34 THE ANTARCTIC. 



Terre d'Esperance. Ten days later he came upon an 

 island group in the same latitude, 46^° S., of which the 

 one on which he landed was named Isle de la Prise de 

 Possession. The islands were certainly covered with 

 snow at midsummer, and a great iceberg was seen : never- 

 theless Crozet, the commander of Marion's consort, 

 concluded that it must be near a graminiferous country 

 from his seeing a pigeon on the wing ! Marion spent no 

 time in exploring the islands or the country conjectured 

 to be beyond, but shaped his course for Tasmania (then 

 Van Diemen's Land) and New Zealand. Here he was 

 killed by a native in revenge for the ineptitude of 

 Surville, who had visited the coast almost at the same 

 time as Cook three years before. The command of both 

 ships was not taken over by Crozet as is frequently 

 asserted, but by Duclesmeur, who brought them home. 



As has already been stated, a second exploring ex- 

 pedition left France in 1771, under the command of Yves 

 Joseph de Kerguelen-Tremarec. He was under orders 

 to start from the Isle de France (now again Mauritius), 

 and to steer towards the southern continent in latitude 

 45 S., and about the meridian of the islands of St. Paul 

 and Amsterdam, to find a suitable harbour, and thor- 

 oughly to study the products of the country, its inhabi- 

 tants, and their social condition. A member of the Paris 

 Academy, the astronomer Rochon, was appointed to 

 assist in setting down the topographical details. On the 

 16th of January, 1772, therefore, Kerguelen left the Isle 

 de France, and a month later, on the 13th of February, 

 he discovered, in latitude 50 S., land that, according 

 to his conjecture, certainly formed a part of the great 

 southern continent. A closer examination was not 

 undertaken, as the weather was bad and the country 

 entirely uninhabited. Kerguelen's opinion about the 

 connection with the southern continent was shared by 

 Paris generally, and the discovery was held to be of such 



