FOR THE SOUTH LAND 
39 
the coast of the South Land were gradually dispelled. 
Hendrik Brouwer in 1643 being unable to make Strait Le 
Maire turned eastward along Staten Land and found it to 
be an island of no great size. He also professed to have 
found new land farther to the east, but his discoveries 
were so vaguely described that they failed to gain general 
belief. In 1675 a merchant named Antony La Roche, re- 
turning from the South Sea, encountered a strong current 
off Strait Le Maire which carried him far to the east, 
where he discovered a snow-covered land, possibly the 
Falkland Islands — one of the most frequently discovered, 
named and forgotten groups in all the seas — but perhaps 
it was South Georgia with which the snow-covering in 
April agrees better. 
During the years towards the close of the seventeenth 
century the English buccaneers made more use than 
almost any other navigators of the seas about the Horn, 
and the stories of their adventurous voyages abound in 
accounts of storms driving them south amongst the ice. 
They were forced into such positions sorely against their 
will and all their efforts were devoted to escaping north- 
ward again. Little information is to be derived from 
their logs except concerning the severity of the weather 
and the misery of working the ships in that region of 
“ floe and snow and blow.’’ It may be that some of the 
ships reached high latitudes, but the total absence of ob- 
served longitudes deprive the record of any geographical 
value. Bartholomew Sharpe is believed to have reached 
“ near 6o° S.” in 1681, Ambrose Cowley 6o° in 1684, 
and Edward Davis “ very near 63° ” in 1687 in the South 
Atlantic. Davis had a short time previously lighted on 
a new land in the South Pacific, far off the coast of 
Chile, which although only the little Easter Island, gave 
