3 1 8 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
Christmas Eve, and a gale of wind accompanied it which 
lasted through Christmas Day though it did not disturb 
the due celebrations. On the 26th the ships came up 
with the edge of the pack in 52 0 W. longitude, and sailed 
along it toward the west so as to get between the float- 
ing ice and the land. Joinville Land was sighted on De- 
cember 28th, and the rugged forms of the mountains 
were examined with great attention. Captain Crozier 
and the officers of the Terror believed that they saw 
smoke issuing from one peak to the southward, but Cap- 
tain Ross and the officers of the Erebus were of opinion 
that it was merely a wreath of mist or possibly snow- 
drift flying before the wind. The probability is that 
the Terror was right, as active volcanoes were dis- 
covered fifty years later in the same direction, which 
might have been visible from the ships. The weather 
was unsatisfactory, so that the position of the prominent 
points on the land could not be fixed by astronomical ob- 
servations; but the extraordinary extent of the snow 
and ice-covering for the latitude was plainly seen, and 
Ross called attention to the way in which the glaciers 
descending to the sea broke off in ice-cliffs 100 feet high, 
a miniature copy of the great Southern Barrier. A 
strong tide or current was surging southward along the 
coast, swirling through a chain of grounded bergs, and 
moving so rapidly as sometimes to hamper the steering 
of the ships. A group of rocky islets almost concealed 
by the grounded bergs suddenly appeared and made it 
necessary for the ships to bear off to the eastward, and 
in so doing through the fog they nearly ran against the 
southernmost of the group appropriately named the 
Danger Islets. This particular rock rose so perpendicu- 
larly from the watm- that a ship could have been laid 
