ENDERBY BROTHERS 165 
reasons made Biscoe give up this voyage, and another 
was charged with the expedition.” The two vessels 
reached the South Shetlands in the southern summer of 
1 833-34 and appear to have found the ice conditions very 
severe. They seem to have sailed toward Alexander 
Land in the hope of making a circumnavigation west- 
ward in a high latitude, but they were beset in the ice 
and the Hopeful was crushed and sank, all hands being 
saved by the smaller vessel. Biscoe suggested to D’Ur- 
ville that this was due to the inexperience of the com- 
mander. Biscoe returned to London about January, 
1835, when Mr. Enderby handed to him the gold medal 
of the Paris Geographical Society awarded in April, 
1834, for his Antarctic explorations. In acknowledging 
this award the explorer said in a letter to the President : 
“ Allow me to express my very hearty and sincere 
thanks to the Society, and to assure you that if an oppor- 
tunity to revisit those latitudes again presents itself, 
neither difficulty nor danger will prevent me from resum- 
ing the exploration of a part of the world still almost 
unknown and now so interesting.” 
Biscoe continued in the employment of Messrs. En- 
derby, and while in command of the brig Emma he made 
several attempts to push exploration to the southward of 
New Zealand, but had always been stopped by the ice 
about 63° S. In January, 1839, he had been spoken by 
Balleny off Campbell Island, and at the close of the same 
year he met Wilkes in Sydney Harbour. Shortly after- 
wards he visited D’Urville at Hobart Town, and then 
said that he knew of no land having been discovered 
south of Tasmania. The interview with Wilkes in which 
he informed the latter of the discovery of the Balleny 
Islands would thus seem to have occurred later, on 
