128 SOUTH AGAIN: NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE 
or no is not to the purpose ; there is no doubt it existed. 
My opinion is that the Packs shift slowly, and that a place 
open for one season may be shut for many successive ones. 
I have heard that an English Lieut, called Eea, or Wray, 
went down in a sealer, and met the Pack in 60°. Now, 
though I sincerely hope to make the Pack and get through 
it, rather even than meet no ice, still we twice have been 
entirely successful, and it is humanly possible that ships 
can always penetrate at whatever point they take the pack. 
A little more ice last year would infaUibly have stopped us 
had it detained us a few weeks more. I would give up all 
my pay to be sure of gaining 78° again, for the French and 
Yankees will surely laugh if we are foiled in any one attempt. 
Should we find much ice we shall be a long time in it doing 
our endeavours to get South : they are fine times for me, as 
the smooth water saiHng is quite dehghtful, and it is a great 
comfort to know that, if we cannot get on, we can always 
go back with the S.W. winds and the drift of the ice. Should 
w^e fail we shall all feel it deeply and almost wish to be 
allowed to try again. It shall not, however, be our faults 
if we do fail, it may be our misfortune and a very sad one. 
None of us despair of success in beating the French and 
Yankees ; but it is ourselves we want to beat, and thus 
we are our own enemies. 
At the Falklands they stayed five months (April 6 to 
September 8) and later another month, November 13 to 
December 17, before the third and last trip to the ice, the 
intervening two months being spent in a visit to Hermite 
Island, to the west of Cape Horn. 
A long series of magnetic observations was carried out ; 
for Hooker, exploration, hunting, arrangement of collections 
and letter writing filled up the time. Delighted though he 
was to ' be fast by the nose again ' at Port Louis in the wet 
and mist of a storm that rose just too late to prevent their 
entrance into the Sound, first impressions of the Falklands 
were dismal. ' Kerguelen's Land is a paradise to it. Desola- 
tion stares in our faces, except a few houses at the settlement, 
where there are about sixty souls, including His Excellency 
