THE ROSS BARRIER 127 



Bight. On arriving at the spot where Balloon Bight was formerly situated, we 

 found that it had entirely disappeared ; an immense strip of the Barrier had evidently 

 broken away and put out to sea since the time of Scott's visit. The Nimrod 

 reached lat. 78° 41' S., long. 164° 30' W., i.e. about 10 miles south of the latitude of 

 the Discovery when at her farthest south in Balloon Bight in 1902. No bottom was 

 found by us at 300 fathoms at lat. 78° 19' S., long. 162° 53' W. The approximate 

 shajje and extent of the mass of the Barrier which had drifted out to sea 

 between 1902 and January 1908 is shown on the accompanying figure, the present 

 general outline being taken from Amundsen's plan in his work The South Pole, 

 vol. ii. p. 350. 



Obviously, it would have been impossible for such a huge mass of the Barrier to 

 have gone out to sea in such a comparatively short time unless it had been afloat. 

 Our discovery of land masses covered by ice, immediately to the south of the Bay 

 of Whales (formerly in part Borchgrevink Inlet), suggests that the east and west 

 valleys in the Barrier, in this region, may be due to the stemming action of the land 

 in resisting the northward movement of the Barrier. This land, immediately to the 

 south of the winter quarters, " Framheim," of Amundsen's Expedition, is shown on 

 his plan as an island or nunatak, completely buried under ice, and 1100 feet above 

 sea-level. 



In regard to disturbances indicating movement of the Bai'rier, Shackleton 

 records that the long volcanic promontory, about 66 miles south of Mount 

 Erebus, known as Minna Bluff, gives rise to heavy crevasses in the Barrier. 

 He describes the surface there as "all hillocks and chasms, the pits often over 

 100 feet deep." Macintosh and Day, of our expedition, when engaged with 

 Joyce and Marston in laying a depot for the returning Southern Party, at the 

 beginning of 1909, observed that the Barrier surface on the south side — the 

 stoss-seite — was raised by the pressure of the ice farther south, apparently more 

 than a hundred feet higher than the Barrier surface on the north — that is, the 

 lee-seite—o^ the bluff. The appearance, as roughly sketched by Day, is shown 

 on Plate XXXIV. 



This depot-laying party wei-e so fortunate as to sight, on February 15, 1909, 

 the bamboo pole, with its tattered flag, marking the old Depot " A " of the Discovery 

 Expedition. This dejiot was established on October 1, 1902. It was about 9-2 

 statute miles from Minna Bluff,* in line with a sharp volcanic peak at the end of 

 the Bluff" and Mount Discovery. Thus 6 years and 6 months had elapsed since its •• 

 erection and the re-alignment of its position by Macintosh. It was found that, in 

 the interval, it had travelled for a total distance of about 3200 yards, that is, 1 

 mile 1440 yards (2927 metres). The direction of the movement was towards about 

 N. 30° E. This gives a rate of about 492 yards (450 metres) per year, or 1*348 



* The original position of Scott's Depot " A " is taken from the plan published in the Meteoro- 

 logical Report, part 1, of the Nat. Antarctic Expedition of 1901-4. 



