An easterly breeze brought cloud and falls of snow during the morning of January 11.  The barrier trended south-west by south, and we skirted it for fifty miles until 11 am.  The cliffs in the morning were 20 ft. high, and by noon they had increased to 110 and 115 ft.  The brow apparently rose 20 to 30 ft. higher.  We were forced away from the barrier once for three hours by a line of very heavy pack-ice.  Otherwise there was open water along the edge, with high loose pack to the west and north-west.  We noticed a seal bobbing up and down in an apparent effort to swallow a long silvery fish that projected at least eighteen inches from its mouth.  The noon position was lat. 73° 13´ S., long. 20° 43´ W., and a sounding then gave 155 fathoms at a distance of a mile from the barrier.  The bottom consisted of large igneous pebbles.  The weather then became thick, and I held away to the westward, where the sky had given indications of open water, until 7 p.m., when we laid the ship alongside a floe in loose pack.  Heavy snow was falling, and I was anxious lest the westerly wind should bring the pack hard against the coast and jam the ship.  The ‘Nimrod’ had a narrow escape from a misadventure of this kind in the Ross Sea early in 1908.

We made a start again at 5 a.m. the next morning (January 12) in overcast weather with mist and snow-showers, and four hours later broke through loose pack-ice into open water.  The view was obscured, but we proceeded to the south-east and had gained 24 miles by noon, when three soundings in lat. 74° 4´ S., long. 22° 48´ W. gave 95, 128, and 103 fathoms, with a bottom of sand, pebbles, and mud.  Clark got a good haul of biological specimens in the dredge.  The ‘Endurance’ was now close to what appeared to be the barrier, with a heavy pack-ice foot containing numerous bergs frozen in and possibly aground.  The solid ice turned away towards the north-west, and we followed the edge for 48 miles N. 60° W. to clear it.

Now we were beyond the point reached by the ‘Scotia’, and the land underlying the ice-sheet we were skirting was new.  The northerly trend was unexpected, and I began to suspect that we were really rounding a huge ice-tongue attached to the true barrier-edge and extending northward.  Events confirmed this suspicion.  We skirted the pack all night, steering north-west; then went west by north till 4 a.m. and round to south-west.  The course at 8 a.m. on the 13th was south-south-west.  The barrier at midnight was low and distant, and at 8 a.m. there was merely a narrow ice-foot about two hundred yards across separating it from the open water.  By noon there was only an occasional shelf of ice-foot.  The barrier in one place came with an easy sweep to the sea.  We could have landed stores there without difficulty.  We made a sounding 400 ft. off the barrier but got no bottom at 676 fathoms.  At 4 p.m., still following the barrier to the south-west, we reached a corner and found it receding abruptly