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!'




[Page 52]
CHAPTER III

IN SEARCH OF WINTER QUARTERS

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