THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 423 
gent observations of all the phenomena that could be 
studied. The days were short, but the party were on the 
sunward side of the circle, and there was no week-long 
darkness to contend with. The weather however was 
very bad ; tempestuous winds raged for a week at a time, 
whirling the copious snowfall in fierce blizzards, and 
often threatening to tear the ship to pieces, though the 
sea-ice was never cracked or even thrown into dangerous 
pressure-ridges. 
When spring came sledge- journeys were resumed, but 
they were not for exploration so much as for research, 
and the results have an importance which cannot be stated 
at once. No bare land was seen except the solitary 
nunatak of the Gaussberg, and when summer came all 
thoughts turned to the freeing of the ship. The ice was 
from 15 to 20 feet thick, and blasting made no impression 
on it. A deep trough was melted in the ice to the depth 
of six feet or more by the heat of the sun beating down 
upon the black surface of a path of cinders that had been 
spread from the ship to the edge of the floe for that 
purpose, and after many days a storm came which first 
freed the floe and set it adrift, then cracked it along the 
sun-wrought line of weakness and the Gauss was free. 
Burning the oily bodies of penguins as fuel, the ship 
began to move on February 8th, 1903. For two months 
she struggled in the ice, trying to work her way to the 
westward through the drifting bergs and floes, and at 
length in longitude 8o° E. she gave up the attempt and 
struck northward into the open sea. Oceanographical 
work was continued and Cape Town was not reached 
until June 9th. Drygalski was anxious to spend another 
season in the Antarctic in order to investigate the condi- 
tions between the newly discovered Kaiser Wilhelm II. 
