3 o8 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Sept. 



knowledge of the Antarctic Regions, it is doubtful whether 

 extensive journeys will ever be made over the sea-ice. 



We have, therefore, this great geographical difference 

 between the North and the South : the greater part of 

 Northern travelling has been and will be done on sea-ice, 

 but the greater part of Southern travelling has been and will 

 be done over land surfaces, or what in this respect are their 

 equivalents. 



The relative merits of these surfaces, always excepting the 

 very rough hummocked sea-ice, is a matter which has been 

 placed beyond doubt by travellers in the North, and hence it 

 is of interest to relate our own experience with regard to it. 

 On travelling over the Great Barrier to the south, I was con- 

 stantly impressed by recognising the difficulties of surface so 

 graphically described by Nansen in his ' First Crossing of 

 Greenland,' and I came to the conclusion that the conditions 

 were very similar. But I was still more impressed by the 

 obvious impossibility of dragging a sledge over such a surface 

 at the rate maintained by the old English travellers on the 

 Northern sea-ice. I was so exercised on this score that I was 

 forced to wonder whether it might not be our own incapacity 

 fcr walking that caused us to fall so far short of those old 

 records, and the thought that the British race of explorers had 

 deteriorated so rapidly and so completely in stamina was by 

 no means a pleasant one. In the following year, in carrying 

 out our exploration to the west, I made no fewer than six 

 crossings over the sea-ice of the strait, a distance of about 

 forty-five statute miles, and the mystery was revealed when we 

 found that we could cover this distance with full weights in 

 two and a half days, while with light weights we actually got 

 across in one and a half day, covering over thirty-six miles in 

 a single day. 



It was consoling to be free from immediate alarm in regard 

 to our racial stamina, but a flood of light was thrown on the 

 comparatively difficult nature of the barrier surface ; we saw 

 that the difficulties we had met in crossing it were by no 

 means existent only in our imagination. The barrier surface 



