234 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
bottom of the inlet which Wilkes named Disappointment 
Bay. The weather was fine and clear, and next day, long 
after leaving the bay, the commander found that one 
of the officers had logged without reporting to him the 
discovery of a wide opening in the ice at the bottom of 
the bay. Although sure that no such opening existed, 
Wilkes put the ship about and sailed back forty miles 
to convince the officers that Disappointment Bay was 
really a cul-de-sac in the ice. About this time Wilkes 
introduced the practise of charting the large ice-islands 
as he proceeded as if they had been actual islands, be- 
lieving that their relative positions would not change 
much in the course of a few hours and that the rough 
chart might prove serviceable if he had suddenly to re- 
treat from his position. 
On January 25th a snow storm came on and the wind 
shifted to the southeast for the first time since the squad- 
ron had reached the ice, a fact that surprised Wilkes, for 
on the strength of former voyages he had expected east- 
erly winds to prevail in the neighbourhood of the Ant- 
arctic circle. The fair wind, come at last, could not be 
taken advantage of because the weather was unsuitable 
for making an examination of the coast, which was now 
fully believed to lie within the southern ice-barrier. The 
Porpoise was sighted several times on the 26th and 27th, 
as the Vincennes continued to run to the westward 
through the scattered ice-islands to about longitude 142 0 
E. Land was distinctly seen on the 28th, and the ship 
ran towards it for 40 miles through an extraordinary num- 
ber of ice-islands, varying from a quarter of a mile to 
three miles in length. At 2 p. m. the barometer began to 
fall and the weather looked so bad that Wilkes deter- 
mined to regain the open sea and tried to do so by aid of 
