ENDERBY BROTHERS 
149 
Three days later the Lively reappeared, and after a long 
fight with fog and gales, the two vessels came in sight 
of Sandwich Land on the 21st. Three islands were 
sighted, all of them small, rocky masses, descending 
steeply to the water’s edge, with no beach for a seal to 
land on, and covered with ice and snow, “so much so 
that it was hardly possible to distinguish the rocks, the 
snow and the clouds above these, one from the other.” 
It was hopeless to look for a cargo on such rocks, and 
that will-o’-the-wisp of the Antarctic seafarer, an “ ap- 
pearance of land ” being observed to the southeast, 
Biscoe set sail in its pursuit. Field-ice soon appeared, 
and after much manoeuvring the ships passed safely 
through the pack to the southward, where, instead of the 
open sea, they found merely a great bay of about eight 
miles diameter, from which they had much ado to escape 
northward again. Until the end of the month they con- 
tinued fighting with wind and ice in the endeavour to reach 
the main body of Sandwich Land by working back to 
the westward. It was a hard time for both captains and 
crews : 
“ Independent of the small seas of field-ice the whole 
space was completely covered with drift pieces, some 
swimming very deep in the water, which a vessel striking 
upon would most likely knock a hole in her bottom, so 
that from the 26th to the 29th in the forenoon, we were 
utterly prevented from steering on any one course for 
more than a few minutes at a time . . . and never at 
any time had we less than fifty or a hundred ice-islands 
round us.” 
On December 29th, two of the islands of Sandwich 
Land were sighted and the boats sent to search a low- 
lying reef for seals, but they returned empty, and Biscoe 
