THE JOURNAL OF M. J. DUMONT-D’URVILLE. 441. 
ever, these first icebergs (glaces) seemed to me too large to have been 
formed in the pack in the open sea. I thought they must have originated 
rather from some land in the neighbourhood, and the result proved I had 
not been mistaken. 
The wind continued to blow from E.N.E., but the sea had suddenly 
subsided and the swell barely reached us. That was a certain indication 
of the approach of land or of pack-ice. We all noticed this ; but since no 
floating ice-islands were visible during the two days which followed, we 
continued to hope we might reach a high latitude. The cold had be- 
come very intense. The thermometer rose very little above zero. The 
sea birds were fewer, and at last the observations of the magnetic needle 
indicated that we were very near the magnetic pole, the search for 
which was one of the principal objects of the expedition. 
Jan. 18.—On the evening of the 18th we had reached 64° 8. lat. The 
weather was damp, the temperature fairly mild, and we were full of hope 
we might soon pass the 70th parallel; but at midnight we found our- 
selves suddenly surrounded by five enormous blocks shaped like a table. 
These icebergs (glaces) had exactly the same appearance as those we had 
encountered in such large numbers near the Powel Islands. From that 
moment my foreboding that we were near some unknown land increased ; 
I reluctantly gave up the hope I had cherished of penetrating to a high 
latitude, for I thought that I should soon be stopped by the land which 
presumably was in front of us, and this in any case would form the 
nucleus of a solid and insuperable iceberg by offermg a solid base fur 
floating ice. The weather was cloudy; snow fell abundantly, and, not- 
withstanding the danger of sailing by night in these latitudes, we took 
advantage of a fair easterly breeze which was blowing to advance further 
to the south. 
Jan. 19.—At 6 o’clock in the morning we counted 6 ice-islands 
floating round us. At 8 a.m. we distinguished 16. All the blocks were 
on the whole larger than those we had already encountered. They were 
all of the same shape, being flat with perpendicular sides. Their height 
varied from thirty to forty metres; as regards their horizontal dimen- 
sions, we noticed several which were more than 1000 metres broad, and 
one of them was admittedly a mile from end ‘to end. They were all 
alike, and similar to those we had seen in the neighbourhood of land on 
our first polar expedition. There seemed to be no trace of fusion nor 
of decomposition ; in none of them were to be seen those vast hollows 
formed by the sea at their edge, which imitate to perfection the arches 
of a bridge, especially when the light shines on them obliquely. Theso 
floating islands seemed to have been detached the night before from 
an ice-bound coast at a short distance. 
Our corvettes were surrounded by white and grey petrels, petrels 
tachetés (damiers), some penguins, a whale, and two or three seals. 
This was another indication of being near land. At 9 a.m. we saw 
