HISTORY OF DISCO VERY. 47 



the Antarctic seas were visited in their better-known 

 regions only by seal hunters. Indeed, in South Georgia 

 the sea-elephants and fur-seals were, in but few years 

 after Cook's report, nearly completely extirpated by 

 English and American hunters. 



The only incident worthy of mention during the whole 

 time between the voyages of Cook and the early twenties 

 of the present century is the re-discovery of Bouvet's 

 Cape Circoncision in 1808. This was achieved by two 

 whaling vessels owned by the London firm of Enderby, 

 the Snow Swan, commanded by James Lindsay, and the 

 Otter, commanded by Thomas Hopper. The first saw 

 land on the 6th of October, 1 808, which he approached as 

 near as the stacked-up ice would permit. According to 

 observations and the ship's reckoning, the ship lay in 

 latitude 55° 15' S. and in longitude 4° 15' E., only a 

 few nautical miles from land. After an unsuccessful 

 attempt to find an available harbour Lindsay left the 

 island on the 13th of October, after Hopper also had 

 sighted it on the 10th. 



As chance appears to have played the principal part 

 in the re-discovery of a forgotten land which neither 

 Cook had succeeded in finding previously, nor James 

 Clarke Ross was to succeed in finding subsequently, so 

 chance apparently was the principal factor in finding 

 the land once discovered by Dirk Gerritz. At all 

 events, probability points that way, and it is certain that 

 the English hydrographer, James Horsburgh, told the 

 German geographer, Heinrich Berghaus, that the island 

 group had been a station for American seal-hunters since 

 18 1 2. The motive for keeping its existence secret was 

 the desire to retain the sole use of the station for their 

 own profit. Meantime nothing further was known of 

 these islands, and it is owing to the English merchant 

 captain, William Smith, that they re-entered the range of 

 human ken. Smith had sailed far south in rounding 



