300 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



but it might very well be Spence's Harbour on the east side of Coronation Island, where 

 as has already been stated (pp. 297-8) both the ' James Monroe ' and the ' Dove ' lay for 

 nearly three days. It should be observed, moreover, that Spence's Harbour is in Lewth- 

 waite Strait, which as far as we can judge was actually discovered by Palmer. 



Edmund Fanning has written such an extraordinary account of Palmer's easterly 

 journey to the South Orkneys that one is tempted to enquire whether it originated 

 entirely with Palmer or in Fanning's rather fertile imagination. The ultimate re- 

 sponsibility, of course, rests with Palmer, who like the majority of the sealers of his day 

 appears to have kept a most inadequate journal,^ if indeed he kept one at all — an un- 

 fortunate circumstance which has helped in no small degree to throw the early history 

 of this region into confusion. Palmer's personal report of this voyage was therefore in 

 all probability purely a verbal one: first to Pendleton at the South Shetlands, and later 

 on his return to America^ to Fanning, who along with Pendleton was one of the agents^ 

 for the Stonington fleet. Even if Palmer had produced documentary evidence it was 

 most probably destroyed, as Balch suggests,* along with other Palmer records in the fire 

 which burnt down the house of A. S. Palmer, a brother of N. B. Palmer, in Stonington, 

 on November 15, 1850. In the absence of such evidence it is difficult to decide whether 

 to doubt the veracity of Palmer or that of his narrator. 



The most that can be said is that Fanning's account is so lacking in precision that it 

 is perhaps unfair to attribute it entirely to Palmer, who by all accounts was a good 

 navigator. It is difficult to believe, as MilF suggests, that he was so grossly misled as to 

 mistake the edge of the pack-ice for the "mainland" over such an immense distance 

 as is implied in Fanning's narrative. Mill writes: 



If Palmer followed the coast to 49° W. he followed it into what is certainly open sea, and if he 

 found a harbour in 61° 41' S. it could be in no known land. Fanning apparently suggests that 

 Palmer's harbour lay in 49° W., which is far to the east of any land except the South Orkneys; and 

 from Powell's map there is no doubt that what Palmer followed was the edge of the pack which that 

 season stretched unbroken to the South Orkneys where the strait he threaded and the harbour in 

 which he anchored are duly charted. 



There is no evidence either in Powell's journal or in his chart that the easterly track of 

 the ' Dove ' from Elephant Island (Fig. i) — and therefore that of the ' James Monroe ' — 

 lay within sight of such a large body of pack to the southward. If any pack was en- 

 countered at all, and it may be supposed there was from Powell's remark " a great quan- 

 tity of ice trending in that direction", it was probably an isolated patch or detached 

 stream, which however lay to the north of the 'Dove's' track, since she had to haul 

 up to the south-east to avoid it. Actually, as Powell's chart shows, the main mass of 



1 At any rate in the 'James Monroe'. He seems to have kept a log of sorts in the 'Hero' but his authority, 

 Balch (Stonington Antarctic Explorers, p. 477), is not at all clear about it. 



2 Shortly after the middle of June, 1822, vide Stonington Antarctic Explorers, p. 474. 



^ Balch, E. S., 1909, Stonington Antarctic Explorers, Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc, xli, p. 483. 



* Ibid., p. ^y 2- 



^ Mill, H. R., 1905, The Siege 0/ the South Pole, p. 103 (London). 



