INTRODUCTION 



which Wilkes had been following westward turned towards 

 the north and over it there was " an appearance of land " 

 which he called Termination Land. He was in 97° 37' 

 East, and on the 21st, having failed to get farther west, 

 he rejoiced the hearts of all on board by turning north- 

 wards and maiding for Sydney. Ringgold on the Porpoise 

 had thought of running to the rendezvous in 100° East 

 first, and working his way back to the eastward with a 

 favouring wind afterwards, and he accomplished the first 

 part of the programme easily enough, for the wind helped 

 him, passing and disdaining to salute d'Urville's ships on 

 the way. He added nothing material to the information 

 obtained by the Vincennes. 



Considering the deplorable conditions against which he 

 had to contend both in the seas without and the men with- 

 in his ships, the voyage of Wilkes was one of the finest 

 pieces of determined effort on record. He erred in not 

 being critical enough of appearances of land; and his 

 charts were certainly faulty as any charts of land dimly 

 seen through fog were bound to be. Subsequent ex- 

 plorers have sailed over the positions were Wilkes showed 

 land between 164° and 154° East, and if the land he 

 saw there exists, it must be farther south than he sup- 

 posed. It is certain that Wilkes saw land further east, 

 and it seems that he was as harshly judged by Ross and 

 as unsympathetically treated by some other explorers and 

 geographers as he was by his own subordinates. 



Sir Edward Sabine and other British physicists had 

 been trying from 1835 onward to secure the despatch of 

 a British expedition to study terrestrial magnetism in the 

 Antarctic regions and pressure was brought to bear on the 

 Royal Society to take the initiative but with little effect. 

 An effort, by Captain Washington, the Secretary, to 

 arouse the Royal Geographical Society early in 1837 

 also failed. In the following year the recently founded 



XXXI 



