CHAPTER II

NEW LAND

The first day of the New Year (January 1, 1915) was cloudy, with a gentle northerly breeze and occasional snow-squalls.  The condition of the pack improved in the evening, and after 8 p.m. we forged ahead rapidly through brittle young ice, easily broken by the ship.  A few hours later a moderate gale came up from the east, with continuous snow.  After 4 a.m. on the 2nd we got into thick old pack-ice, showing signs of heavy pressure.  It was much hummocked, but large areas of open water and long leads to the south-west continued until noon.  The position then was lat. 69° 49´ S., long. 15° 42´ W., and the run for the twenty-four hours had been 124 miles S. 3° W. This was cheering.

The heavy pack blocked the way south after midday.  It would have been almost impossible to have pushed the ship into the ice, and in any case the gale would have made such a proceeding highly dangerous.  So we dodged along to the west and north, looking for a suitable opening towards the south.  The good run had given me hope of sighting the land on the following day, and the delay was annoying.  I was growing anxious to reach land on account of the dogs, which had not been able to get exercise for four weeks, and were becoming run down.  We passed at least two hundred bergs during the day, and we noticed also large masses of hummocky bay-ice and ice-foot.  One floe of bay-ice had black earth upon it, apparently basaltic in origin, and there was a large berg with a broad band of yellowish brown right through it.  The stain may have been volcanic dust.  Many of the bergs had quaint shapes.  There was one that exactly resembled a large two-funnel liner, complete in silhouette except for smoke.  Later in the day we found an opening in the pack and made 9 miles to the south-west, but at 2 a.m. on January 3 the lead ended in hummocky ice, impossible to penetrate.  A moderate easterly gale had come up with snow-squalls, and we could not get a clear view in any direction.  The hummocky ice did not offer a suitable anchorage for the ship, and we were compelled to dodge up and down for ten hours before we were able to make fast to a small floe under the lee of a berg 120 ft. high.  The berg broke the wind and saved us drifting fast to leeward.  The position was lat. 69° 59´ S., long. 17° 31´ W. We made a move again at 7 p.m., when we took in the ice-anchor and proceeded south, and at 10 p.m. we passed a small berg that the ship had nearly touched twelve hours previously.  Obviously we were not making much headway.  Several of the bergs passed during this day were of solid blue ice, indicating true glacier origin.