AMERICAN SEALERS 
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in 61 0 41' south latitude, a strait was discovered, which 
he named Washington Strait, this he entered and about 
a league within came to a fine bay, which he named Mon- 
roe bay, at the head of this was a good harbor; here 
they anchored, calling it Palmer’s Harbor.” 
If Palmer followed the coast to 49 0 W. he followed it 
into what is certainly open sea, and if he found a har- 
bour in 6i° 41' S. it could be in no known land. Fan- 
ning apparently suggests that Palmer’s harbour lay in 
49° W., which is far to the east of any land except the 
South Orkneys ; and from Powell’s map there is no doubt 
that what Palmer followed was the edge of the pack 
which that season stretched unbroken to the South Ork- 
neys where the strait he threaded and the harbour in 
which he anchored are duly charted. Nathaniel B. Pal- 
mer continued to follow the sea for many a year and died 
in 1877 at the age of seventy-eight. 
Captain George Powell, apparently a British sealer, 
accompanied Palmer in the sloop Dove for a considerable 
part of his cruise in 1821-22, and gave a clear account of 
his track in an excellent chart published in London on his 
return. This shows that he had not only improved the 
survey of the South Shetlands, but discovered and sur- 
veyed the group of islands usually called the South 
Orkneys, but originally known as the Powell Islands, a 
name to which it would seem only right to return. 
Powell might have done much as an explorer, but he 
perished in a squabble with the natives of Tonga in 1824 
at the age of twenty-nine. 
For years to come the Americans regularly visited the 
South Shetlands, South Georgia and neighbouring 
islands and did not cease until the fur seal was extinct, 
and even the hair seal had become scarce. The exploits 
