THE POLAR SEAS. 53 



gave the name of Adelia's Land. The long and lofty cliffs of this 

 island or continent he describes as being surrounded by a belt of 

 islands of ice at once numerous and threatening. D'Urville did not 

 hesitate to navigate his corvettes through the middle of the band of 

 enormous icebergs which seemed to guard the Pole and forbid his 

 approach to it. For some moments his vessels were so surrounded 

 that they had reason to fear, from moment to moment, some terrible 

 shock, some irreparable disaster. In addition to this, the sea produces 

 around these floating icebergs, eddies, which were not unlikely to draw 

 on the ship to the destruction with which it was threatened at every 

 instant. It was in passing at their base that D'Urville was able to 

 judge of the height of these icy cliffs. " The walls of these blocks of 

 ice," he says, " far exceed our masts and riggings in height ; they 

 overhang our ships, whose dimensions seem ridiculously curtailed. 

 We seem to be traversing the narrow streets of some city of giants. 

 At the foot of these gigantic monuments we perceive vast caverns 

 hollowed by the waves, which are engulfed there with a crashing 

 tumult. The sun darts his oblique rays upon the immense walls of 

 ice as if it were crystal, presenting effects of light and shade truly 

 magical and startling. From the summit of these mountains, 

 numerous brooks, fed by the melting ice produced by the summer 

 heat of a January sun in these regions, throw themselves in cascades 

 into the icy sea. 



" Occasionally these icebergs approach each other so as to conceal 

 the land entirely, and we only perceive two walls of threatening ice, 

 whose sonorous echoes send back the word of command of the officers. 

 The corvette which followed the Astrolabe appeared so small, and its 

 masts so slender, that the ship's crew were seized with terror. For 

 nearly an hour we only saw vertical walls of ice." Ultimately they 

 reached a vast basin, formed on one side by the chain of floating 

 islands which they had traversed, and on the other by high land 

 rising three and four thousand feet, rugged and undulating on the 

 surface, but clothed over all with an icy mantle, which was rendered 

 dazzlingly imposing in its whiteness by the rays of the sun. The 

 officers could only advance by the ship's boats through a labyrinth of 

 icebergs up to a little islet lying opposite to the coast. They touched 

 the land at this islet ; the French flag was planted, possession was 

 taken of the new continent, and, in proof of possession, some portions 



