320 NOTES ON THE BOTANY 
clear till next morning, all her men, of course, on deck, and 
fourteen hours of severe labour were spent in extricating her 
from this dangerous situation. The same scene of labour and 
peril was repeated the next two days with increased detention. 
But so continued and so fatiguing were the baffling diffi- 
culties with which, day after day, and often during. many 
nights, the persevering commander of the expedition and his 
officers were tried, that we cannot continue to particularize 
them, and shall sum up their month of January of this year 
(equivalent to our July) by saying that the time was spent, 
generally near the Pack edge, in fruitless endeavours to 
proceed towards the south ; sometimes beating about in little 
pools of water, and sometimes made fast to floes, with the 
agreeable diversity of weather afforded by gales of wind, 
snow-squalls, fogs and misty rain. If they endeavoured to 
penetrate the pack, which barred their southerly progress, 
they were beset with the ice and lost much time in getting 
out, andif they bore away, then the current and the course 
of the floating bergs took them to the north, the direction 
which of all others they sought to avoid. On the 4th of Feb- 
- ruary a heavy swell from the north-east indicated the proxi- 
mity of clear water and by dint of tacking and boring, 
they cleared the loose ice, and hoped, by going rapidly - 
to the east, to reach »Weddell’s track, which Captain 
Ross trusted to find either quite open, or but little inter- 
cepted by ice. The prevalence of westerly winds in these 
latitudes favoured this supposition. But, as if to disap- 
point their main object, the expedition was now doomed 
to encounter such a succession of easterly gales, right 
in their teeth, as they had never met with in all their 
previous experience of Antarctic navigation. The build of - 
the “Erebus and Terror,’ which one of their officers term 
“our round-nosed ships,” was peculiarly unfavourable to 
making way against head-winds, and when they had obtained 
a latitude, but afew miles to the south of where D’Urville had 
been foiled, they found the same heavy Pack-ice blocking up 
Weddell’s: homeward passage, Already the increasing darkness 
