"I Think This Southern Land 

 to Be a Continent'''' 



This section of the coast line has been the subject for numerous controversies. 

 Some cartographers name it the Palmer Coast, others Graham Land.°^ The 

 British sealer Sprightly was here in 1824 under Captain Hughes, whose name 

 was given to the bay.^^ Hughes apparently charted the bay which appeared on 

 Laurie's 1828 maps, and the island of Hoseason was named for the Sprightly' s 

 mate, James Hoseason. It is thought Hoseason sailed first with Smith in the 

 Williams. On January 5, 1829, H.M.S. Chanticleer under Captain Henry Foster, 

 a distinguished British scientist, made a landfall here and Foster went ashore 

 at a place called Cape Possession.^^ An American sealer named Captain William 

 H. Smiley claimed to have been in this Hughes Bay area in 1842 in the Ohio 

 of Newport, R.V 



The French explorer, Admiral Dumont D'Urville, in the Astrolabe, is 

 credited with establishing the northeastern end of Orleans Channel, ^^ and some 

 thirty years later (1873) Captain Dallman, the German, in the Gronland is 

 said to have located the southwestern part of Orleans Channel as it passed 

 between Trinity Land and the Antarctic Continent, thus establishing Trinity 

 Island as an island which he called "Palmer Land."'^^ But it was the Belgica, 

 during the Antarctic Expedition of 1897-99, which established the existence 

 of the strait named for its leader, de Gerlache, and explained so much of what 

 American (and afterwards) British sealers had seen. This expedition con- 

 clusively showed the "Hughes Bay" region was in reality a large bay where 

 the waters of the southern end of the Orleans Channel met those of the northern 

 extremity of the de Gerlache Strait." 



Captain Davis' laconic statement which completed his February 7 entry — 

 "I think this Southern Land to be a Continent," definitely indicates his aware- 

 ness of what he saw. His position has been proven by every Antarctic explorer 

 who has since observed the coast in this area. The words of a member of the 

 Belgica Expedition serve as a supplement to this entry from the logbook of 

 the Huron. 



So descriptive are the words of a member of the Belgica' s officers, that they 

 might have been written by Captain Davis years before. Cook, of the Belgica, 

 wrote : 



"At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the 23rd, (Jan. 1898) a curious white 

 haze appeared upon the swollen skj-. A little later an imperfect outline of 



[53] 



