1902] ENTERING PACK-ICE 89 



course did not take us close to any, but even at a distance it 

 was possible to realise the unpleasant shock that would be 

 experienced by suddenly encountering them on a dark night, 

 or in such a fog as that from which we had just emerged. 

 Before our voyage ended we had ample opportunity of appre- 

 ciating what unpleasant neighbours they may prove under such 

 conditions. 



On January 3 we had left our first group of bergs behind 

 us ; early in the morning we crossed the Antarctic Circle, little 

 thinking how long a time would elapse before we recrossed it. 

 We had at length entered the Antarctic Regions; before us 

 lay the scene of our work ; the struggles and trials of pre- 

 paration and the anxiety of delays svere over, and the haste of 

 our long voyage was forgotten in the fact that we had reached 

 the field of our labours in time to take advantage of the best 

 part of the short open season in these ice-bound regions. 

 During the night we had encountered the first of the scattered 

 fragments of sea-ice which form the outriders of the pack, and 

 soon we were passing through loose streams of ice, feeling 

 again the slight shocks as our ironclad prow forced a way 

 through the honeycombed floes. 



Having raised steam in one boiler, at 2.30 we stopped and 

 took a sounding, finding bottom at 2,040 fathoms. The pack 

 was now on all sides of us, but so loose that there were many 

 large pools of open water, in one of which we stopped for our 

 sounding and to put over our dredge. It is almost impossible to 

 sound or dredge in thick pack-ice, owing to the danger of en- 

 tanglement of the lines, and this was to us a very great drawback, 

 because in pursuing our general explorations it was constantly 

 necessary to enter the pack, and consequently the opportu- 

 nities for carrying out such interesting operations as sounding 

 and dredging were largely reduced. 



The belt of pack-ice into which we had now entered was 

 that which was traversed for the first time by Sir James Ross 

 in 1840. We had therefore fully expected to meet it more or 

 less in the latitude in which we actually did so. In general 

 terms it is the ice which freezes over the Ross Sea in the 



