110 TASMANIA AND THE ANTARCTIC 
and seen many wonders hitherto quite unexpected, though 
it has been very uxiprohfic. We reached 78° 3' S. Latitude 
and approached as near to the S. Magnetic Pole as was 
possible, within 150 miles, having laid down its position 
with perfect accuracy from observations made to the N.W. 
and S.W. of its position. We have run along and roughly 
surveyed an enormous tract of land extending from 72° 
to 79° S. Latitude ; every part of it further south than 
any hitherto discovered land, and our progress was finally 
arrested by a stupendous barrier of ice running 300 miles 
E. and W. I shall, however, give you a hst of our positions 
every day at noon since leaving V.D. Land, last, that Maria 
may lay it down in your S. Polar chart and I shall add a 
small chart of the coast we have seen. (P.S. I have too mjach 
to say to leave room.) 
And now as regards the object of the expedition, it is 
certainly a failm'e, our intention having been to have made 
observations on the actual site of the S. Magnetic Pole, and 
also to have wintered within the Antarctic Circle, that we 
might have made a series of experiments with such instru- 
ments as must be used on land — from the first object we 
were deterred by the Pole's lying inland, among a stupendous 
range of mountains covered from their tops to the sea beach 
with everlasting snow and ice. Nor can we anywhere 
approach the mainland as the sea is covered with streams 
of ice and sometimes extending in one continued line for 
many miles. In approaching such a coast the danger 
arises from the chances of a shift of wind, or a gale which 
would prevent our working off, when all the ice would set 
down on us and jam us ; or, what is quite as bad, we might 
be becalmed and frozen in, for the sun here has no povv-er 
to melt the ice even in the height of summer ; wintering 
in such a Latitude Captain Ross pronounced as totally 
impracticable, as we should be frozen in, and only get out 
when a current should take the pack, which would imbed 
us, north, and melt it in warmer water.^ 
* As he further explains to his father (Nov. 25, 1842) who had been told 
by the Admiralty that they M-ere then to winter in the ice, perhaps in order 
to keep some term days in the South Shetlands : — ' We cannot remain in the 
pack except under sail, for the S.W. Mind would gradually blow us out of it, 
. . . and it is idle to suppose that an accessible harbour could be found where 
the ice and snow are perennial. There is no great winter cold to shut us in 
safely, in a few days, or summer's heat to thaw it.' 
