From Hobart to South Victoria Land. 55 
evening we entered the pack. Here two new birds 
appeared, one quite grey, and the other white under- 
neath, greyish brown above, and a white border on 
the extremities of the wings. Both were about the 
size of the Daption Capensis. 
On the 30th December, 1898, when the Southern 
Cross first struck the scouts of Antarctic ice-pack, 
n Ol GO >, and lone. 153° 55' E., it was some- 
what sooner 
pham IL ex- 
pected. There 
was,of course, 
reason to be- 
lieve that we 
sicud en- 
Counter ice 
early on the 
southward 
voyage by 
going so far 
west, and par- 
ticularlyat the 
point chosen, 
where my experiences from 1894-5 justified such 
anticipation ; but still the appearance of the first pack 
took me by surprise at the latitude where we met it, 
and in the beginning I took it as a promising sign 
of early Antarctic spring. [Interested as I naturally 
have been in the controversy between my predecessor, 
Sir James Clark Ross, and Captain Wilkes, in regard 
to the land reported by the latter, and anxious to be 
enabled to judge for myself the cause of Captain 
Wilkes' mistake, I purposely took that course, although 
AN OCEAN VISITOR. 
