394 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
but hard work and hope made the unsavoury food so 
welcome that seven meals were disposed of in the twenty- 
four hours. On the 14th, thanks partly to the cutting 
and partly to the wind the ship broke loose and was 
water-borne once more, but another month elapsed before 
she was able to win her way to the open sea, and it was 
March 28th, 1899, before she steamed into Punta Arenas. 
Never before were the bleak shores of Magellan Strait 
so welcome to the seafarer, and the harsh autumn wind 
from the forests of Tierra del Fuego was laden with all 
the perfumes of spring to the worn-out explorers who for 
more than a year had lived in a world of ice with no 
natural odour more fragrant than a penguin rookery. 
The Belgica had a splendid reception when after linger- 
ing in South American ports she returned to Belgium 
early in November. The expedition was of unprecedented 
importance from the duration and regularity of the rou- 
tine scientific observations in the far south, the complete- 
ness of the collections and the zeal and courage of the 
cosmopolitan scientific staff who toiled in great discom- 
fort without even the consolation of free conversation in 
any language equally understood by all. The Belgian 
Government undertook the elaboration and publication of 
the scientific results in the most generous manner, and the 
work of the Belgica will be an enduring monument of 
scientific enthusiasm. 
The Belgica had found no new land south of the Ant- 
arctic circle, but during most of the drift she had been in 
water less than 250 fathoms deep, gradually shoaling 
toward the south, in fact on a continental shelf similar 
to that which belts about the sea-washed continents, 
though submerged to a somewhat greater depth. The 
suggestion is inevitable that somewhere not very far to 
