THE THKEE EXPEDITIONS 53 
and back to the Cape, lasting three and a half months, when 
he visited Louis Philippe Land and the South Shetlands. 
Between the first and second came a stay of three months 
in Tasmania, a visit to Sydney and a stay of three months in 
New Zealand. Between the second and third came a stay of, 
altogether, six months at the Falklands, broken by a seven 
weeks' expedition to Hermite Island in Tierra del Fuego, and 
west of Cape Horn. 
The original voyage out to Tasmania, which lasted nearly 
eleven months, followed an unusual course in order to touch 
at various oceanic islands, to establish observatories there and 
at the Cape, and to pass certain points of magnetic interest. 
The journey home from the Cape, however, by way of St. 
Helena, Ascension, and Eio, occupied only four months. Thus 
four years had elapsed since leaving England on September 30, 
1839, before Boss and his men once more reached English 
soil on September 4, 1843. 
VOL. I 
