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Updated: June 13, 2025
In four days this land was visibly nearer, sheer basaltic cliffs mixed with glacier, forming apparently a great bay, with two small islands in the mid-distance; and at fore-day of the 3rd August I arrived at the definite edge of the pack-ice in moderate weather at about the freezing-point.
When these lie closely together the mass is called pack-ice; in which shape it usually drifts away with the southern currents, and, separating as it travels south, is met with in loose floating masses, of every fantastic form.
On the Danish charts six different kinds of sea-ice are marked namely, unbroken polar ice; land-floe; great ice-fields; tight pack-ice; open ice; bay-ice and brash. With the exception of bay-ice, which is more generally known as young ice, all these terms pass current in the Antarctic.
It was on this day I decided finally that the crew for the 'James Caird' should consist of Worsley, Crean, McNeish, McCarthy, Vincent, and myself. A storm came on about noon, with driving snow and heavy squalls. Occasionally the air would clear for a few minutes, and we could see a line of pack-ice, five miles out, driving across from west to east.
My hypothesis of the solidity of the Barrier that is, of its resting upon underlying land seems to be confirmed at all points by our observations during our twelve months' stay on it. In the course of the winter and spring the pack-ice is forced up against the Barrier into pressure-ridges of as much as 40 feet in height.
Egede observed the keen gaze, though he judged it wise to take no notice of it at the time, but he did not fail to pray mentally that the good seed might take root. The attention of the party was called off the subject of discourse just then by a further movement of the pack-ice. "See, the lanes of open water widen," exclaimed Okiok eagerly, pointing seaward.
The travellers struggled gallantly against these adverse circumstances as long as any progress northward was at all possible, being desirous of realising, as fully as might be, for themselves the difficulties experienced by explorers in these high latitudes; but at length they found themselves so completely hemmed in by vast floes and drifting masses of pack-ice that to prolong the struggle would only be endangering the ship, and they were reluctantly compelled to own themselves beaten and to rise into the air.
In the following year this cylinder was found by the Morning, and so the first information was given that the Discovery had succeeded in reaching these southern regions. Very soon, however, the tidal stream began to make from the south, and the whole aspect of the streams of heavy pack-ice rapidly changed.
To struggle towards the Pole over the pack-ice, at times reared in rough hillocks and at times split with lanes of open water, proved a feat beyond the power of man. Nansen and his companion got as far as latitude 86° 13', a long way north of all previous records. By sheer pluck and endurance they managed to make their way southward again.
Fifteen inches of snow fell in the next twenty-four hours, making over two feet between August 18 and 21. A slight swell next day from the north-east ground up the pack-ice, but this soon subsided, and the pack became consolidated once more.
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