January 5.—We are satisfied with the success of our mission to the present. We should like to terminate our campaign with a striking sweep of discoveries, such as marked our beginning last year, but such a hope is now quite beyond the range of possibility. Our provisions are nearly all used, and to penetrate again into another part of this ice-strewn sea, with our present equipment, would be injudicious. We are inclined to bundle our results, and quit the under-world of ice as soon as the ice breaks enough to give us freedom.

Indeed, we ought to be contented with the unparalleled series of scientific records which are now written in our journals. Beginning with Tierra del Fuego, we have secured ethnological data of a race of primitive people, scientifically unknown; there we have also read the story of two vanishing American races; while the naturalist and geologist have worked out facts and gathered specimens unique in value and usefulness. We have sounded the unknown seas between the terminating point of South America and the antarctic land. In the new regions south of Cape Horn we have discovered many islands, and several hundred miles of the coast of a great country. Passing into the pack-ice we have drifted thousands of miles over the bed of a virgin sea; have discovered a great submarine bank, and have collected skeletons and skins of a curious life, previously almost unknown. Racovitza has hundreds of bottles of odd-looking specimens of creatures in alcohol, and his notes record, for the first time, the life story of antarctic fauna throughout the year. Arctowski has a record of hourly meteorological observations taken systematically, night and day, during one year. This, too, is a valuable record, for previously we have had only a few short notes on the climate of the summer months of the antarctic. Lecointe has made a painstaking series of magnetic observations, which will be useful in making valuable deductions for the compass, in the southern hemisphere. There are many studies valuable to oceanographic sciences, and our examination of a part of the great restless sea of ice, which encircles the pole, will be the basis of all future work in this region. We shall emerge from an area of perennial winter, never before invaded by man, with the knowledge of having been the first of all human beings to pass through the south polar winter and its long night. We feel, one and all, that our mission has been accomplished, and we are waiting impatiently to be freed from this embrace of the frozen sea.

January 9.—From the first to the ninth there was little of interest aside from the usual run of life. We took a few Ross seals (Ommatophoca Rossi), saw two new birds, but did not secure them, and were generally busy preparing the ship for the home voyage. We have had a continuous southerly wind, but its force was so light that we drifted little, though our sounding yesterday was 1490 m., which we take as an encouragement of a northerly movement off of the shallow sea over which we have floated so long. The bergs continue to change positions, but our pan, which is a little over two miles in diameter, is the same as it was two months ago, except that the snow has melted to an average thickness of about a half metre. Because our floe has not changed its form or shown any signs of disruption since November first, and also because we have had no ice-destroying tempest since that time, we have no good reason to suppose that we shall have a storm, or that our floe will fracture in a line to liberate us during the remaining two months of possible navigation.

There is at present sufficient water in long leads to navigate, and to reach this is the ambition of all on board, from the Commandant to the cabin-boy. But thus far we have done nothing to liberate the ship. It is true, our men have had more than sufficient work to prepare the sleeping Belgica for the sea, but for this they will have sufficient time during the many days when we shall be pressing out of the pack. If we do not help ourselves, as matters go now there is a great possibility of wintering again in the pack. To do something in this direction, I submitted, yesterday, a plan to the Commandant. It is based on the fact that the sun acts much more powerfully upon water, and upon everything else of a dark colour, than upon snow. Keeping this in mind, my suggestion involves the digging of two trenches, one from the bow, the other from the stern to the water, at the edge of the Belgica field. These trenches are to be carried through the snow and the superficial fresh water sheet of ice, leaving a narrow current of water from the ship to the lead, which we hope by the aid of the sun will so weaken the ice in this direction that it may break in this line. Otherwise it might fracture, if it fractured at all, a mile to the other side of us, and then our position would be no better than it is now.

January 12.—We have finished the trenches. For three days we have worked, not like men, but like dogs in chase of game. With picks and axes and shovels, we have excavated the ditches, and have hardly taken time to eat or sleep, because we have been so eager to watch the progress and effect of our work. As the work is completed, we find that our project is a failure. The sun at midnight is now so feeble that it permits the formation of new ice to such a thickness that the heat of the following day is barely sufficient to melt it. Had we done this in December, the result might have been more satisfactory, but now it is too late.

With the cutting of these trenches I proposed, as a last resort, to cut a canal through the ice from the Belgica to the edge of the field. The lines for the trenches were so laid that the saws might be run through the same groove; in this way we hoped to save the labour of twice removing the upper sheets of ice and snow. The work of sawing was begun last night and at first the progress was encouraging. Upon more careful examination, however, by drilling, we found that the lines which we had laid out for the canal, though shorter, ran over several submarine projections of ice from fifteen to twenty-five feet thick. We had learned by this time that with the saws it is nearly impossible to cut ice more than seven feet in depth. We now began renewed experiments with tonite, an explosive said to be more powerful than dynamite and much safer. It certainly is decidedly safer, but we were unable to discover its power.

Two months ago we all had faith in tonite. We had on board a large supply, and believed that with it we could blow the Belgica’s ice-fetters to atoms. Our confidence was much shaken with the early experiments. In the first trial we were afraid of the stuff. We handled it with the greatest care, placed it cautiously on a sledge, and drew it with a long rope. We selected a spot nearly two miles from the Belgica for the first explosion. At the time of this experiment the bark was not yet ready for the sea, and we thought it not wise to break the ice in close proximity. We also feared the “great power” of the tonite, and thought the whole field would be broken and scattered in the air, only to fall down and smash the decks, but all of this faith in, and fear of, tonite changed upon a more intimate acquaintance with the stuff. We are now amused at our extraordinary precautions during the first experiments. We took the tonite far away, put to it long fuses to permit us to run off a great distance out of the reach of the expected shattered fragments. The explosion went off with a hiss and a great fire, but in the air there was only smoke, and under the explosion there was only soot and a concavity in the snow. There was nothing broken, not even a hole through the ice, and we stood a half mile away behind a hummock, shivering for fear the ice would be so broken that we could not return to the Belgica. In later experiments we were more bold, and brought the scene of action nearer the ship, but we found that in temperatures lower than -10° C. (14.0° F.) the tonite exploded feebly, so much so, indeed, that the engineer, seeing the beautiful fire it made, vowed he would get better service by using it to get up steam. Most of us have lost faith in the power of tonite to release the Belgica, and we have also lost faith in its power to do damage of any kind. Instead of handling it with the extreme care of a few months ago, we now have it in our beds, on the table, and in every corner of the cabin. Lecointe and Racovitza, however, still have some confidence in the destructive powers of the explosive, and before we begin the seemingly impossible task of sawing a canal it is important to determine the limits of tonite in breaking the ice.

A number of experiments were made yesterday and to-day, but the consensus of opinion is that tonite will “cut no ice.” If we are to get freedom, we must seek it by our own muscular efforts with the saw and the axe. We have argued for several days in favour of sawing a canal. To this there has been considerable opposition, based upon the fact that the entire working force could not be spared for such work, and that the suggestion, at best, gave little promise of success. The sawing experiments in the trenches, however, proved that much could be done, and the eagerness of the men assured a concerted effort if the plan could be made the one aim of everybody. The repeated failure of the tonite proved that a continuation of our work in the old trenches was unwise, because ice of more than seven feet was impregnable to us. Gerlache has suggested the sawing of an old lead over the stern which might prove less obstructed by hummocks. A vigilant sounding of this lead proved the general depth of the ice about five feet, but the distance was somewhat greater than the line of our trenches. A careful study of all other possible routes easily proved this the most practical. The plans were then made as cautiously as if we were to dig the Nicaragua Canal, and every contingency was vigorously discussed by the officers. When the project was once thoroughly developed we divided into three or four crews according to the work, and every man, from the highest officer to the cabin-boy, took to the saws and the axes.

The work on this canal was begun on the evening of January eleventh, and was continued night and day until the bark was released. The distance of the canal was about 2200 feet. The sawing of the two sides with the cross sections made the distance to be cut, in a straight line, something over a mile and a half. We were able to remove the upper sheets of ice and snow by shovels and picks and specially constructed implements to the depth of from one to two feet. This left solid ice from three to four feet thick to be cut by the saws. We kept at it day after day, working eight hours daily, as do day labourers. No men ever worked harder or more faithfully. We were sixteen in number, officers and sailors working side by side, with no easy berth for anybody. Our main food supply was only sufficient to last three months longer. We were accordingly put on reduced rations, but we had a plentiful supply of seal and penguin meat and were adding to the larder every day the game coming into our new canal. We ate ravenously, and were contented with the fishy penguin steaks, developing strength and enthusiasm with the increased length of the canal.

January 23.—We are still hard at work at the channel for the release of the Belgica. Every man is still putting in eight hours daily on the work except the cook, and he is working twenty hours a day in doing his own work and that of the cabin-boy and steward. The work is proceeding nobly, so quickly and so perfectly as to surpass all expectation. This can only be explained by the cheerful manner and manly vigour with which every man is at work. The men need no urging, no special direction, no superintendence. Given a plan and system of action, they arrange themselves and work with an effort almost superhuman. The Commandant, the captain, the first officer, the meteorologist, zoölogist, and the doctor are all shoulder to shoulder with the sailors, and occupied at the same work. The meteorologist says, “There simply exists no longer a Commandant, no captain, no officers. We are all ordinary workmen.”

I have had little time to write for one week. Eight hours daily with a heavy saw, and the spine twisted semi-circularly, is not conducive to literary ambitions. It is, however, a capital exercise. Everybody is being hardened to the work and developing ponderous muscles. Our skin is burnt until it has the appearance of the inner surface of boot leather. Our hands, we have found by experience, are more comfortable if not washed, especially with soap, because then they crack and become painful. The result is that we all have a more savage physical appearance than most Indians. But this is of little consequence to us. There are no ladies here to arouse the sleeping vanity which we all once possessed, and our one ambition is to free the ship. This now seems quite certain. We eat like bears the meat of seals and penguins twice daily, disposing of three, four, and five steaks each. We find time and gastric capacity for no less than seven meals daily. All work was stopped Sunday morning at 4 A.M., and it began again Monday, at 8 A.M.; during that time we slept no less than thirty-six hours, and twelve hours is about an average of our daily sleep with the channel work. Before the canal was begun we could barely sleep eight hours.

By the first of February we had extended our canal to within one hundred feet of the Belgica, but the ice which remained to be cut was from six to seven feet in depth, and of a consistency so hard that the saws barely made an impression upon it. In one spot we sawed eight hours and cut less than five feet. While we were busily occupied in devising new plans to cut this ice, the wind changed and altered the drift of the ice, bringing a strong pressure on a tongue of the floe, which caused a fracture contiguous to our canal, around the bark and through the remaining ice to the edge. This new crevasse opened, and in so doing, the new floe drifted, partly closing our canal. This sudden and unexpected change, before our canal was completed, brought a look of disappointment and despair to every face. Now our prospective way of retreat was not only useless, but our position was such that the Belgica was subjected to dangerous pressure. To relieve this pressure we cut an oblong concavity in the body of the main floe with the idea of taking the vessel to this as a harbour. In this effort we succeeded on the evening of the thirteenth, but our canal was so effectually closed by new ice and the pressure of neighbouring floes, that we could not escape. On the morning of the fourteenth, the wind again changed. There was a general expansion of the pack, leaving wide open leads on all sides, and our canal again widened. We lost no time in steaming out. No body of men were ever happier than the officers and crew of the Belgica as the good old ship thumped the edge of the ice which had held her a prisoner for nearly a year.

Our supply of provisions did not permit a continuation of the campaign, and after all our mission was about fulfilled. Accordingly we headed northward in the most direct manner for the open sea. In two days we pushed, through closely packed ice, twenty miles northward, and then we entered a zone of the pack where the ice was broken into small pieces and closely pressed by an almost continuous line of icebergs. Beyond the bergs there was a dark blue-black sky which, after a time, we recognised as a water sky, indicating that under it there was the open ice-free Pacific. Here, within sight of the open sea, we were again imprisoned by the closely packed ice for thirty days, but at last, when we had almost abandoned all hope of escape and were preparing for work during a second winter night, a gentle southerly wind drove us with the sea ice out beyond the line of icebergs, and then we were free to seek the world of life in our own way. We left the pack-ice in latitude 70° 45′ south, longitude 103° west, and then headed for Cape Horn.

At last we feel again the pleasure of being out of the frigid stillness and on the bound of the broad ice-free waters. We have left the white line of the pack-ice under the black sea behind us, and now the ever-present electric glimmer, the ice-blink, is fading over our stern. As the blink vanishes, and the sky is screened by the normal South Pacific dulness, we descend from our world of lofty thoughts, in which we had been raised and upheld by the long months of isolation, and frost, and storm; and with this descent our minds and our hearts are set on the joys of home-going. The feeling of isolation and desertion now comes over us stronger than ever before. There is still a long spread of tempestuous waters between us and Punta Arenas, the nearest outpost of civilisation, and as we plough this hopeless sea, with souls raised to a fever-heat of anticipation, our old winged companions in the long drift with the frozen sea leave us. While among them, we thought we were wearied of their songless poses on the icy spires, and of their noiseless flights. We believed that we had seen all of their cold white world that we ever desired, but even before we have felt the heat of the sunny inner zones we are half sorry to leave this weird other-world life. A year hence, I am sure we shall all long to return again to this death-like sleep of the snowy southern wilderness; but just at present we long, as no tongue can tell, for the kindly breast of Mother Earth, with her soul-stirring warmth, her running streams, her sweet-smelling flowers, and her air of colour, of perfume, and of pleasant musical sounds.

On the morning of March 28, 1899, we steamed into the port of Punta Arenas. After a fifteen months’ absence from civilisation the new delights which we saw around this end-of-the-world town were surprising. We noticed with considerable interest the worn roads snaking through grassy fields, around groups of trees to the summits of green hills. Behind us were the olive and purple waters of Magellan Strait. The harsh Cape Horn winds, which blew over the forest-covered lands, seemed soft to us; to our frozen perceptions the sweets which these winds brought seemed to combine into one joyous perfume.

Little time was lost in seeking the shore. We were hungry for home news, and anxious to tread on solid ground. The sensation of having real earth under our feet was new to us. For more than a year we had roamed about over the moving frozen waters of the antarctic sea, with no sight of land, and no feeling of stability. When we mount the first hill we shall sit down and watch and wait to see if it, too, does not move like the hills of ice upon which we have rested so long. We landed quietly, and almost unnoticed; there was no crowd, no tooting of whistles, and no display of bunting as we passed over the long iron pier. In Patagonia nothing short of a volcanic eruption creates an uproar, which was to our liking, for we hated excitement and display and much desired to spend our time as it best suited our inclinations. A few of the sailors who came ashore remained on the beach, kicked about in the sand, and tossed pebbles. So much were they interested in this first touch of solid ground that they continued to play in the sand for hours, with the delight of children at the seashore. The officers marched straightway to a hotel, but in getting there they were made to feel their own previously unnoticed awkwardness. It is a sad undertaking for one endowed with a graceful walk to engage in polar exploration. I do not know whether any one on the Belgica ever boasted of such an accomplishment, but I do know that our walking attitudes, as we strolled up these streets, were a study in alcoholism. We had travelled on skis and other snowshoes so long, and had been tossed about on the sea so much, that we had forgotten how to walk normally. We spread our legs, dragged our feet, braced and balanced our bodies with every step, and altogether our gait was ridiculous. It may all be imagination, but we felt unnatural, as, indeed, we must have looked.

We had hardly learned to realise this ourselves when we got a glimpse, for the first time in many long months, of a woman. She simply stood and stared at us, and we at her, and then she gathered up a couple of youngsters nearby and rushed away from us into the house, as if we were dangerous characters. Morally hurt by this incident we went along taking some notice of the men who eyed us with considerable interest. Presently we passed a door in which two pretty girls were standing. This sight sent a new sensation through us like that of a Faradic battery. Somehow we all, at the same time, unconsciously brushed aside the year’s growth of hair from our faces, and made an effort to arrange our neckties and change the set of our coats, but we were made to realise, more and more, that we looked hideous. The girls gave a sudden giggle, rushed back into the hall, and we had to content ourselves with the rustle of skirts. This rustle of the skirts of these first girls who warmed our frozen hearts would make spicy poetry if we dared to write it. But we are not poets: we must hasten on to the hotel where we hope quickly to change our freak-like appearances.

At the hotel we soon learned something of the events which had occurred during our absence, but we were able to get very little connected news. The Spanish-American War and the Dreyfus Case, of which we knew nothing, were explained to us. We next tried to get a hasty glimpse of the newspapers, but the fifteen months previous being a blank to us, we were unable to read the papers with any idea of assimilation. It was impossible for us to understand the short daily announcements until we were able to get a general idea of the drift of the previous events, and this we knew would take long. We next returned to our rooms and began to scrutinise ourselves in the mirrors, to learn the reason why mothers guarded their youngsters, and girls ran away as we came along the streets.

We presented curious and funny physiognomies. Our faces were drawn, and but a shade lighter than old copper kettles; our skins were rough, like nutmeg-graters; and our hair was long, stubborn, and liberally lined by bunches of gray, though the eldest among us was less than thirty-five years of age. Our clothing was in a good state of repair, but its appearance was odd. We had been short of patching material, hence pieces of leather, bits of canvas, and strips of carpet were used to cover the tears and to reinforce the weak parts of our coats and trousers. We were ourselves so used to all of this that we did not think it strange; but when we heard the rustle of skirts it brought our sleeping vanity all back. Henceforth we must again wear boiled shirts and bright feathers. We soon brought in the barber, who made for us new faces, and the tailor, who fitted us with presentable up-to-date outfits. While this was being done the mail was brought, and at once each took a bundle and wandered to some corner. These were moments of sentiment. Business letters, cheques, drafts, papers, and, indeed, the bulk of correspondence was put aside, and each had soon in hand a series of sheets with feminine inscriptions, in which all interest for the time was centred. Racovitza said: “What means it all? Surely the indications are that in six months there will be as many new wives as the present number of bachelors on the Belgica.”

After a time, however, this sentimental trance gave way to material instincts. We had ordered a dinner to be specially prepared for us. We didn’t care for fancy dishes and desserts; our appetites craved plain substantials. We had fed during a year on “embalmed” foods and meat, tasting like cod-liver oil. We enjoyed this when we could get nothing better, but now we want beefsteak, and a good deal of it. The waiter interrupted our interesting occupation by the announcement that dinner was ready. We all followed without a second bidding, and I should be ashamed to confess to the amount of beefsteak which we devoured.

In a few days we settled down in the normal routine of life. An opportunity was found to send a cable message by steamer to Montevideo announcing our discoveries and the general results of our explorations. Most of us lingered a few weeks in southern South America to prosecute various branches of research, and then the scientific staff sought their respective homes by the easiest and quickest routes, leaving the Belgica to follow in her own slow way.

It seldom falls to the lot of polar explorers to be made to feel, as we have been, the importance of their work and the success of their mission. By the honours bestowed upon us by his Majesty, King Leopold; by medals from the Royal Society of Belgium, the Geographical Society of Brussels, and the Municipality of Brussels, we are assured that our hard efforts have been appreciated. The favourable criticism of the geographers of all lands convince us of what we had hardly dared to hope, that the expedition was an entire success. I am sure that I voice the sentiment of every member of the expedition when I say that in receiving the substantial recognition of King Leopold, of the various scientific societies, and above all of our fellow-countrymen, we feel that we have been rewarded beyond our deserts. Such appreciation by knowing critics is indeed the highest honour which falls to man.