328 Voyage of C apt. Sir James C. Ross to the Antarctic. 



Franklin Island. — With extreme difficulty and peril, CapL 

 Ross with some of his officers landed upon an island whose icy 

 cliffs, lashed by the surge, rendered a foot-hold hazardous in the 

 extreme, and one of the officers slipping between the boat and 

 the rock was near being crushed and drowned. 



This island is about twelve miles long and six broad, and is 

 situated in lat. 76° 8' S., long. 168° 12' E. ; the rocks are entirely 

 igneous, the cliffs five to six hundred feet high, wholly without 

 vegetation — not even a lichen or sea- weed. Still the white petrel 

 and rapacious gull nested among the ledges, and several seals, but 

 no whales were seen. 



January 28. — An active Volcano, Mount Erebus. — The lofty 

 land which had been seen the day before, " proved to be a moun- 

 tain 12,400 feet high above the sea level, emitting flame and 

 smoke in great profusion ; at first the smoke appeared like a snow 

 drift, but as we drew nearer, its true character became manifest. " 

 The discovery of an active volcano in so high a southern lati- 

 tude, was justly regarded as a subject of great geological interest, 

 proving as it does, that the antarctic as well as arctic snows and 

 ice-mountains have no influence towards extinguishing the fires 

 that rage beneath, and which, ever and anon, within the polar cir- 

 cles of the opposite hemispheres, burst through the frozen zones 

 and flash upon the ever wintry skies of the coldest regions of the 

 earth. The newly discovered volcano was called mount Erebus, 

 while mount Terror was the name assigned to an extinct volcano 

 to the eastward, little inferior in height, being 10,900 feet high. 



Magnetic dip 88° 27' S., variation 95° 31' E., being south of the 

 magnetic pole, the ice preventing an access to it. An icy barrier 

 of 150 to 200 or 300 feet high, stretching along many miles, de- 

 barred any farther progress in that direction, although the com- 

 manders had appointed a rendezvous in 82° S. 



" At 4 P. M. mount Erebus emitted smoke and flame in great 

 quantity, producing a grand spectacle. A volume of dense smoke 

 was projected at each successive jet with great force, in a ver- 

 tical column 1500 and 2000 feet above the mouth of the cra- 

 ^ ; when condensing, first at its upper part, it descended in 

 mist or snow and gradually dispersed, to be succeeded in about 

 half an hour by another splendid exhibition of the same kind, 

 although the intervals between the eruptions were by no means 

 regular. The diameter of the column of smoke was between 

 200 and 300 feet, as near as it could be measured. Whenever the 

 vapors cleared away, the bright red flame that filled the mouth 

 of the crater, was clearly perceptible; and some of the officers 

 believed that they could see streams of lava pouring down its 

 sides, until lost beneath the snow which descended from a few 

 hundred feet below the crater, and projected its perpendicular icy 



cliffs several miles into thp nc&nn " 





