This inlet was afterwards named Granite Harbor, and so snug and secure a spot was it to winter in that Scott expressed his thankfulness that he did not yield to its allurements. 'Surrounded as we should have been by steep and lofty hills, we could have obtained only the most local records of climatic conditions, and our meteorological observations would have been comparatively valueless; but the greatest drawback would have been that we should be completely cut off from traveling over the sea-ice beyond the mouth of our harbor.... It is when one remembers how naturally a decision to return to this place might have been made, that one sees how easily the results of the expedition might have been missed.'
It was, however, consoling at the time to know that, in default of a better place, a safe spot had been found for wintering, so with Granite Harbor in reserve the ship again took up her battle with the ice; and on the 21st she was in the middle of McMurdo Sound, and creeping very slowly through the pack-ice, which appeared from the crow's-nest to extend indefinitely ahead. They were now within a few miles of the spot where they ultimately took up their winter quarters, but nearly three weeks were to pass before they returned there. 'At 8 P.M. on the 21st,' Scott says, 'we thought we knew as much of this region as our heavy expenditure of coal in the pack-ice would justify us in finding out, and as before us lay the great unsolved problem of the barrier and of what lay beyond it, we turned our course with the cry of Eastward ho!'
CHAPTER III
IN SEARCH OF WINTER QUARTERS
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Beholde I see the haven near at hand To which I mean my wearie course to bend; Vere the main sheet and bear up to the land To which afore is fairly to be ken'd. —SPENSER, Faerie Queene. |
In their journey from Cape Washington to the south something had already been done to justify the dispatch of the expedition. A coast-line which hitherto had been seen only at a great distance, and reported so indefinitely that doubts were left with regard to its continuity, had been resolved into a concrete chain of mountains; and the positions and forms of individual heights, with the curious ice formations and the general line of the coast, had been observed. In short the map of the Antarctic had already received valuable additions, and whatever was to happen in the future that, at any rate, was all to the good.
At 8 P.M. on the 22nd the ship arrived off the bare land to the westward of Cape Crozier, where it was proposed to erect a post and leave a cylinder containing an account of their doings, so that the chain of records might be completed. After a landing had been made with some difficulty, a spot was chosen in the center of the penguin rookery on a small cliff overlooking the sea, and here the post was set up and anchored with numerous boulders. In spite of every effort to mark the place, at a few hundred yards it was almost impossible to distinguish it; but although this small post on the side of a vast mountain looked a hopeless clue, it eventually brought the Morning into McMurdo Sound.
While Bernacchi and Barne set up their magnetic instruments and began the chilly task of taking observations, the others set off in twos and threes to climb the hillside. Scott, Royds and Wilson scrambled on until at last they reached the summit of the highest of the adjacent volcanic cones, and were rewarded by a first view of the Great Ice Barrier.[1]
[Footnote 1: The immense sheet of ice, over 400 miles wide and of still greater length.]
'Perhaps,' Scott says, 'of all the problems which lay before us in the south we were most keenly interested in solving the mysteries of this great ice-mass.... For sixty years it had been discussed and rediscussed, and many a theory had been built on the slender foundation of fact which alone the meager information concerning it could afford. Now for the first time this extraordinary ice-formation was seen from above.... It was an impressive sight and the very vastness of what lay at our feet seemed to add to our sense of its mystery.'