polar-explorer Sir John Franklin. Balls at Government House and 

 picnics in the countryside gave the expedition members a last taste 

 of civilization before facing the perils of the Antarctic. During this 

 time they set up their observatory. Then came disturbing news, 

 news that angered Ross. 



Dumont d'UrviUe's expedition and the United States' expedition 

 under Charles Wilkes both claimed to have made important dis- 

 coveries in the area to be explored by Ross. Wilkes even paid Ross 

 the courtesy of giving him a copy of his own charts. But there, 

 regrettably, Ross the obstinate patriot overshadowed Ross the 

 scientist. He decided to ignore the foreign discoveries and to sail 

 south along a meridian farther east than either Wilkes or d'Urville. 

 He was to be well rewarded. 



Shortly after Christmas 1840, Erebus and Terror met their first 

 icebergs — huge flat-topped islands, so very different from the small 

 piimacled bergs of the Arctic. Later explorers were to find icebergs 

 many square miles in extent, and it was James Ross who was to 

 discover where they came from. In January they reached the edge 

 of the ice belt which girdles Antarctica, ice which had deterred 

 Captain Cook. But Erebus and Terror buffeted their way through 

 the pack. On January 5 , Ross found himself in the open sea with 

 not a particle of ice to be seen. The way to the South Magnetic 

 Pole lay open, and southward Ross sailed. Eventually a great range 

 of mountains loomed up ; the Admiralty Range, Ross called them, 

 and the summits' names still commemorate the board of the Ad- 

 miralty of that day. Landing on an offshore island, Ross raised the 

 national flag and, in the presence of a large concourse of penguins, 

 claimed the region for the Queen — Victoria Land. 



But they were still far from the Magnetic Pole which, according 

 to their best calculations, lay five hundred miles to the southwest. 

 Hugging the ice-fringed coast line, the ships continued through 

 the frigid, uncharted waters. Each day they were rewarded with 

 vistas of even more splendid ranges and summits. Officers and men 

 scarcely slept for fear of missing something new. There was a 

 thirteen-thousand-foot-high volcano which emitted dense smoke 

 and streams of red-hot lava. Ross named it Mt. Erebus, and its 

 smaller neighbor Mt. Terror. These mountains were to be familiar 

 landmarks to later polar explorers. 



Farther to the east of the volcanoes another wonder awaited 

 them — a high cliff of ice dazzling white in the sunshine. They were 

 the first men to gaze on this Antarctic ice shelf, which has been a 

 constant source of controversy and mystery. More than 150 feet 

 high, it is the greatest breeding ground of the tabular bergs which 

 the ships had met earlier. It resembled nothing in the Arctic, and 

 Ross called it simply the Barrier, for it was just that to his plans of 

 further progress to the south. 



Ross guided his ships along this wall of ice for 250 miles to the 

 east, as far as long. 1 66° W., yet it continued apparently without end. 

 It was in this area that he decided to look for winter quarters. 

 Turning the ships toward land he began a search for a harbor as 

 close to the Magnetic Pole as possible. At this point he had his 

 first bit of bad luck. Making in the direction of McMurdo Bay, 

 named after the First Lieutenant of the Terror, Ross and his officers 

 miscalculated the distance of a mountain range that backed on the 

 bay. They turned in their tracks and missed one of Antarctica's 



Ross' observatory at Hobart Town, set up 

 in 1840 when Sir John Frank/in was 

 governor of Tasmania. Ross used the 

 observatory to study magnetic variation. 



The globe shows routes followed by Sir 

 James Clark Ross during his exploration 

 of the Arctic regions. (See key for details 

 of each voyage.) 



51 



