DUMONT D’URVILLE 
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Antarctic region south of South America was the only 
part which his instructions required him to explore. 
There was little to chronicle until January 22nd, 1838, 
when the ships reached the edge of the ice-pack in 63° 39* 
S. and 44 0 47' W. Unfortunately the ice-pack was very 
close, or perhaps appeared so to the inexperienced eyes 
of the French officers; but at any rate the ships did not 
penetrate the pack or approach within a considerable dis- 
tance of the Antarctic circle between the meridians where 
Weddell had made his farthest south. D’Urville was not 
a little annoyed at this check; as he had failed, he began 
to think that Weddell could not have succeeded, and he 
made what old Dalrymple would have termed “ groundless 
and illiberal imputations ” on the common honesty of the 
daring sealer. The Astrolabe and Zelee hovered about 
the region for nearly two months, now and again find- 
ing their way northward to the South Orkney Islands, 
now and again returning to the edge of the pack, once 
indeed being surrounded by ice and getting free with diffi- 
culty, experiencing the usual miserable weather of those 
latitudes and making a great number of minute and often 
interesting observations on the appearance and move- 
ments of the ice. An artist of real talent was amongst 
the staff and his drawings of the icebergs and floes 
splendidly reproduced in the volumes describing the 
cruise are remarkably faithful and beautiful. 
On February 27th, 1838, when to the southwest of the 
South Shetlands the ships sighted land in 63° S., unques- 
tionably part of the same land that had been seen by Pal- 
mer and Biscoe although on account of the frequent fogs, 
the general uncertainty of all determinations of position 
in polar regions and the sketchy nature of the charts in 
his possession D’Urville cannot altogether be blamed for 
