CHAPTER 



EXPLORATIONS IN THE SOUTHERN OCEAN AND CHILI. 



' BY the 25th of February, 1839, Captain Wilkes 

 had completed his arrangements for the Southern 

 cruise ; and, all the members of the squadron being 

 again assembled, after the execution of the several 

 explorations to which they had been recently de- 

 spatched, the signal was given to the ships to get 

 under way. At this point Captain "Wilkes ascer- 

 tained, by careful experiment, that the rapidity of 

 the waves around Cape Horn, in tranquil weather, 

 was twenty-six and a half miles per hour; and that 

 the greatest height of the waves was thirty-two feet. 

 Such prodigious velocity and bulk of the billows 

 will readily suggest the appalling horrors which 

 would sweep over the deep in that stormy clime, 

 when lashed by the fierce fury of a tempest. 



On the 2d of March they approached the first frozen 

 islands of the Southern ocean. The water was 

 covered with fragments of ice of every possible 

 shape. The squadron sailed safely through this 

 immense expanse of waters in various directions. 



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