HISTORY OF THE ISLANDS 303 



him, had sighted and charted its northern coast at two points, viz., "Trinity Land" in 

 60° W, and its north-eastern extremity in the neighbourhood of Mount Bransfield to- 

 gether with the western side of D'Urville Island, in about 57° W. Bransfield's dis- 

 coveries and approximate track along the Trinity Peninsula and thence to Elephant 

 Island are admirably shown in the map which accompanies Gould's paper The First 

 Sighting of the Antarctic Continent, and with these earlier discoveries in view it is 

 possible now to arrive at a reasonable estimate of the nature and extent of the land which 

 Palmer might have discovered in the late spring of 1821 during his second voyage of 

 exploration in the ' James Monroe '. If, as Fanning relates, he came up with the coast of 

 "Palmer's Land" in the 64th meridian and turned eastward, or more correctly north- 

 eastward, he undoubtedly discovered in turn Anvers, Brabant, and Liege Islands — the 

 Palmer Archipelago — with which, however, he appears to have been already partially 

 acquainted from his previous voyage in the 'Hero'. Then, having skirted Bransfield's 

 "Trinity Land" and provided (which is quite uncertain) that he had the land always in 

 sight all the way to D'Urville Island, he can scarcely have failed to discover that part of 

 the north coast of Trinity Peninsula, between 59° 45' and 57° 45' W, in length some fifty- 

 five miles, which Bransfield lost sight of in fog on January 30 or 31, 1820, but which he 

 indicated on his chart with a pecked line and the legend " Supposed Land". 



Finally, it should be noted that Palmer made this voyage of discovery in November 

 1821 and not in December and January 1821-2 as Fanning states, for as we have already 

 seen he was at Elephant Island on November 30 and his movements since then, so far as 

 they can now be ascertained, have been accounted for up to January 25, 1822, when he 

 presumably sailed for America (see p. 299). Now, as the southern and especially the 

 south-eastern coasts of the Bransfield Strait are often beset for a long way to the north 

 by pack-ice in November, besides being fog-bound, the probability that Palmer dis- 

 covered or saw large tracts of the coast of Graham Land in the ' James Monroe ' must be 

 considerably diminished. The Palmer Archipelago may, it is true, have been clear of ice, 

 or clear enough for a distant view, but as far as the coast of Trinity Peninsula is con- 

 cerned, unless he was exceptionally lucky he may quite easily have failed to see the land 

 altogether, or, as is suggested in the editorial preface to Powell's journal, only have seen 

 it from a great distance. 



That Palmer cannot have been wholly aware of what actually took place in November 

 and December 1821 is not to be doubted, for evidence exists which clearly proves that 

 some twelve years before the publication of Fanning's book Palmer had made statements 

 in America regarding the discovery of the South Orkneys which correspond in one very 

 important detail with Fanning's account. 



In the editorial preface to Powell's A^o^e^ on South- Shetland it appears that a New Chart 

 of the Southern Ocean, together with a Memoir^ of considerable length dealing with the 

 earliest history of discovery in the South Shetlands, was published by R. H. Laurie in 

 1822, prior to the publication of Powell's Chart of South Shetland, including Coronation 



1 It is a pity that neither the Memoir nor the New Chart can now be traced. The Memoir, in particular, 

 appears to contain much that would help to clear up the very early history of the South Shetlands. 



