FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
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what with attending to the sailors' boils and various 
complaints, arising from this inhospitable climate, and 
making his hourly observations, his hands are full. I 
should like to give a drawing of the doctor at work in his 
bunk, overwhelmed with skins, bottles, and apparatus, 
but perhaps there would be * trop de chosesl as the great 
Carolus used to say. 
Wind S.E. We thought we saw land to-night to the 
westward. 
Friday, 2yd Dec— Hurrah ! we've made the land at 
last — the islands of the Antarctic Continent. At seven 
this morning the mist rose and we found ourselves almost 
exactly where our dead reckoning put us, but rather 
nearer the most northerly of the group of Danger Islands 
than we cared to be. Sir James Ross discovered them 
fifty years ago, and I suppose they have not been seen 
since. Beyond them to the west lay the N.E. end of 
Joinville Land, seen by Admiral d'Urville from the N.W. 
in 1838. What we saw of it was a sweep of snow that 
rose in a very gradual slope to between two or three 
thousand feet, then fading almost imperceptibly into the 
clouds. At times the sun shone through the whisps of 
cloud and chased shadows along the glacier slopes ; I 
thought the faint lines I could trace on the snow might be 
crevasses. Not a sign of a rock or any kind of land 
showed through the glacier slopes. Sir James Ross saw 
some rocks like warty excrescences breaking abruptly 
from the snow on the top, and Captain Crozier and his 
officers in the Terror believed they saw smoke issuing 
