within a quarter of a mile of the ice-face, and exclamations of wonder at the stupendous bulk of the Barrier were drawn from those who had not seen it before. Looking at the Barrier from some little distance, one would imagine it to be a perfectly even wall of ice; when steaming along parallel with it, however, the impression it gave was that of a series of points, each of which looked as though it might be the horn of a bay. Then when the ship came abeam of it, one would see that the wall only receded for a few hundred yards, and afterwards new points came into view as the ship moved on. The weather continued fine and calm, and there was absolutely no sign of the strong westerly current along the Barrier which we had always encountered during the voyage of the _Discovery_.