DUMONT D’URVILLE 
197 
it that the King himself proposed an important preliminary 
operation, nothing less than a trip into the Antarctic seas 
to surpass the record of Weddell toward the South 
Pole. How far this was a whim of the Citizen-King 
we cannot tell; but it seems more likely to have been 
the plan of some official personage or man of science 
prudently presented through His Majesty. Baron Hum- 
boldt was frequently at the court of Louis Philippe 
throughout his reign and is known to have been on terms 
of personal intimacy with the French King, so that it 
seems highly probable that the author of the letter to the 
Duke of Sussex urging the British Government to es- 
tablish magnetic stations, was also responsible for the ad- 
dition to D’Urville’s plan. The additional commission 
was accepted by D’Urville without enthusiasm, tie was 
not at all sanguine as to the result of an Antarctic cruise 
and in an address to the Paris Geographical Society in 
1837 he said : 
“ If the enterprise is bold and perhaps impracticable 
for certain spirits, it is at least honourable to attempt it, 
and whatever be the result it must at least give occasion 
for interesting observations.” 
By this time the fact that an American expedition was 
nearly ready to set out was known to D’Urville, and at 
the same meeting of the Paris Geographical Society at 
which he announced his own plans he presented a full 
translation of the letter of A. Z. to the President and 
Council of the Royal Geographical Society of London 
which curiously enough is now only accessible in this 
form, the original publication having been only by a 
privately-distributed pamphlet. 
No serious steps were taken to fit the two vessels set 
apart for the service to navigate an ice-infested sea. 
