HISTORY OF THE ISLANDS 



301 



the pack lay out of sight and a long way to the southward. But even if an unbroken 

 line of ice had lain to the southward and within sight of his track we have not the 

 slightest reason for supposing that Palmer was incapable of distinguishing it from land. 

 On the contrary it can hardly be doubted that he had more than a passing acquaintance 

 with ice and ice forms; for when his attention was first drawn to the new land ahead, 

 girt about as it was with icebergs, it is recorded that " Captain Palmer doubted whether 

 it was land or ice", which while implying that he was perhaps reserved and cautious in 



60° 



50° 



60 





/ 



\- 



60 



.N^ 





."^f^eK rO THE EASTW4kTi^,t, jj^ 



Firm field ice.witb many high 

 Ice bergs.extending to the 

 Southward as far as we could 

 discern from the Masthead. 



64 



60° 



Longitude 50° West of Greenwich 



Fig. I . Track of the ' Dove ' to and from the South Orkneys : taken from Chart of South Shetland, 



pubHshed by R. H. Laurie in November, 1822. 



his judgment, perhaps reluctant to jump swiftly to conclusions, suggests above all that 

 he was already aware, as every sailor who has visited the Antarctic is aware, how easy it 

 sometimes is at a distance to mistake icebergs for islands. 



It is easier to suppose that he was misled as to the easterly extension of "Palmer's 

 Land" before his meeting with Powell at Elephant Island on November 30; that having 

 sailed along and beyond the coast of "Palmer's Land" until he came to, say, D'Urville 

 Island, he crossed from there to the Elephant-Clarence group, and in the thick weather 

 which frequently prevails in this region during the summer months, failed to realize 

 that he had lost touch with the "mainland". Had heavy pack-ice then lain across the 

 eastern end of the Bransfield Strait, as it frequently does in November, in the general 

 uncertainty of the fog he might possibly have regarded that as continental, or rather 

 imagined it to have some close association with the supposed continent he had just left. 



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