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The course was now directed for Robertson Bay, and after some difficulty, owing to the reappearance of loose streams of pack-ice, the ship was eventually steered into the open water within the bay. It was on this spit that the expedition sent forth by Sir George Newnes and commanded by Borchgrevink spent their winter in 1896, the first party to winter on the shores of the Antarctic Continent.
We must acknowledge that by ascending the Barrier, Borchgrevink opened a way to the south, and threw aside the greatest obstacle to the expeditions that followed. The Southern Cross returned to civilization in March, 1900. The Valdivia's expedition, under Professor Chun, of Leipzig, must be mentioned, though in our day it can hardly be regarded as an Antarctic expedition.
At this part of the voyage King Edward VII. Land was discovered, but the thick ice-floes prevented the expedition from landing. On the way back the ship entered the same bight that Borchgrevink had visited in 1900, and a balloon ascent was made on the Barrier. The bay was called Balloon Inlet. From here the ship returned to McMurdo Bay, so named by Ross.
The old huts left by Borchgrevink in 1900 were much dilapidated: one snowed up inside, and the other roofless and full of penguin guano. The snow was all removed from the snow-choked hut, and this shack used as a temporary shelter during the building of the Chateau Campbell.
Borchgrevink in his "Southern Cross" Antarctic Expedition used this position as his winter quarters, and found, just as Campbell did, that it was not a suitable part of the Antarctic continent for making extensive sledge journeys from. Still, King Edward's Land was denied him.
In January 1842 he reached farthest south, 76°. Since his time little has been attempted in the south, though in the winter of 1894-95 C. E. Borchgrevink again visited Victoria Land. They were last seen by a whaler on the 26th July of the former year waiting to pass into Lancaster Sound.
While the Belgica was trying her hardest to get out of the ice, another vessel was making equally strenuous efforts to get in. This was the Southern Cross, the ship of the English expedition, under the leadership of Carstens Borchgrevink. This expedition's field of work lay on the opposite side of the Pole, in Ross's footsteps.
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