Besides these purely technical and material advantages which the Barrier seemed to possess as a winter station, it offered a specially favourable site for an investigation of the meteorological conditions, since here one would be unobstructed by land on all sides.  It would be possible to study the character of the Barrier by daily observations on the very spot better than anywhere else.  Such interesting phenomena as the movement, feeding, and calving of this immense mass of ice could, of course, be studied very fully at this spot.

Last, but not least, there was the enormous advantage that it was comparatively easy to reach in the vessel.  No expedition had yet been prevented from coming in here.

I knew that this plan of wintering on the Barrier itself would be exposed to severe criticism as recklessness, foolhardiness, and so forth, for it was generally assumed that the Barrier was afloat here, as in other places.  Indeed, it was thought to be so even by those who had themselves seen it.  Shackleton’s description of the conditions at the time of his visit did not seem very promising.  Mile after mile had broken away, and he thanked God he had not made his camp there.  Although I have a very great regard for Shackleton, his work and his experience, I believe that in this case his conclusion was too hasty —­ fortunately, I must add.  For if, when Shackleton passed the Bay of Whales on January, 24, 1908, and saw the ice of the bay in process of breaking up and drifting out, he had waited a few hours, or at the most a couple of days, the problem of the South Pole would probably have been solved long before December, 1911.  With his keen sight and sound judgment, it would not have taken him long to determine that the inner part of the bay does not consist of floating barrier, but that the Barrier there rests upon a good, solid foundation, probably in the form of small islands, skerries, or shoals, and from this point he and his able companions would have disposed of the South Polar question once for all.  But circumstances willed it otherwise, and the veil was only lifted, not torn away.

I had devoted special study to this peculiar formation in the Barrier, and had arrived at the conclusion that the inlet that exists to-day in the Ross Barrier under the name of the Bay of Whales is nothing else than the self-same bight that was observed by Sir James Clark Ross —­ no doubt with great changes of outline, but still the same.  For seventy years, then, this formation —­ with the exception of the pieces that had broken away —­ had persisted in the same place.  I therefore concluded that it could be no accidental formation.  What, once, in the dawn of time, arrested the mighty stream of ice at this spot and formed a lasting bay in its edge, which with few exceptions runs in an almost straight line, was not merely a passing whim of the fearful force that came crashing on, but something even stronger than that —­ something that was firmer than the hard ice —­ namely, the solid land.  Here in this spot, then, the Barrier piled itself up and formed the bay we now call the Bay of Whales.  The observations we made during our stay there confirm the correctness of this theory.  I therefore had no misgivings in placing our station on this part of the Barrier.