New land appeared next morning, with outlying islands, named the Candlemas Isles in honour of the day on which they were discovered. The whole of the new land was named Sandwich Land, and was supposed to be either a group of islands, or the point of a continent. Cook firmly believed in a tract of land near the Pole as the source of most of the icebergs in those seas, but did not attempt a further exploration.
It was not till the year 1819 that the commander of the brig William, Mr. William Smith, sailing south-east from the latitude of Cape Horn, noted in latitude 62° 30′ S. and longitude 60° W., an extensive snow-covered land, on the coasts of which seals were abundant. As he was bound with a cargo to Valparaiso, he could not follow up his discovery; but on arrival at that port informed H.B.M. Consul, Captain Sheriff, of the fact he had ascertained, and that gentleman dispatched Mr. Edward Barnsfield, master of the frigate Andromache, to explore the new-found land. It was found to consist of a group of islands, numbering twelve, with innumerable rocky islets between them. There was little doubt that it was a part of the same land sighted by Gerritz more than two centuries before, and now known as the South Shetlands. They were further explored in 1820 by Mr. [pg 279]Weddell, whose crews obtained an immense number of sea-elephants and fur seals. These islands are nearly inaccessible, being ice-bound, while almost any part of them, other than perpendicular cliffs, is perpetually snow-covered. There are a few small patches of straggling grass where there is any soil, and a moss similar to that found in Iceland. In 1821 other additions were made to our knowledge of islands adjacent to the South Shetlands by Captains Powell and Palmer, the latter an American, and by the Russian navigator, Bellinghausen, who reached a very southern point. They are respectively known as Trinity, Palmer’s, and Alexander’s Lands. A voyage in 1822 has importance, as it led to valuable results, in a commercial point of view. The brig Jane, of Leith, Captain Weddell, with a crew of twenty-two officers and men, accompanied by a cutter, set sail in September of that year on a voyage to the South Seas for the purpose of procuring fur seals. At the beginning of January, 1823, the vessels first came in sight of the land of the high southern latitude, and the next day reached the South Orkneys. The tops of the islands mostly terminated in craggy peaks, and looked almost like the mountain tops of a sunken land. Proceeding southward, they one evening passed very close to an object which appeared like a rock. The lead was immediately thrown out, but no bottom could be found. It turned out to be a dead whale, very much swollen, floating on the surface. Weddell obtained at South Georgia a valuable cargo. From the sea-elephant no less than 20,000 tons of oil were obtained in a few seasons, the cargoes always including a large number of fur sealskins. American sealers also took large cargoes of these skins to China, where they sold for five or six dollars a skin. The Island of Desolation, described by Cook, was also a source of great profit. “This is a striking, but by no means uncommon example of the commercial advantage to be derived from voyages of discovery.” In 1830, Captain Biscoe, commanding the sealing brig Eliza Scott, made the discovery of another range of islands, since named after him. In 1839, Captain Balley, in a ship belonging to Messrs. Enderby, the owners of the last-named vessel, discovered land in latitude 66° 44′ S., which was in all probability a portion of the same territory sighted by Wilkes and D’Urville a year afterwards. Thus, while America and France claim the honour of having discovered an “Antarctic continent,” Balley seems to have forestalled them. It is extremely doubtful whether the patches of land seen by these explorers can be considered to form a great southern continent.[44]
D’Urville, after describing the “lanes” of tall icebergs by which his ship was enclosed and impeded, states that they sighted land, some few miles off, with prominent peaks 3,000 feet and upwards in height, and surrounded with coast ice. Some boats were sent off to make magnetic observations, and one of the officers succeeded in landing on a small rocky islet, on which the tricolour flag was unfurled. Not the smallest trace of vegetable life could be discovered. Numerous fragments of the rock itself were carried off as trophies. Close at hand were eight or ten other islets. The land thus discovered was named Adélie Land (after Admiral D’Urville’s wife). A projecting cape, which had been seen early in the day, was called Cape Discovery, and the islet on which the landing was effected was named Point Geology.
Wilkes describes his discoveries in similar terms to those of previous explorers already mentioned. Stones, gravel, sand, mud, &c., were noted on a low iceberg, proving the existence of land somewhere about, but it must be borne in mind that a landing on anything but ice was not effected.
An attempt on the part of Captain (afterwards Sir James) Ross to establish magnetic observations in the southern hemisphere was unsuccessful, but resulted in a discovery of importance. On January 11th, 1841, land was sighted, rising in lofty snow-covered peaks, the elevation of some of which was stated to be from 12,000 feet to 14,000 feet. Various peaks were named after Sabine and other distinguished philosophers who had advocated the cause of the expedition. With some difficulty they landed on an island, on which they planted our flag, and drank a toast to the health of the Queen and Prince Albert. It was named Possession Island. There was no vegetation, but “inconceivable myriads of penguins completely and densely covered the whole surface of the island, along the ledges of the precipices, and even to the summits of the hills, attacking us,” says Ross, “vigorously as we waded through their ranks, and pecking at us with their sharp beaks, disputing possession; which, together with their loud coarse notes, and the insupportable stench from the deep bed of guano, which had been forming for ages, and which may at some period be valuable to the agriculturists of our Australasian colonies, made us glad to get away again, after having loaded our boats with geological specimens and penguins.” Whales were very numerous; thirty were counted at one time in various directions.
Further south the interesting discovery was made of an active volcano, a mountain 12,400 feet altitude, emitting flame and smoke at the time. It was named after the Erebus, one of the vessels employed, while a second volcano, scarcely inferior in height to the first-named, was called Mount Terror, after our staunch old friend the vessel which so well withstood the ice in Sir George Back’s expedition. “On the afternoon of the 28th,” says Ross, “Mount Erebus was observed to emit smoke and flame in unusual quantities, producing a most grand spectacle; a volume of dense smoke was projected at each successive jet with great force, in a vertical column, to the height of between 1,500 and 2,000 feet above the mouth of the crater, when, condensing first at its upper part, it descended in mist or snow, and gradually dispersed, to be succeeded by another splendid exhibition of the same kind in about half an hour afterwards, although the intervals between the eruptions were by no means regular. The diameter of the columns of smoke was between two and three hundred feet, as near as we could measure it; whenever the smoke cleared away, the bright red flame that filled the mouth of the crater was clearly perceptible; and some of the officers believed they could see streams of lava pouring down its sides until lost beneath the snow, which descended from a few hundred feet below the crater, and projected its perpendicular icy cliff several miles into the ocean.”
The whole of the land traced to the seventy-ninth degree of latitude was named Victoria Land. Ross “restored to England the honour of the discovery of the southernmost known land,” which had previously belonged to Russia, as won twenty years before by the intrepid Bellinghausen. A second and a third visit was made by Ross, on the latter of which he made some discoveries of minor importance.
LISBON IN THE 16TH CENTURY. (After an Engraving of the period.)