662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the French, American, and English Governments under D'Urville, 

 Wilkes, and Ross, respectively, between the years 1838 and 1840. 

 D'Urville left the Strait of Magellan in January, 1838, with two ves- 

 sels. He penetrated with great difficulty the ice-fields which surround 

 the pole, and reported land as lying about two hundred miles south of 

 the Orkney Islands. The next year he attempted to explore from an 

 opposite quarter, and reported a further discovery which he called 

 Adelia's Land. It seems probable that most of his discoveries were 

 only huge cliffs of ice, though he is said to have landed on a little islet 

 off the coast in one place, and carried away quartz and gneiss rocks 

 torn from the cliffs. He coasted along the ice-cliffs for a distance of 

 more than one hundred miles, and thus describes their appearance : 



"The walls of these blocks of ice far exceeded our masts and risr- 

 ging in height ; they overhung our ships, whose dimensions seemed 

 ridiculously curtailed. We seemed to be traversing the narrow streets 

 of some city of giants. At the foot of these gigantic mountains we 

 perceived vast caverns hollowed by the waves, which were there in- 

 gulfed with a crashing tumult. The sun darted his oblique rays upon 

 the immense walls of ice, making them look as if they were crystal, 

 and presenting effects of light and shade truly magical and startling. 

 From the summit of these mountains numerous brooks, fed by the 

 melting ice produced by the summer heat of a January sun in these 

 regions, threw themselves in cascades into the icy sea. Occasionally 

 these icebergs would approach each other so as to conceal the land en- 

 tirely, and we could only perceive two walls of threatening ice whose 

 sonorous echoes sent back the word of command of the officers. The 

 corvette which followed the Astrolabe appeared so small, and its masts 

 so slender, that the ship's crew were seized with terror. For nearly an 

 hour we only saw vertical walls of ice." 



Wilkes, as the commander of the American expedition, charted 

 lands which subsequent navigators failed to find. The Challenger 

 sought in vain for what he named Termination Land, but could find 

 only open sea. He explored the ocean for a distance of fifteen hun- 

 dred miles east and west, skirting a barrier of ice often one hundred 

 and fifty feet or more in height, and sometimes extending in an un- 

 broken line for fifty miles. 



Lastly, Sir James Ross, the commander of the English expedition, 

 penetrated from an opposite quarter to Wilkes, and in the same year, 

 and succeeded in reaching latitude 78, the highest before or since at- 

 tained. He found a continent which he called Victoria Land, and he 

 describes its first appearance as follows : "On January 11, 1841, in 

 about latitude 71 south and longitude 171 east, the Antarctic Con- 

 tinent was first seen, the general outline of which at once indicated its 

 volcanic character, rising steeply from the ocean in a stupendous 

 mountain-range, peak above peak enveloped in perpetual snow, and 

 clustered together in countless groups resembling a vast mass of crys- 



