| "The rudder had to be protected." |
With the exception of a few cases of ophthalmia, resulting from the continual glare of the snow, the health of the crews was satisfactory, and this was no little satisfaction to the leaders of the expedition, compelled as they were to be continually on the qui-vive. Not until the 9th February were the vessels, favoured by a strong breeze, able to get off, and once more enter a really open sea. The ice had been coasted for a distance of 225 leagues. The vessels had actually sustained no further damage than the loss of a few spars and a considerable portion of the copper sheathing, involving no further leakage than there had been before.
The next day the sun came out, and observations could be taken, giving the latitude as 62° 9' S., and the longitude 39° 22' W.
Snow continued to fall, the cold was intense, and the wind very violent for the three succeeding days. This continuance of bad weather, together with the increasing length of the nights, warned D'Urville of the necessity of giving up all idea of going further. When, therefore, he found himself in S. lat. 62° and W. long. 33° 11', in other words in that part of the ocean where Weddell had been able to sail freely in 1823, and the new explorer had met with nothing but impassable ice, he steered for New South Orkney. A whole month passed amongst the ice and fogs of the Antarctic Ocean had told upon the health of the crews, and nothing could be gained for science by a continuance of the cruise.
On the 20th the archipelago was again sighted, and D'Urville was once more driven out of his course in a northerly direction by the ice, but he was able to put off with two boats, the crews of which collected on Weddell Island a large number of geological specimens, lichens, &c., and some twenty penguins and chionis.
On the 25th February Clarence Island was seen, forming the eastern extremity of the New South Shetland Archipelago, a very steep and rugged district covered with snow except on the beach, and thence the explorers steered towards Elephant Island, resembling Clarence Island in every respect, except that it is strewn with peaks rising up black against the plains of snow and ice. The islets of Narrow, Biggs, O'Brien, and Aspland were successively identified, but covered as they are with snow they are perfectly inaccessible to man. The little volcano of Bridgeman was also seen, and the naturalists tried in vain to land upon it from two boats.
"The general colour of the soil," says the narrative, "is red, like that of burnt brick with particles of grey, suggestive of the presence of pumice-stone, or of calcined cinders. Here and there on the beach are seen great blackish-looking blocks, which are probably lava. This islet has, however, only one true crater, although thick columns of smoke are emitted from it, nearly all of them issuing from the base on the western side, whilst in the north are two other fumerolles, thirty or forty feet along the water. There are none on the eastern or northern side, or at the top, which is smooth and round. The bulk appears recently to have undergone some considerable modification, as indeed it must have done, or it could not now resemble so little the description given by Powell in December, 1822."
D'Urville soon resumed his southerly route, and on the 27th February sighted a considerable belt of land in the south-east on which he was prevented from landing by the fog and the continuous fall of very fine snow. He was now in the latitude of Hope Island—i.e. in S. lat. 62° 57'. He approached it very closely, and sighted before reaching it a low-lying land, to which he gave the name of Joinville. Then further on in the south-west he came to an extensive district which he named Louis Philippe, and between the two in a kind of channel, encumbered with ice, an island he called Rosamel.
"Now," says D'Urville, "the horizon was so light that we could trace all the irregularities of Louis Philippe's Land. We could see it stretching away from Mount Bransfield in the north (62° W. long.) to the S.S.W., where it faded away on the horizon. From Mount Bransfield to the south it is lofty, and of fairly uniform surface, resembling a vast, unbroken ice-field. In the south, however, it rises in the form of a fine peak (Mount Jacquinot), which is equal perhaps, indeed superior, to Bransfield; but beyond this peak it stretches away in the form of a mountain chain, ending in the south-west in a peak loftier than any of the others. For the rest, the effect of the snow and ice, together with the absence of any objects with which they can be compared, aid in exaggerating the height of all irregularities, and, as a matter of fact, the results of the measurements taken by M. Dumoulin showed all these mountains, which then appeared to us gigantic and equal to the Alps and Pyrenees at least, to be after all of very medium size. Mount Bransfield, for instance, was not more than about 2068 feet high, Mount Jacquinot 2121 feet, and Mount d'Urville, the loftiest of them all, about 3047 feet. Except for the islets grouped about the mainland, and a few peaks rising above the snow, the whole country is one long series of compact blocks of ice, and it is impossible to do more than trace the outlines of this ice-crust, those of the land itself being quite indistinguishable."