New Year’s Day came and went without any change in the ice.

The situation now began to be seriously threatening.  Another winter in the ice would mean death and destruction on a large scale.  Disease and insufficient nourishment would soon make an end of most of the ship’s company.

Again Cook came to the aid of the expedition.

In conjunction with Racovitza he had thought out a very ingenious way of sawing a channel, and thus reaching the nearest lead.  The proposal was submitted to the leader of the expedition and accepted by him; both the plan and the method of carrying it out were well considered.

After three weeks’ hard work, day and night, they at last reached the lead.

Cook was incontestably the leading spirit in this work, and gained such honour among the members of the expedition that I think it just to mention it.  Upright, honourable, capable, and conscientious in the extreme —­ such is the memory we retain of Frederick A. Cook from those days.

Little did his comrades suspect that a few years later he would be regarded as one of the greatest humbugs the world has ever seen.  This is a psychological enigma well worth studying to those who care to do so.

But the Belgica was not yet clear of the ice.  After having worked her way out into the lead and a little way on, she was stopped by absolutely close pack, within sight of the open sea.

For a whole month the expedition lay here, reaping the same experiences as Ross on his second voyage with the Erebus and Terror.  The immense seas raised the heavy ice high in the air, and flung it against the sides of the vessel.  That month was a hell upon earth.  Strangely enough, the Belgica escaped undamaged, and steamed into Punta Arenas in the Straits of Magellan on March 28, 1899.

Modern scientific Antarctic exploration had now been initiated, and de Gerlache had won his place for all time in the first rank of Antarctic explorers.

While the Belgica was trying her hardest to get out of the ice, another vessel was making equally strenuous efforts to get in.  This was the Southern Cross, the ship of the English expedition, under the leadership of Carstens Borchgrevink.  This expedition’s field of work lay on the opposite side of the Pole, in Ross’s footsteps.

On February 11, 1899, the Southern Cross entered Ross Sea in lat. 70deg.  S. and long. 174deg.  E., nearly sixty years after Ross had left it.

A party was landed at Cape Adare, where it wintered.  The ship wintered in New Zealand.

In January, 1900, the land party was taken off, and an examination of the Barrier was carried out with the vessel.  This expedition succeeded for the first time in ascending the Barrier, which from Ross’s day had been looked upon as inaccessible.  The Barrier formed a little bight at the spot where the landing was made, and the ice sloped gradually down to the sea.