March 25.--The storm continued all night, but stopped suddenly soon after sunrise. The morning gave no promise of better weather. The sky remained low, the atmosphere wet and uncomfortable. After noon a southerly wind cleared the sky and the air, and sent the thermometer falling rapidly. The ice is separating, leaving large, open, endless leads running north-west and south-east; any one of these leads offers us an excellent passage out of this unearthly sea of ice. There is one within two hundred yards of the bow, but this might as well be ten miles off, for we cannot get the vessel to it. We have made some journeys along these leads, but have seen only one giant and two snow petrels. The captain’s observation at noon shows that we have drifted eleven miles northward. We have made a sounding to-day, and are beginning to prepare the _Belgica_ for her long sleep through the coming winter darkness. March 26.--A white day, with a blinding glitter from the ice. An ice-edge southerly wind is keeping the temperature close to -20° C. (-4° F.). In our excursions to-day, we found the leads of yesterday converted into large lakes partly covered by quickly-forming new ice, which was about an inch thick and covered by a decoration of hoar-frost in large crystals. In the centre of these lakes there were small pools of open water, and in these several families of small penguins were darting like sunbeams through the water to keep from freezing to the new ice. The shores of these lakes and the broad sheets of ice, which spread out over the glassy blue water, were covered, decorated, and bejewelled by a garden-like growth of ice-flowers. In the absence of budding plants we take very kindly to these crystal shrubs. It is remarkable how much real pleasure we find in our admiration for apparently insignificant things. The forms of the hummocks, the figures of the drift-snow, and the clusters of glittering ice crystals, displayed everywhere, are a source of never-ceasing entertainment. The most remarkable of these formations are what we have affectionately styled ice-flowers. In reality, they are snow crystals, so assembled as to form clusters, which are arranged in rows on the new ice. These ice-flowers possess the charm of both jewels and blooming plants. In form they are flowers, in texture they are gems. They bud, if I may so express it, with the first sharp breath of winter, casting their fragile tendrils into a hundred delicate forms wherever a suspicion of humidity can be hardened with sufficient regularity and force. Upon porous young ice, adjacent to open water, is the garden spot for these curious growths. They give the finishing touch of harmony to the rough outline of the frowning cliffs of ice. They gleam from the miniature ice mountains. They appear as sparkling flowers upon the black sheets of young ice, and convert the cold monotony of the pack into a glistening field of beauty.