ADDRESS. 97 



Give us, then, suitable vessels, with an efficient outfit, say two 

 barks of two hundred tons, with two tenders of one hundred tons 

 each, and a storeship. To make the expedition complete, we 

 must again be permitted to urge the employment of a frigate. 

 She will not be necessary in the higher latitudes ; there the smaller 

 vessels should venture alone, and trust for safety to the facility of 

 locomotion, and the skilfulness of their officers. This is no longer 

 an unsettled and debateable point. The experience of others is 

 confirmed, to a limited extent, by our own. We ourselves have 

 been in the Antarctic seas, on board of two vessels, the one of one 

 hundred and sixty, and the other of eighty tons burthen, and have 

 beheld in all its terror and sublimity, that castellated region of 

 floating crystal pyramids, of accumulated ice and snow, and we 

 could easily enlarge on the preference to be given to the use of 

 comparatively small vessels. 



That the ninetieth degree, or the South Pole, may be reached 

 by the navigator, is our deliberate opinion (unless intercepted by 

 land), which all that we have seen and known has tended to con- 

 firm. That an expedition should be despatched from this country 

 for the sole purpose of ascertaining the practicability of attaining 

 it, is not, perhaps, to be expected ; but that the effort should be 

 allowed to be made, in connexion with the other great objects of 

 the enterprise, is perfectly in accordance with the most prudential 

 policy. 



We feel that we have discharged our duty, and that the subject 

 is now committed to other hands, to be disposed of by those whose 

 decision will have no connexion with our individual feelings or 

 wishes, nor do we wish that it should. Indeed, we have no 

 unusual share of personal solicitude and feverish anxiety about the 

 result. The time was, when we felt differently far differently ; 

 but that time has gone by. For us there is no disappointment in 

 store. We sought adventure, and have had it without the aid or 



patronage of government. Still our efforts have not gone unre- 

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