448 THE ANTARCTIC MANUAL. 
after a thaw. Their appearance was to the last degree imposing. They 
seemed to form an insurmountable barrier to the east of the islets to 
which we were bound; and this made me think that they were per- 
haps fixed 80-100 fathoms down. Their height indicated about this 
draught of water. The sea was covered with débris of ice, which 
obliged us to take a very winding course. On the icebergs (glagons) we 
noticed a crowd of penguins, who with a stupid air quietly watched us 
pass. 
“Tt was nearly 9 o’clock when, to our great joy, we landed on the 
western part of the most westerly and the loftiest islet. The Astrolabe’s 
boat had arrived a moment before, and already the men had climbed up 
the steep sides of this rock. They hurled down the penguins, who were 
much astonished to find themselves so brutally dispossessed of the island, 
of which they were the sole inhabitants. We also jumped on shore 
armed with pickaxes and hammers, The surf rendered this operation 
very difficult. I was forced to leave several men in the boat to look 
after her. I then immediately sent one of our men to unfurl the 
tricolour flag on this land, which no human creature had either seen or 
stepped on before. Following the ancient custom, faithfully kept up by 
the English, we took possession of it in the name of France, as well as 
of the adjacent coast, which the ice prevented us from approaching. 
Our enthusiasm and joy were such that it seemed to us we had just added 
a province to French territory, by this wholly pacific conquest. If the 
abuse which has been born of such acts of possession has caused them to 
be often regarded as ridiculous and worthless, in this case at any rate 
we believed ourselves sufficiently in the right to maintain the ancient 
custom in favour of our country. For we dispossessed none and our 
titles were incontestable. We regarded ourselves, therefore, at once as 
being on French soil; and there is at least this advantage that it will 
never raise up war against our country. 
“The ceremony ended, as it should, with a libation. To the glory of 
France, which concerned us deeply just then, we emptied a bottle of the 
most generous of her wines, which one of our companions had had the 
presence of mind to bring with him. Never was Bordeaux wine called 
on to play a more worthy part; never was bottle emptied more fitly. 
Surrounded on all sides by eternal ice and snow, the cold was extreme. 
This generous liquor reacted with advantage against the rigours of the 
temperature. All this happened in less time than it takes to write it. 
We then all set to work immediately to collect everything of interest in 
natural history that this barren land could offer. The animal kingdom 
was only represented by the penguins. Notwithstanding all my search 
we did not find asingle shell. The rock was entirely bare, and did not 
even offer the least trace of lichens. We found only one single seaweed, 
and that was dry; so it had been brought there by currents or birds. 
We were obliged to fall back on the mincral kingdom. Each of us took 
