702 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



east of the large bay in a small bay, named Balloon Bight, and from 

 there to ascend the Ice Barrier, which heretofore had been considered 

 an insurmountable obstacle to further advance towai'd the south. 



In 1901 the Discovery steamed along the Barrier and confirmed in 

 every respect what the Southern Cross had observed. Land was also 

 discovered in the direction indicated by Ross, namely, King Edward 

 VII Land. Scott, too, landed in Balloon Bight, and, like his prede- 

 cessors, saw the large bay to the west. 



In 1908 Shackleton arrived there on the Nimrod. He, too, fol- 

 lowed along the edge of the Ice Barrier. He came to the conclusion 

 that disturbances had taken place in the Ice Barrier. The shore line 

 of Balloon Bight, he thought, had changed and merged with the large 

 bay to the west. This large bay, which he thought to be of recent 

 origin, he named Bay of Wliales. He gave up his original plan of 

 landing there, as the Ice Barrier appeared to him too dangerous for 

 the esta])lishment of winter quarters. 



It was not difficult to determine that the bay shown on Ross's 

 map and the so-called Bay of Whales are identical; it was only 

 necessary to compare the two maps. Except for a few pieces that 

 had broken off from the Barrier, the bay had remained the same for 

 the last 70 years. It was therefore possible to assume that the 

 bay did not owe its origin to chance and that it must be underlain 

 by land, either in the form of sand banks or otherwise. 



This bay we decided upon as our base of operations. It lies 400 

 mUes from the English station in McMurdo Sound and 115 miles 

 from King Edward VII Land. We could therefore assume that we 

 should be far enough from the English sphere of interest and need- 

 not fear ci-ossing the route of the Englisli expedition. The leports 

 concerning the Japanese station on King Edwai'd VII Land were 

 indefinite. We took it for granted, however, that a distance of 115 

 mUes would suffice. 



On August 9, 1910, we left Norway on the Fram, the ship that had 

 originally been built for Nansen. We had 97 superb Eskimo dogs 

 and provisions for two years. The first harbor we reached was 

 Madeira. There the last preparations were made for our voyage 

 to the Ross Barrier — truly not an insignificant distance which we 

 had to cover, namely, 16,000 nautical miles from Norway to the 

 Bay of Whales. We had estimated that this trip would require 

 five months. The Fram, which has justly been called the stanchest 

 polar ship in the world, on this voyage across practically all of the 

 oceans proved herself to be extremely seaworthy. Thus we traversed 

 without a single mishap the regions of the northeast and of the 

 southeast trades, the stormy seas of the "roaring forties," the fogs 

 of the fifties, the ice-filled sixties, and reached our field of work at 

 the Ice Barrier on January 14, 1911. Everj'thing had gone splendidly. 



