BELLINGSHAUSEN 
127 
long. Doubling the northern projection of the ice, Bel- 
lingshausen deliberately passed the meridian where Cook 
had made the farthest south of his voyage, feeling it was 
his duty to explore the unknown rather than to follow 
where another had led. Keeping on a southeasterly 
course he crossed the circle southward for the sixth time 
in 103 0 W. and sailing straight on through a crowd of 
huge ice-islands was brought up by a solid wall of ice. 
This was the most southerly point reached on the voyage, 
69° 52' S. in 92 0 10' W. ; it was attained on January 1st, 
1821. 
The risk of being surrounded and imprisoned in 
the drifting ice was becoming serious and the ships were 
sailing northward along the edge of the pack when a 
dark speck appeared on the white background of ice to 
the east. Every telescope was turned upon it and various 
opinions were being expressed when the sun suddenly 
shone out and revealed it as undoubted land, the steep 
cliffs standing out black, bare and unmistakable. Since 
leaving the Macquarie Islands the only solid objects to 
meet the eye had been ice in its multifarious forms of 
berg and floe and pack, but now an island loftier than 
any berg had come into view. It lay in latitude 69° S., 
longitude 90° W., the most southerly land yet discovered, 
and when on January 22nd the ships came as near the 
land as the ice permitted, its length was found to be about 
nine miles, its breadth four miles and its height was esti- 
mated at 4000 feet. The island rose abruptly from the 
ice-covered sea and, except for the cliffs and the higher 
slopes, was entirely swathed in snow. It stood as a silent 
and inaccessible outpost of the known world, the only land 
ever yet discovered within the southern circle. Bellings- 
hausen named it Peter I. Island in memory of the great 
