Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
become the main access for later polar explorers, was appropriately
called (though not by its discoverer) Ross Sea. At last they came
upon the frozen bastion which guards the pole against any water-
borne assault: a continuous ice cliff two to three hundred feet high.
Ross gazed day after day at that formidable bastion and
wondered, as sixty years later his fellow countryman, Ernest Shack-
leton, was to wonder, what lay beyond.
We have sailed from your farthest
West, that is bounded by fire
*
and snow
We have pierced to your farthest East,
till stopped by the hard-set floe.
We have steamed by your wave-worn caverns;
dim, blue, mysterious halls.
We have risen above your surface,
we have sounded along your walls.
And above that rolling surface
we have strained our eyes to see
But league upon league of whiteness
was all that there seemed to be.
Ah, what is the secret you're keeping
to the southward beyond our ken?
This year shall your icy fastness
resound with the voices of men?
Shall we learn that you come from the mountains?
Shall we call you a frozen sea?
Shall we sail to the North and leave you,
still a Secret, forever to be?
12
Ross now looked for a safe place to spend the winter. He hoped
that by establishing a base close to the magnetic pole he could lead
an overland expedition to it and thus achieve the unique distinction
