ANTARCTIC VOYAGE OF THE BELGICA. 885 



for twenty-four hours; but the 11 Igica became altogether immovable in 

 latitude 71°30' S. on March 2, L898. This latitude was never exceeded 



later by more than a few minutes. 



No .serious attempt was made to escape from our imprisonment. 

 Wintering in the antarctic regions was part of the programme of the 

 expedition, and it was just as well to do so where we were in the mov- 

 ing pack as to force a way out and return to a land station. Besides, 

 in the explored land regions we had only seen one place where winter- 

 ing was practicable — at the twelfth landing in Lemaire Channel. 



Lecointe made frequent astronomical determinations of position and 

 deduced therefrom the direction of drift. Sometimes we moved north- 

 ward with southerly or southwestfy winds; this we heard with joy. 

 But with change of wind we would again go toward the pole or east- 

 ward or westward, and so we wandered from place to place, sometimes 

 back in our old position, sometimes far to the westward. Apparently 

 we remained immobile, for everything around us followed the same 

 course; we always took our dreary scenery with us. 



The drift of the Belgica with the ice is the longest experienced by 

 any vessel; the chart shows that the movement of the pack was guided 

 b} 7 an obstacle to the east and south of us, and the existence of land in 

 those directions is further indicated Iw our soundings. Depths dimin- 

 ished to the south and east, and my bathymetrical chart a shows that 

 during nearly all the time we were on a continental plateau. The pack 

 in which we were may be regarded as a coastal pack, no doubt of great 

 extent, but different in every respect (especially with regard to its 

 movements) from the pack of northern polar regions. It is possible 

 that in some years the pack becomes detached like that in the Ross 

 Sea, but the observations of Cook and Bellingshausen, as well as our 

 own, in 1898 and 1899, indicate that this must be exceptional. I am 

 of opinion that the great Graham Land peninsula forms an anticyclonic 

 region, so that, far from driving the ice toward the ocean, the pre- 

 vailing northeasterly winds of the summer months send it southward; 

 but in the Ross and Weddell seas the same anticyclonic winds pro- 

 duce the opposite effect, because, as they come from the southeast, 

 they arc 1 diverted toward the north, Victoria Land being, in all like- 

 lihood, equally a region of high pressure. The forthcoming English 

 expedition should decide this question. 



The seals and penguins were our very good comrades from the begin- 

 ning; they took the greatest interest in all our affairs. The penguins, 

 particularly the small ones (Pygoscelis Adelke), seemed to us remark- 

 ably intelligent, and we took great interest in watching them. They 

 had an almost human appearance when walking across the snow, and, 

 indeed, they had many human attributes, especially in their social 

 customs. 



"Published in the Geographical Journal, February, 1901. 

 sm 1901 25 



