and Borchgrevink left a message in a canister to prove their presence there. On the island Borchgrevink found a lichen, the first plant life discovered south of the Antarctic Circle. On 24 January the ship reached the vicinity of Cape Adare, at the northern extremity of the Victoria Land coastline of the Antarctic mainland. Ross's 1841 expedition been unable to land here, but as Antarctic neared the cape, conditions were calm enough for a boat to be lowered. A party including Bull, Kristensen, Borchgrevink and others then headed for a shingled foreshore below the cape. Exactly who went ashore first was disputed, between Kristensen, Borchgrevink, and a 17-year-old New Zealand seaman, Alexander von Tunzelmann, who said that he had "leapt out to hold the boat steady". The party claimed this was the first landing on the Antarctic mainland, although they may have been preceded by the Anglo-American sealing captain John Davis, on the Antarctic Peninsula on 7 February 1821, or by other whaling expeditions. While ashore at Cape Adare, Borchgrevink collected further specimens of rocks and lichens, the latter of which were of great interest to the scientific community, which had doubted the ability of vegetation to survive so far south. He also made a careful study of the foreshore, assessing its potential as a site where a future expedition might land and establish winter quarters. When Antarctic reached Melbourne, Bull and Borchgrevink left the ship. Each hoped to raise funds for a further Antarctic expedition, but their efforts were unsuccessful. An animosity developed between them, possibly because of their differing accounts of the voyage on the Antarctic; each emphasised his own role without fully acknowledging that of the other. Making plans International Geographical Congress 1895 To promote his developing ideas for an expedition that would overwinter on the Antarctic continent at Cape Adare, Borchgrevink hurried to London, where the Royal Geographical Society was hosting the Sixth International Geographical Congress. On 1 August 1895 he addressed the conference, giving an account of the Cape Adare foreshore as a place where a scientific expedition might establish itself for the Antarctic winter. He described the site as "a safe situation for houses, tents and provisions", and said there were indications that in this place "the unbound forces of the Antarctic Circle do not display the full severity of their powers". He also suggested that the interior of the continent might be accessible