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VII. Remarks on several icebergs which have been met with in unusually low 
latitudes in the southern hemisphere. By Captain James Horsburgh, 
Hydrographer to the East India Company , F.R.S. 
Read Feb. 4, 1830. 
An apology might probably be necessary, in offering the following remarks 
to the notice of the Royal Society, if they did not pertain to a phenomenon of 
a novel nature, which may be interesting to those members of the Society who 
are anxious for the elucidation of cosmographical science. 
It appears that icebergs, until lately, have seldom been seen by navigators 
in their passage near the Cape of Good Hope and the coast of South Africa ; 
for the journals of the ships belonging to the East India Company, during the 
whole of the last century, do not specify that any icebergs had been seen in 
the route of their navigation in the southern hemisphere, although several of 
these ships proceeded into the parallels of latitude 40°, 41°, and 42° south. 
On April the 7th, 1828, the Harmonie, French ship from Calcutta, bound 
homeward, in latitude 35° 50' south, longitude 18° 5' east of Greenwich, saw 
several icebergs, some of them appearing to be 100 feet elevated above the sea, 
and passed between two of them, upon which the sea broke violently. When 
amongst these icebergs, the Harmonie fell in with the Spanish ship Constancia 
from Manilla, bound to Cadiz, the pilot of which describes them as follows : 
April 7th, 1828, at lOf a.m. saw a small island, appearing like a white 
cloud, and soon afterward some shadowy lines were observed in it, as is usual 
in land : upon a nearer approach, it appeared to be a large island of con- 
siderable height divided into two summits. Soon after, three other small 
islands were discovered at a short distance from the former. At 11^ a.m., 
perceived that they were white, and that the light of the sun was reflected from 
their surface as from a mirror. We were perplexed with this phenomenon till 
noon, being then in latitude 33° 56' south, longitude 16° 59' east of Greenwich, 
by chronometer, corresponding with lunar observations. Sounded, but got 
no bottom at 135 fathoms ; and the sea continuing of a green colour, we con- 
cluded these were icebergs, which had drifted to latitude 35° 54|' south, longi- 
