HISTORY OF THE ISLANDS 293 



although he regretted that he was unable through lack of provisions to ascertain its 

 easterly extent.^ 



The eastern land [Laurie Island] extends to the eastward of Cape Hartree as far as we could discern, 

 forming, as I suppose, a group of islands; for the sea, to the southward of the land was full of ice, 

 floating about. I would have proceeded further to the eastward, but the wind being from the E.N.E., 

 and all our stock of provisions exhausted, I was forced, with reluctance, to quit my object. 



Powell did not find a single fur seal at the South Orkneys, but this circumstance, as 

 far as can be gathered from his journal, does not seem to have caused him any regret. 

 On the contrary his chief concern appears to have been the exploration of the group ; and 

 when he was at length compelled to leave, shortage of food did not deter him from 

 standing due south into the Weddell Sea as far as 62° 20' S, where heavy pack-ice 

 obliged him to turn westwards towards the South Shetlands. 



In the concluding lines of his Notes on South- Shetland Powell appears to throw a 

 certain light, where all is vague, on a problem that has attracted the attention of the 

 earlier historians of this region — particularly Balch and Nordenskjold : the problem of 

 the nature and extent of N. B. Palmer's discoveries on the southern side of the Bransfield 

 Strait ; and a brief discussion of this matter, at least in so far as it appears to be in- 

 terpreted by Powell, is perhaps not exceeding the purpose of this paper. Palmer in the 

 ' Hero ' first appears to have explored the land to the south of the Bransfield Strait in 

 January or February 1821,^ and later, as nearly as we can judge now, in November of 

 the same year (see p. 303) to have sailed along and considerably extended his exploration 

 of it in the 'James Monroe'. Part of the land he had explored, however, had 

 previously been discovered and named "Trinity Land" by Bransfield on January 30, 

 1820,^ at least a year before Palmer's discovery in the ' Hero ', an important fact of which 

 Powell, judging from his concluding remarks, was evidently unaware: 



Of the land to the southward, called palmer's land, very little can be said, as it does not appear 

 to be sufficiently explored : but it has been described as very high, and covered with snow, with in- 

 lets, forming straits, which may probably separate the land, and constitute a range of islands, similar 

 to those of South-Shetland; at least, such is the appearance of the northern side, which alone has 

 yet been seen. 



Thus more than a hundred years ago Powell, although he had never been near the 

 south side of the Bransfield Strait but had evidently held conversation with some 

 who had,* appears to have entertained a shrewd opinion as to the possible nature of 

 the land with which Palmer was acquainted — that it was perhaps an archipelago, so 

 that after all the "Palmer's Land" which appears vaguely in Powell's chart of 1822, in 

 part at any rate, need not have been the mainland of "West Antarctica" or Graham 



^ Cf. the editor of Povvell's Notes, p. 3: "How far Powell's Group may extend to the eastward is yet 

 unknown, and we are equally ignorant of the extent of Palmer's Land, both to the south, east, and west". 



2 Balch, E. S., 1909, Stonington Antarctic Explorers, Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc., XLI, p. 478. According to 

 Balch, however {Antarctica Addenda, Journ. Franklin Inst., CLVii, p. 85), he had already sighted it not 

 very long before from a peak in Deception Island. 



3 Gould, R. T., 1925, The First Sighting of tlie Antarctic Continent, Geog. Journ., LXV, pp. 220-5. 

 * For instance, almost certainly with his co-voyager to the South Orkneys, Palmer himself. 



