292 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Land". This is evident from Captain Shirreff's instructions to Edward Bransfield, of 

 which the following is an extract : 



You are to proceed to about the latitude of 62° South and 62° West to discover and ascertain the 

 extent of that tract of land there seen by Mr Smith in October last and whether it be merely an island 

 or part of a continent; if the latter you will explore the land to the eastward and determine if it be 

 connected with Southern Thule and Sandwich Land.^ 



These instructions were issued to Bransfield on board H.M.S. 'Andromache' at Val- 

 paraiso on December 19, 18 19. There is little doubt, however, that an expedition such 

 as this would have been despatched at an even earlier date but for the extreme scepticism 

 with which Smith's original notice of his discovery was received in Valparaiso by the 

 English, "who all ridiculed the poor man for his fanciful credulity and his deceptive 

 vision". It was only after two further attempts to reach the South Shetlands, on the 

 second of which he actually succeeded in landing, that Smith was at length able, in 

 November 1819, to convince his countrymen in Valparaiso of the reality of his dis- 

 covery. Then considerable interest was indeed aroused and swift action taken by the 

 naval authorities at Valparaiso in equipping the ' Williams ' ^ under Bransfield for a more 

 thorough investigation of this new southern land. It is evident too that speculation 

 was rife as to the true nature of the land which Smith had seen, whether it was the long- 

 sought-for Southern Continent or merely a group of islands, for Miers, writing from 

 Valparaiso in January 1820, remarks: 



As yet it remains an interesting topic of conversation, whether New Shetland be an island of con- 

 siderable size, or if it be part of a continent. It is by no means an improbable supposition that it is 

 connected with Southern Thule, the most southerly point of Sandwich Land seen by Captain Cook in 

 1775,. . .and it is by no means unfair to conclude, that New South Shetland and Sandwich Land 

 form two points of one large continent.^ 



Although the South Shetlands were already known to be islands in 1821, the possi- 

 bility still remained that the rather vague coast-line* to the south of the Bransfield Strait 

 might be connected with " Sandwich Land", and moreover that new land such as the 

 South Orkneys might form an important link in the event of such a connection. Of this 

 possibility Powell may be assumed to have been aware. At all events, while Palmer,^ 

 if we are to believe Fanning, perhaps imagined that his "Palmer's Land" extended at 

 least as far east as, and was connected with, the South Orkneys, Powell had a much 

 clearer conception of his discovery ; for he correctly supposed it to be a group of islands 



1 Ida Lee (Mrs Charles Bruce Marriot), 1913, The Voyages of Captain William Smith and others to the 

 South Shetlands, Geog. Journ., xlii, p. 367. See also Gould, R. T., 1925, The First Sighting of the Antarctic 

 Continent, Geog. Journ., lxv, pp. 220-5. 



^ The brig 'Williams' in which Smith discovered the South Shetlands. See Miers' account of the dis- 

 covery in Edinburgh Philosophical Journ., ni, 1820, pp. 367-80. 



^ Miers, J., loc. cit., pp. 377-8. 



^ The Trinity Land of Bransfield and the "Palmer's Land" of Fanning and others. 



'^ N. B. Palmer, an American sealer, who accompanied Powell to the eastward in December 1821 (see 

 p. 294). 



