The location of such caches and of the Western Base, it was hoped, would be communicated to us at the Main Base, through the medium of wireless telegraphy from Hobart.
All members of the land parties and the ship's officers met in the ward-room. There were mutual good wishes expressed all round, and then we celebrated previous Antarctic explorers, more especially D'Urville and Wilkes. The toast was drunk in excellent Madeira presented to us by Mr. J. T. Buchanan, who had carried this sample round the world with him when a member of the celebrated 'Challenger' expedition.
The motor-launch was hoisted and the anchor raised. Then at 8.45 P.M. on January 19 we clambered over the side into one of the whale-boats and pushed off for Cape Denison, shouting farewells back to the 'Aurora'. Several hours later she had disappeared below the north-western horizon, and we had set to work to carve out a home in Adelie Land.
CHAPTER IV NEW LANDS
Leaving the land party under my charge at Commonwealth Bay on the evening of January 19, the 'Aurora' set her course to round a headland visible on the north-western horizon. At midnight the ship came abreast of this point and continued steaming west, keeping within a distance of five miles of the coast. A break in the icy monotony came with a short tract of islets fronting a background of dark rocky coastline similar to that at Cape Denison but more extensive.
Some six miles east of D'Urville's Cape Discovery, a dangerous reef was sighted extending at right angles across the course. The ship steamed along it and her soundings demonstrated a submerged ridge continuing some twelve miles out to sea. Captain Davis's narrative proceeds:
"Having cleared this obstacle we followed the coastline to the west from point to point. Twelve miles away we could see the snow-covered slopes rising from the seaward cliffs to an elevation of one thousand five hundred feet. Several small islands were visible close to a shore fringed by numerous large bergs.
"At 10 P.M. on January 20, our progress to the west was stopped by a fleet of bergs off the mainland and an extensive field of berg-laden pack-ice, trending to the north and north-east. Adelie Land could be traced continuing to the west. Where it disappeared from view there was the appearance of a barrier-formation, suggestive of shelf-ice, running in a northerly direction. Skirting the pack-ice on a north and north-west course, we observed the same appearance from the crow's-nest on January 21 and 22."
The stretch of open, navigable, coastal water to the north of Adelie Land, barred by the Mertz Glacier on the east and delimited on the west by more or less compact ice, has been named the D'Urville Sea. We found subsequently that its freedom from obstruction by ice is due to the persistent gales which set off the land in that locality. To the north, pack-ice in variable amount is encountered before reaching the wide open ocean.