266 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
in Toronto almost at its antipodes. The ships remained 
at their anchorage for more than two months; furious 
gales were experienced on forty-five days in that time, 
and there were only two days on which neither rain nor 
snow fell, but the magnetic observations were kept up 
hourly day and night without a break. An opportunity 
was afforded for the ships’ companies to become ac- 
quainted with penguins as an article of diet, and Ross, 
who resembled his great predecessor Cook in his power 
of digesting strange food, experimented on other sea 
birds also. 
The observatories were taken down, and on July 20th, 
1840, the Erebus and Terror left Christmas Harbour. 
The weather was exceedingly tempestuous, the boat- 
swain of the Erebus was blown from the rigging and 
drowned, four men of the party who attempted to rescue 
him nearly sharing the same fate, and the two ships 
were soon separated not to meet again until they arrived 
at Hobart Town on August 16th. 
Sir John Franklin, the Governor of Van Diemen’s 
Land, was ready to receive the expedition and furthered 
its progress in every possible way. He had all the ma- 
terials ready for building a magnetic observatory and 
the day after the Erebus arrived he assisted Captain 
Ross to select a site which received the appropriate 
name of Rossbank. By dint of hard work the observa- 
tory was finished and ready for work a few hours before 
the international simultaneous observations of August 
27th had to be commenced. The interest which every- 
one in the colony took in the work of the expedition 
was curiously shown by the gang of convicts who had 
been engaged in roofing the observatory from 6 a. m. to 
10 p. m. one Saturday, begging to be allowed to con- 
