AVERTED INTEREST 
329 
their commands in defiance of the facts of nature. Had 
the orders been to make the voyage in the opposite di- 
rection, proceeding eastward through the temperate 
Indian Ocean to Australia and then running southward 
and following the edge of the ice-pack toward the west 
to the meridian of Bouvet Island, the somewhat disap- 
pointing cruise of the Pagoda might have become an 
important voyage of discovery. The sailor’s duty is to 
obey and “ not to reason why ; ” and the Admiralty might 
have had reasons which we do not know for not acting- 
in harmony with the facts of Antarctic meteorology dis- 
covered by Cook, confirmed by Bellingshausen, Weddell, 
and Biscoe, and quite recently supported by Balleny, 
D’Urville, Wilkes and Ross, which dictated a westerly 
course for circumnavigation south of 6o° S., just as im- 
peratively as the Brave West Winds dictate an easterly 
course for circumnavigation in the roaring forties. Moore 
stuck to the hopeless task of trying to drive his ship 
against the prevailing winds until a furious gale drove 
him northward to where a fair wind blew and allowed 
him to proceed eastward in clear seas. Other attempts 
to get south met with no better success, but the track 
kept on the poleward side of 6o° S. to the meridian of 
ioo° E. On March 7th in 64° S. and some distance east 
of the fiftieth meridian the ship was surrounded by bergs 
on the margin of a belt of pack ice ten miles wide be- 
yond which in the intervals between the squalls Moore 
saw a high ridge of ice or land. He says : “ It was more 
like land than anything before seen during the voyage, and 
there was no doubt about it; but we would not say it 
was land without having really landed on it.” The ship 
then bore up to the north because her sailing power had 
been damaged by the loss of some spars in a heavy gale 
