140 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Steered east " to make a new attempt to get to the southward at another more favourable 

 point". 



BelHngshausen reported that there were three Candlemas Islands instead of two — • 

 one of his very few errors; but he stated correctly that there were three islands in 

 Southern Thule. For one of the latter he retained the name Thule, while another he 

 called Cook Island. Cook had named the group Sandwich Land, and Bellingshausen 

 says: " Captain Cook saw these islands first and, as he had thus named them they must 

 stand, as a memory of the daring explorer to be handed on to posterity. Consequently 

 I call them, also, Sandwich Islands". 



Since the time of Bellingshausen little survey work has been attempted at the islands, 

 and though they must frequently have been sighted by sealers in the last century and in 

 recent years by whalers, very few have recorded their visits. 



Morrell,^ whose account of his voyages is generally discredited,^ says that in 1823 he 

 examined the islands from the Candlemas Group to Southern Thule. He remarks that 

 he saw "nine burning volcanoes" and that "three of the islands had vomited out so 

 much of their entrails that their surfaces were nearly even with the water". In 1830 

 Capt. James Brown,^ when engaged on a sealing voyage in the schooner 'Pacific', re- 

 discovered the three northern islands first found by Bellingshausen. Knowing nothing 

 of Bellingshausen's voyage he gave them new names, and with less reason gave a new 

 name also to Saunders Island. His men landed on Zavodovski and noted that steam 

 was issuing from the ground at many points as well as from the main crater. On 

 Visokoi they found "a burning mountain with smoke issuing in different places". In 

 the same year (1830) John Biscoe* in the brig 'Tula', with the cutter 'Lively' in com- 

 pany, in the voyage in which he discovered Enderby Land, visited Montagu'' and 

 sighted Bristol and Saunders Islands. 



From 1830 there appear to be no records of any visits to the islands until 1908, when 

 Capt. C. A. Larsen,^ the pioneer of modern Antarctic whaling, examined the group in 

 the S.S. 'Undine' in the hope of finding a site for a whaling station. Owing to lack of 

 harbours he failed in his main object, but in the course of his expedition he was able to 

 carry out some very useful work. Of the eleven islands he visited seven: he was unable 

 to approach the Thule Group by reason of pack-ice, and he appears to have missed the 

 south-western island of the Candlemas Group in the fog. Larsen was extremely suc- 

 cessful in making landings on the islands. Hitherto Zavodovski was the only island on 



1 Morrell, A Narrative of Four Voyages. . ., p. 66 (New York, 1832). 



'^ See Fricker, The Antarctic Regions, pp. 62-4 (London, 1904). 



^ See E. Fanning, Voyages round the World, pp. 440-3 (London, 1834). 



* The journal of John Biscoe's voyage, in the possession of the Royal Geographical Society, is printed in 

 The Antarctic Manual, pp. 305-25 (London, 1901). 



5 The compiler of the Notes on the Sandwich Islands, drawn up for the use of the Hydrographic De- 

 partment of the Admiralty, calls attention to the curious circumstance that Brown was at Visokoi and Biscoe 

 at Montagu on the same day (22 December 1830). They do not appear to have met. 



* Larsen's report does not appear to have been published. The notes and extracts given here are from a 

 translation prepared for the Colonial Office. 



