5 
opposite course to that of ships on their homeward passage from Australia. 
But during the next three months it swung round 90° to the left, and 
drifted E.N.E. about 100 miles, which brought it very near to the route of 
outward bound ships, with the hay open to their track. We can scarcely 
imagine any mass of ice in an equally dangerous form, and I regret to 
add that one emigrant ship, the “ Guiding Star,” was embayed and lost on 
it with all hands. The “ Cambridge” and “ Salem” were also embayed in 
March and April, 1855, but through the skill of their commanders they 
were extricated from the most perilous situation in which we can conceive 
a ship to be placed by ice in any form. In 1856 I had the opportunity of 
taking the opinion of the late Dr. Scoresby on the nature of this mass, 
laying before him the numerous reports I had received concerning it. He 
believed that it consisted of an immense number of icebergs, that had been 
drawn together, by some of them having grounded in the track of others, 
and became afterwards united by the frost of successive centuries ; till at 
length, by some convulsion or otherwise, the whole mass was set adrift. 
Dr. Scoresby was a very high authority on this subject, and I place great 
confidence in his opinion. Beyond doubt this was an extraordinary 
phenomenon, there being no record of any other mass of ice bearing even 
approximate horizontal proportions to those now described. 
In tracing this and other remarkable masses of ice, I have been able to 
determine the direction of their drift, and their rate of progress. With 
the exception of one locality, the course of an iceberg is E. by N., rate ten 
miles per diem. The only exception is, after it has passed to the eastward 
of the Horn, when its course bends to the N.E., veering round to the east 
as it approaches the lat. of 40° S., on which parallel from the meridian of 
25° W. to 15° W. its progress is scarcely one mile daily, in direction nearly 
east. This course is afterwards bent towards the south, crossing the 
meridian of Greenwich on the S.E. rhumb. I have been unable to deter- 
mine whether it again changes its course to E. by N. or returns by a vor- 
tical current to the neighbourhood of the Horn. There are facts tending 
to support both of these hypotheses ; but since near the meridian of 
Greenwich few ships go higher than lat. 50° S. we have not a sufficient 
number of observations to enable me to decide this question. 
If, however, an iceberg happens to be carried to the left of the shaded 
line on the chart, situated between 50° S. 50° W. and 41° S. 30° W. it 
