ch. xlv] The Great Southern Continent 
393 
expedition from Chile which discovered the coast of 
the southern continent, landed on it, and had communi- 
cation with the natives. But the story is not authentic 1 . 
More than a century passed without any further thought 
of the reputed continent round the antarctic pole. In 
1675 an English merchant named Anthony La Roche, 
returning from the South Pacific, discovered the land 
to which Captain Cook afterwards gave the name of 
South Georgia. In 1738, the French East India Com- 
pany sent two vessels under the command of Captain 
Lozier Bouvet to discover a peninsula in the South 
Atlantic said to form part of the southern continent. 
Bouvet sighted land in 54 0 S. and n° E., but did not 
ascertain whether it was a peninsula or an island. He 
called it Cap Circoncision 2 . 
Hitherto the discoveries in the far south had for the 
most part been accidental, and there had only been one 
real antarctic expedition, that of Quiros, which too soon 
altered course from south, hesitating near the threshold, 
and met with failure in consequence. 
1 Dalrymple and Burney take it seriously. I included it among the 
documents in my Voyages of Quiros, but I now quite agree with my old 
friend Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna that it is a fabrication. (See Vicuna 
Mackenna's Historia de Juan Fernandez.) 
2 Cook and Ross searched for this small island in vain, but several 
of Mr Enderby's sealing vessels found and visited Bouvet Island. 
