52 THE OCEAN WOKLD. 



hope. The floating icebergs became more and more closely packed 

 and dangerous. The southern icebergs do not circulate in straits and 

 channels already formed, like those of the North Pole, but in enormous 

 detached blocks which hug the land. Sometimes in shallow water 

 they form belts parallel to the base of the cliffs, intersected by a small 

 number of sinuous narrow channels. These icy cliffs present a face 

 more or less disintegrated as they approximate to the rocky shore. 

 The blocks of ice form at first huge prisms, or tabular, regular masses 

 of a whitish paste ; but they get used up by degrees, and rounded off 

 and separated under the action of the waves, which chafe them, and 

 their colour becomes more and more limpid and bluish. They ascend 

 freely towards the north, in spite of the winds and currents which 

 carry them in the contrary direction. One year with another these 

 floating icebergs accumulate with very striking differences, and it is 

 only by a rare chance that they open up a free passage such as 

 Captain Weddell had discovered. These floating islands of ice have 

 been met with in thirty-five degrees south latitude, and even as high 

 as Cape Horn. 



The two French ships frequently found themselves shut up in the 

 icebergs, which continued to press upon them, and driven before the 

 north winds, until the south wind again dispersed their vast masses, 

 enabling them to issue from their prison in health and safety. In 

 some cases D'Urville found it necessary to force his ship through 

 fields of ice by which he was surrounded and imprisoned, and to cut 

 his way by force through the accumulating blocks, using the corvette 

 as a sort of battering-ram. In 1838 he recognized, about fifty leagues 

 from the South Orkney Isles, a coast, to which he gave the name of 

 Louis Philippe's and Joinville's Land. This coast is covered with 

 enormous masses of ice, which seemed to rise to the height of two 

 thousand six hundred feet. Boss discovered still more lofty peaks, 

 such as Mount Penny and Mount Haddington, rising about seven 

 thousand feet. The English navigator states that this land is only a 

 great island. The crew of D'Urville's ship being sickly and over- 

 worked, he returned to the port of Chili, whence he again issued for 

 the South Pole in the following January. 



On this occasion his approach was made from a point diametrically 

 opposite to the former. He very soon found himself in the middle of 

 the ice. He discovered within the Antarctic Circle land, to which he 



