ANTARCTIC VOYAGES OF DISCOYERY. 



403 



By great skill and management Ross succeeded in jumping on to the rocks. 

 By means of a rope some of the officers landed somewhat more easily, but not 

 without getting thoroughly wetted, and one of them nearly lost his life in this 

 difficult affair. The thermometer being at 22°, every part of the rocks washed 

 by the waves was covered with a coating of ice, so that in jumping from the 

 boat he slipped from them into the water between her stern and the almost 

 perpendicular rock on which his companions had landed. But for the prompt- 

 itude of the men in the boat in instantly pulling off, he must have been crushed 

 between it and the rock. He was taken into the boat without having suffered 

 any other injury than being benumbed by the cold. 



The island, which received the name of Franklin, bore not the smallest trace 

 of vegetation, not even a lichen or piece of sea-weed growing on the rocks ; but 

 the white petrel and the skua-gull had their nests on the ledges of the cliffs, and 

 seals were seen sporting in the w^ater. 



The following day was memorable for the discovery of the southernmost 

 known land of the globe, a magnificent mountain chain, to which the name of 

 Parry was given, in grateful remembrance of the honor which that illustrious 

 navigator had conferred on Ross, by caUing the most northern land at that 

 time known by his name. It is not often that men are able to reciprocate such 

 compHments as these ! The most conspicuous object of the chain was Mount 

 Erebus (77° 5' S.), an active volcano, of which Ross had the good-fortune to 

 witness a magnificent eruption. The enormous columns of flame and smoke 

 rising two thousand feet above the mouth of the crater, which is elevated 

 1 2,400 feet above the level of the sea, combined with the snow-white mountain 

 chain and the deep-blue ocean to form a magnificent scene. An extinct volcano 

 to the eastward of Mount Erebus, and a little inferior in height, being by meas- 

 urement 10,900 feet high, was called "Mount Terror." A brilliant mantle of 

 snow swept down the sides of both these giants of the south, and projected a 

 perpendicular icy cliff several miles into the sea. 



Gladly would Ross have penetrated still farther to the south, but all his 

 efforts were baffled by a vast barrier of ice, forming an uninterrupted wall, 

 450 miles in length, and rising in some parts to a height of 180 feet above the 

 sea-level. While sailing along this barrier, the ships were frequently obliged 

 by the wind and the closely-packed ice to keep at a considerable distance; but 

 ' on February 9, having entered the only indentation which they had perceived 

 throughout its whole extent, they had an excellent opportunity of getting quite 

 close to it, though at no little hazard. This bay was formed by a projecting 

 peninsula of ice, terminated by a cape 170 feet high ; but at the narrow isthmus 

 which connected it with the great barrier it was not more than fifty feet high, 

 affording Ross the only opportunity he had of seeing its upjDer surface from 

 the mast-head. It appeared to be quite smooth, and conveyed to the mind the 

 idea of an immense plain of frosted silver. Gigantic icicles depended from 

 every projecting point of its perpendicular cliffs, proving that it sometimes 

 thawed, which otherwise could not have been believed; for at a season of the 

 year equivalent to August in England, the thermometer at noon did not rise 

 above 14°, and the young ice formed so quickly in the sheltered bay as to warn 



