It was not difficult to determine that the bay shown on Ross’s map and the so-called Bay of Whales are identical; it was only necessary to compare the two maps.  Except for a few pieces that had broken off from the Barrier, the bay had remained the same for the last seventy years.  It was therefore possible to assume that the bay did not owe its origin to chance and that it must be underlaid by land, either in the form of sand banks or otherwise.

This bay we decided upon as our base of operations.  It lies 400 miles from the English station in McMurdo Sound and 115 miles from King Edward VII.  Land.  We could therefore assume that we should be far enough from the English sphere of interest and need not fear crossing the route of the English expedition.  The reports concerning the Japanese station on King Edward VII.  Land were indefinite:  we took it for granted, however, that a distance of 115 miles would suffice.

On August 9, 1910, we left Norway on the Fram, the ship that had originally been built for Nansen.  We had ninety-seven superb Eskimo dogs and provisions for two years.  The first harbor we reached was Madeira.  There the last preparations were made for our voyage on the Ross Barrier—­truly not an insignificant distance which we had to cover, namely, 16,000 nautical miles from Norway to the Bay of Whales.  We had estimated that this trip would require five months.  The Fram, which has justly been called the stanchest polar ship in the world, on this voyage across practically all of the oceans, proved herself to be extremely seaworthy.  Thus we traversed without a single mishap the regions of the northeast and of the southeast trades, the stormy seas of the “roaring forties,” the fogs of the fifties, the ice-filled sixties, and reached our field of work at the Ice Barrier on January 14, 1911.  Everything had gone splendidly.

The ice in the Bay of Whales had just broken up, and we were able to advance considerably farther south than any of our predecessors had done.  We found a quiet little nook behind a projecting ice cape; from here we could transfer our equipment to the Barrier with comparative safety.  Another great advantage was that the Barrier at this place descended very gradually to the sea ice, so that we had the best possible surface for our sleds.  Our first undertaking was to ascend the Barrier in order to get a general survey and to determine a suitable place for the erection of the house which we had brought with us.  The supposition that this part of the Barrier rests on land seemed to be confirmed immediately by our surroundings.  Instead of the smooth, flat surface which the outer wall of the Barrier presents, we here found the surface to be very uneven.  We everywhere saw sharp hills, and points between which there were pressure-cracks and depressions filled with large masses of drift.  These features were not of recent date.  On the contrary, it was easy to see that they were very old and that they must have had their origin at a time which long preceded the period of Ross’s visit.