FOR THE SOUTH LAND 
47 
captain on this matter, believing that the evidence pointed 
to Cape Circumcision being on an island, and that not a 
large one. The position assigned by Bouvet was be- 
tween 54 0 io' and 54 0 15' S., and between 27 0 and 28° 
East of Tenerife. Cape Circumcision will be heard of 
again several times in the course of our narrative. 
On January 20th the Frenchmen reached 54°4o' S., 
close to the limit assigned by their instructions, and even 
had they wished to go farther they could not have done so 
on account of the ice-pack, the edge of which they fol- 
lowed for 400 leagues eastward along what they be- 
lieved to be a continent rendered inaccessible by the 
floating ice. Bouvet accordingly turned north-eastward 
and continued the search for Gonneville Land to 55° E. 
(of Tenerife) with no result. His crews suffering much 
from illness he returned to France after a spirited and 
persevering effort to find what did not exist. 
He did valuable work in freeing the South Atlantic 
of the mythical land and in bringing home the first fairly 
complete description of the huge flat-topped Antarctic 
icebergs amongst which he had sailed. Some of these 
he described as from 200 to 300 feet in height and from 
two to three leagues in circumference. The abundance 
of penguins and seals observed on the ice appeared to 
indicate the proximity of land for, as Bouvet observed, 
these are amphibious animals. And whether he was right 
as to the proximity of a coast-line or not he performed a 
solid piece of exploration in very hard conditions by 
sailing along 48° of longitude nearly in 55 0 S. 
The contrast between the far south and the far north 
could not fail to strike the explorers, for here not long 
after the southern midsummer they found the sea filled 
with ice at a latitude corresponding to that of Belfast. 
