British Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1904, but
more familiarly as 'The Discovery Expedition,' from the name of the ship
which carried it, was organized by the Royal Society and the Royal
Geographical Society, backed by the active support of the British
Government. The executive officers and crew were Royal Navy almost
without exception, whilst the scientific purposes of the expedition were
served in addition by five scientists. These latter were not naval
officers.

The Discovery left New Zealand on Christmas Eve 1901, and entered the
belt of pack ice which always has to be penetrated in order to reach the
comparatively open sea beyond, when just past the Antarctic Circle. But a
little more than four days saw her through, in which she was lucky, as we
now know. Scott landed at Cape Adare and then coasted down the western
coast of Victoria Land just as Ross had done sixty years before. As he
voyaged south he began to look for safe winter quarters for the ship, and
when he pushed into McMurdo Sound on January 21, 1902, it seemed that
here he might find both a sheltered bay into which the ship could be
frozen, and a road to the southland beyond.

The open season which still remained before the freezing of the sea made
progress impossible was spent in surveying the 500 miles of cliff which
marks the northern limit of the Great Ice Barrier. Passing the extreme
eastward position reached by Ross in 1842, they sailed on into an unknown
world, and discovered a deep bay, called Balloon Bight, where the rounded
snow-covered slopes undoubtedly were land and not, as heretofore,
floating ice. Farther east, as they sailed, shallow soundings and gentle
snow slopes gave place to steeper and more broken ridges, until at last
small black patches in the snow gave undoubted evidence of rock; and an
undiscovered land, now known as King Edward VII.'s Land, rose to a height
of several thousand feet. The presence of thick pack ahead, and the
advance of the season, led Scott to return to McMurdo Sound, where he
anchored the Discovery in a little bay at the end of the tongue of land
now known as the Hut Point Peninsula, and built the hut which, though
little used in the Discovery days, was to figure so largely in the story
of this his last expedition.

The first autumn was spent in various short journeys of
discovery--discovery not only of the surrounding land but of many
mistakes in sledging equipment and routine. It is amazing to one who
loo