106 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
Patagonia, and the first fortnight of November 1822 was 
occupied in a purposeless search for the Aurora Islands, 
although Morrell had just met his old captain, Johnson, 
at the Falklands, returning from the same hopeless quest, 
and knew of Weddell’s exhaustive and conclusive search 
made two years before. He then visited South Georgia 
but found no fur-seals, and on December 6th, arrived 
without any apparent difficulty at “ Bouvette’s Island, 
so called from being first seen by that navigator in Oc- 
tober, 1808.” Here the fore-shortening of time is pain- 
fully in evidence, since Bouvet’s Cape Circumcision of 
1738 is run into Lindsay and Hopper’s rediscovery in 
1808, with a considerable flavour of Norris’s landing in 
1825. The only interesting fact is that this reference 
proves that in 1832, when Morrell’s book was published, 
the fact that the island had been seen in 1808 (and also 
in 1825) was known among the southern sealers. Ac- 
cording to Morrell, Bouvet Island was over 25 miles 
in circumference, situated in latitude 54° 15' S., longitude 
6° ii' E., and off the west end of the island where there 
was a beach, a chain of grounded icebergs shut in a 
tranquil harbour, in which the Wasp anchored in 17 
fathoms half a mile from shore. Rather fewer than 
two hundred skins were yielded by this beach, on which, 
the seals were so tame “ that they would come up and 
play among the men who were skinning their com- 
panions.” A circumnavigation of the island showed that 
there was no other point save this beach on which a seal 
could land. The island was of volcanic rock, the cliffs 
in some parts presenting the appearance of blue and 
green glass; the mountain, which rose some 3000 feet 
above the sea-level, was covered with pumice-stone, 
with some patches of vegetation. Not a word is said as 
