CHAPTER VI 
Bellingshausen's antarctic voyage 
“To reside 
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendent world.” 
— Shakespeare. 
W HEN the fog lifted from the deck of the little Hero 
in Bransfield Channel one morning in 1821 the wor- 
thy Nathaniel B. Palmer of Stonington, Connecticut, 
gazed, we are told, with very natural surprise on two Rus- 
sian men-of-war which loomed above him out of the 
darkness. They appeared without notice and after the 
momentary intercourse with the sealers of Yankee Har- 
bour they disappeared without a trace for many a day. 
Even now the volumes which conceal the facts of the 
cruise in the Russian language remain without a full 
published translation into any tongue of western Europe, 
and it was many years before even a summary of the log 
of the expedition became known to sailors. The excel- 
lent abstract in German published by Professor Gravelius 
in 1902 gives the only really satisfactory account yet 
accessible of one of the greatest Antarctic expeditions on 
record, a voyage well worthy of being placed beside that 
of Cook, the only precursor in those waters. 
Early in 1819 the Emperor Alexander I., probably act- 
ing on the advice of Baron de Traversey the head of 
