KING EDWARD VII LAND 



the leaky condition of the ship, and the absolute necessity 

 of landing all our stores and putting up the hut before the 

 vessel left us made the situation an extremely anxious 

 one for me. I had not expected to find Barrier Inlet gone, 

 and, at the same time, the way to King Edward VII Land 

 absolutely blocked by ice, though the latter condition was 

 not unusual, for every expedition in this longitude up till 

 1901 had been held up by the pack; indeed Ross, in 

 this locality, sailed for hundreds of miles to the north- 

 ward along the edge of a similar pack on this merid- 

 ian. It is true that we had steam, but the Discovery } 

 or even the Yermdk, the most powerful ice-breaker ever 

 built, would have made no impression upon the cemented 

 field of ice. 



I decided to continue to try and make a way to the 

 east for at least another twenty-four hours. We altered 

 the course to the north, skirting the ice as closely as 

 possible, and taking advantage of the slightest trend to 

 the eastward, at times running into narrow culs-de-sac in 

 the main pack, only to find it necessary to retrace our way 

 again. The wind began to freshen from the west, and 

 the weather to thicken. A little choppy sea washed over 

 the edges of the floes, and the glass was falling. About 

 five o'clock some heavy squalls of snow came down, 

 and we had to go dead slow, for the horizon was 

 limited at times to a radius of less than one hundred 

 yards. Between the squalls it was fairly clear, and 

 we could make out great numbers of long, low bergs, 

 one of which was over five miles in length, though 

 not more than forty feet high. The waves were 

 splashing up against the narrow end as we passed 

 within a couple of cables' length of the berg, and almost 

 immediately afterwards another squall swept down upon 

 us. The weather cleared again shortly, and we saw the 

 western pack moving rapidly towards us under the in- 



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