310 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Thus in 1822 three conflicting reports came to London of the discovery of this new 

 land: first (probably) Palmer's vague story of " South Iceland" situated in 61° 41' S; 

 then Weddell's report to the Admiralty; and finally Powell's reliable account to R. H. 

 Laurie. 



In the beginning of 1823 Weddell again visited the South Orkneys^ in search of fur 

 seal and doubtless also in order to make further geographical acquaintance with a new 

 land to which he had paid only the briefest visit in 1822. He sighted the eastern end of 

 Laurie Island on January 12 and on the afternoon of the 15th landed on Saddle Island, 

 thus named by Weddell from its peculiar shape. Thence his vessels went westwards 

 examining the northern coast of Coronation Island and were off West Cape, the south- 

 western corner of Coronation Island, on the 20th. They returned by the same route and 

 on the 22nd reached the most easterly point of Laurie Island which Weddell named 

 Cape Dundas "in honour of the illustrious family of that name". Here a landing was 

 made. In the meantime the southern shores of the group had been examined and very 

 roughly charted by the ships' boats under Matthew Brisbane. His search of the group 

 having been rewarded by only three fur seal, Weddell now stood southwards from Cape 

 Dundas, his immediate path lying through a chain of icebergs set so closely together that 

 they were thought from a distance to be a range of land. 



Beyond saying that they were "if possible, more terrific in appearance than South 

 Shetland ", Weddell has given little description of these islands ; but his general impres- 

 sion of this "cold earthless land, and its immense ice islands" is perhaps particularly 

 applicable to the South Orkneys : " The part of the country which I have seen is without 

 soil, reared in columns of impenetrable rock, inclosing and producing large masses of 

 ice, even in the low latitude of 60° 45'."^ 



The first Weddell seal ever taken from the Antarctic was collected by Weddell at the 

 South Orkneys (probably from Saddle Island) and sent to the Royal Scottish Museum 

 in Edinburgh, where stuffed in a grotesque shape it was for long on exhibition in the 

 pubhc galleries.^ At Cape Dundas he says there was a patch of short grass, the only 

 flowering plant ever recorded from the South Orkneys, but in spite of careful search 

 no trace of it has been found in recent years (see p. 367). 



WEDDELL'S CHART 



Weddell's chart of the South Orkneys (Fig. 4) appears only in his book A Voyage 

 towards the South Pole where it occupies a single octavo page ; it was not published as a 

 separate map. Said to be the work of his two visits to the group, although it is mainly 

 that of the second in 1823, ^^ is rather a rough piece of surveying and in addition appears 

 to have been carelessly laid down, for not one of his three major "fixes"'* corresponds 



^ Weddell, J., 1825, loc. cit., pp. 20-5. 

 ^ Ibid., p. 42. 



^ See Brown, R. N. Rudmose, 1913, The Seals of the Weddell Sea: Notes on their Habits and Dis- 

 tribution, Scientific Results of the 'Scotia' 1902-4, IV, part xiii, p. 192. 



* Recorded in the text: they are Saddle Island, West Cape and Cape Dundas. 



