The noon position was lat. 72° 02? S., long. 16° 07? W., and the
run for the twenty-four hours had been 136 miles S. 6° E.
We were now in the vicinity of the land discovered by Dr. W. S. Bruce,
leader of the 'Scotia' Expedition, in 1904, and named by him Coats'
Land. Dr. Bruce encountered an ice-barrier in lat. 72° 18? S., long.
10° W., stretching from north-east to south-west. He followed the
barrier-edge to the south-west for 150 miles and reached lat. 74° 1?
S., long. 22° W. He saw no naked rock, but his description of rising
slopes of snow and ice, with shoaling water off the barrier-wall,
indicated clearly the presence of land. It was up those slopes, at a
point as far south as possible, that I planned to begin the march
across the Antarctic continent. All hands were watching now for the
coast described by Dr. Bruce, and at 5 p.m. the look-out reported an
appearance of land to the south-south-east. We could see a gentle snow-
slope rising to a height of about one thousand feet. It seemed to be
an island or a peninsula with a sound on its south side, and the
position of its most northerly point was about 72° 34? S., 16° 40? W.
The 'Endurance' was passing through heavy loose pack, and shortly
before midnight she broke into a lead of open sea along a barrier-edge.
A sounding within one cable's length of the barrier-edge gave no bottom
with 210 fathoms of line.
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