These facts are established in a very conclusive article published by the hydrographer Daussy in theBulletin de la Société de Géographie. Further on we shall see that d'Urville actually landed on the new continent, so that the honour of being the first to discover it is undoubtedly his.
ThePeacockandFlying-Fish, either because they had sustained damages or because of the dangers from the roughness of the sea and floating ice, had steered in a northerly direction from the 24th January to the 5th February, TheVincennesandPorpoisealone continued the arduous voyage as far as E. long. 97°, having land in sight for two or three miles, which they approached whenever the ice allowed them to do so.
"On the 29th of January," says Wilkes, in his report to the National Institution of Washington, "we entered what I have called Piners Bay, the only place where we could have landed on the naked rocks. We were driven out of it by one of the sudden gales usual in those seas. We got soundings in thirty fathoms. The gale lasted thirty-six hours, and after many narrow escapes, I found myself some sixty miles W. to leeward of this bay. It now became probable that this land which we had discovered was of great extent, and I deemed it of more importance to follow its trend than to return to Piners Bay to land, not doubting I should have an opportunity of landing on some portion of it still more accessible; this, however, I was disappointed in, the icy barrier preventing our approach, and rendering it impossible to effect.
"Great quantities of ice, covered with mud, rock, and stone, presented themselves at the edge of the barrier, in close proximity of the land; from these our specimens were obtained, and were quite as numerous as could have been gathered from the rocks themselves. The land, covered with snow, was distinctly seen in many places, and between them such appearances as to leave little or no doubt in my mind of it being a continuous line of coast, and deserving the name bestowed upon it of theAntarctic Continent, lying as it does under that circle. Many phenomena were observed here, and observations made, which will be found under their appropriate head in the sequel.
"On reaching 97° east, we found the ice trending to the northward and continuing to follow it close, we reached to within a few miles of the position where Cook was stopped by the barrier in 1773."
Piners Bay, where Wilkes landed, is situated in E. long. 140° (reckoning from Paris), that is to say it is identical with the place visited by D'Urville on the 21st January. On the 30th January thePorpoisehad come in sight of D'Urville's two vessels, and approached to within speaking distance of them, but they put on all sail and appeared anxious to avoid any communication.
On his arrival at Sydney, Wilkes found thePeacockin a state of repair and with that vessel he visited New Zealand, Tonga Tabou, and the Fiji Islands, where two of the junior officers of the expedition were massacred by the natives. The Friendly, Navigator, and Sandwich Islands, Admiralty Straits, Puget Sound, Vancouver's Island, the Ladrones, Manilla, Sooloo, Singapore, the Sunda Islands, St. Helena, and Rio de Janeiro, were the halting places on the return voyage, which terminated on the 9th June, 1842, at New York, the explorers having been absent three years and ten months altogether.
The results to every branch of science were considerable, and the young republic of the United States was to be congratulated on a début so triumphant in the career of discovery. In spite, however, of the interest attaching to the account of this expedition, and to the special treatises by Dana, Gould, Pickering, Gray, Cassin, and Brackenbridge, we are obliged to refrain from dwelling on the work done in countries already known. The success of these publications beyond the Atlantic was, as might be expected in a country boasting of so few explorers, immense.
Whilst Wilkes was engaged in his explorations, i.e. in 1839, Balleny, captain of theElizabeth Scott, was adding his quota to the survey of the Antarctic regions. Starting from Campbell Island, on the south of New Zealand, he arrived on the 7th February in S. lat. 67° 7', and W. long. 164° 25', reckoning from the Paris meridian. Then bearing west and noting many indications of the neighbourhood of land, he discovered two days later a black band in the south-west which, at six o'clock in the evening, he ascertained beyond a doubt to be land. This land turned out to be three islands of considerable size, and Balleny gave them his own name. As may be imagined the captain tried to land, but a barrier of ice prevented his doing so. All he could manage was the determination of the position of the central isle, which he fixed at S. lat. 66° 44' and W. long. 162° 25'.
On the 14th February a lofty land, covered with snow, was sighted in the W.S.W. The next day there were but ten miles between the vessel and the land. It was approached as nearly as possible, and then a boat was put off, but a beach of only three or four feet wide with vertical and inaccessible cliffs rising beyond it rendered landing impossible, and only by getting wet up to their waists were the sailors able to obtain a few specimens of the lava characteristic of this volcanic district.
Yet once more, on the 2nd March in S. lat. 65° and about W. long. 120° 24', land was seen from the deck of theElizabeth Scott. The vessel was brought to for the night, and the next day an attempt was made to steer in a south-west direction, but it was impossible to get through the ice barrier. Naming the new discovery Sabrina, Balleny resumed his northerly route without being able further to verify his discoveries.
In 1837, just as Wilkes had started on his expedition, Captain Dumont d'Urville proposed to the Minister of Marine a new scheme for a voyage round the world. The services rendered by him in 1819-21 in a hydrographic expedition, in 1822 and 1825 on theCoquille, under Captain Duperrey, and lastly in 1826-29 on theAstrolabe, had given him an amount of experience which justified him in submitting his peculiar views to the government, and to supplement so to speak the mass of information collected by himself and others in these little known latitudes.
The minister at once accepted D'Urville's offer, and exerted himself to find for him enlightened and trustworthy fellow-workers. Two corvettes, theAstrolabeand theZelée, fitted up with everything which French experience had proved to be necessary, were placed at his disposal, and amongst his colleagues were many who were subsequently to rise to the rank of general officers, including Jacquinot, commander of theZelée, Coupvent Desbois, Du Bouzet, Tardy de Montravel, and Perigot, all well-known names to those interested in the history of the French navy.
The instructions given by Vice-Admiral Rosamel to D'Urville differed from those of his predecessors chiefly in his being ordered to penetrate as near as the ice would permit to the South Pole. He was also ordered to complete the great work he had begun in 1827 on the Viti Islands, to survey the Salomon archipelago, to visit the Swan river of Australia, New Zealand, the Chatham Islands, that part of the Caroline group surveyed by Lütke, Mindanao, Borneo, and Batavia, whence he was to return to Franceviâthe Cape of Good Hope.
These instructions concluded in terms proving the exalted ideas of the government. "His Majesty," said Admiral de Rosamel, "not only contemplates the progress of hydrography and natural science; but his royal solicitude for the interests of French commerce and the development of the French navy is such as to lead him greatly to extend the terms of your commission and to hope for great results from it. You will visit numerous places, the resources of which you must study with a view to the interests of our whaling-ships, collecting all information likely to be of service to them alike in facilitating their voyages and rendering those voyages as remunerative as possible. You will touch at those ports where commercial relations with us are already opened, and where the visit of a state vessel will have salutary effects, and at others hitherto closed to our produce and about which you may on your return give us some valuable details."
In addition to the personal good wishes of Louis Philippe, D'Urville received many marks of the most lively interest taken in his work by theAcadémie des Sciences moralesand the Geographical Society, but not unfortunately from theAcadémie des Sciences, although he had for twenty years been working hard to increase the riches of the Museum of Natural History.
"Whether from prejudice or from whatever cause," says D'Urville, "they (the members of theAcadémie des Sciences) showed very little enthusiasm for the contemplated expedition and their instructions to me were as formal as they would have been to a complete stranger."
It is matter of regret that the celebrated Arago, the declared enemy of Polar researches, was one of the bitterest opponents of the new expedition. This was not, however, the case with various scholars of other nationalities, such as Humboldt and Kruzenstern, who wrote to congratulate D'Urville on his approaching voyage and on the important results to science which might be hoped for.
After numerous delays, resulting from the fitting up of two vessels which were to take the Prince de Joinville to Brazil, theAstrolabeandZeléeat last left Toulon on the 7th September, 1837. The last day of the same month they cast anchor off Santa Cruz de Teneriffe which D'Urville chose as a halting-place in preference to one of the Cape Verd Islands, in the hope of laying in a stock of wine and also of being able to take some magnetic observations which he had been blamed for neglecting in 1826, although it was well known that he was not then in a fit state to attend to such things.
In spite of the eagerness of the young officers to go and enjoy themselves on shore they had to submit to a quarantine of four days, on account of rumours of cases of plague having occurred in the lazaretto of Marseilles. Without pausing to relate the details of Messrs. Du Bouzet, Coupvent, and Dumoulin's ascent of the Peak, we will merely quote a few enthusiastic remarks of Coupvent Desbois:—
"Arrived," says that officer, "at the foot of the peak, we spent the last hour of the ascent in crossing cinders and broken stones, arriving at last at the longed-for goal, the loftiest point of this huge volcano. The smoking crater presented the appearance of a hollow sulphurous semi-circle about 1200 feet wide and 300 feet deep, covered with the débris of pumice and other stones. The thermometer, which had marked five degrees at ten a.m., got broken through being placed on the ground where there was an escape of sulphuric vapour. There are upon the sides and in the crater numerous fumerolles which send forth the native sulphur, which forms the base of the peak. The rush of the vapour is so rapid as to sound like shots from a cannon.
"The heat of the ground is so great in some parts that it is impossible to stand on it for a minute at a time. Look around you and see if these three mountains piled one upon the other do not resemble a staircase built up by giants, on which to climb to heaven. Gaze upon the vast streams of lava, all issuing from one point which form the crater, and which a few centuries back you could not have trodden upon with impunity. See the Canaries in the distance, look down, ye pigmies, on the sea, with its breakers dashing against the shores of the island, of which you for the moment form the summit!... See for once, as God sees, and be rewarded for your exertions, ye travellers, whose enthusiasm for the grand scenes of nature has brought you some 12,182 feet above the level of the ocean."
We must add that the explorers testified to the brilliancy of the stars, as seen from the summit of the peak, the clearness of all sounds, and also to the giddiness and headache known as mountain sickness. Whilst part of the staff were engaged in this scientific excursion, several other officers visited the town, where they noticed nothing special except a narrow walk called the Alameda, and the church of the Franciscans. The neighbourhood, however, is interesting enough on account of the curious aqueducts for supplying the town with water, and the Mercede forest which, in D'Urville's opinion, might more justly be called a coppice, for it contains nothing but shrubs and ferns. The population seemed happy, but extremely lazy; economical, but horribly dirty; and the less said about their morals the better.
On the 12th October the two vessels put to sea again, intending to reach the Polar regions as soon as possible. Motives of humanity, however, determined D'Urville to change his plans and touch at Rio, the state of an apprentice with disease of the lungs becoming so rapidly worse that a stay in the Arctic regions would probably have been fatal.
The vessels cast anchor in the roadstead, not the Bay of Rio, on the 13th November, but they only remained there one day, that is to say, just long enough to land young Dupare, and to lay in a stock of provisions. The southerly route was then resumed.
For a long time D'Urville had wished to explore the Strait of Magellan, not with a view to further hydrographical surveys, for the careful explorations of Captain King, begun in 1826, had been finished in 1834 by Fitzroy, leaving little to be done in that direction, but to gather the rich and still unappropriated harvest of facts relating to natural history. How intensely interesting it was, too, to note how real had been the dangers encountered by early navigators, such as the sudden veering of the wind, &c. What a good thing it would be to obtain further and more detailed information about the famous Patagonians, the subject of so many fables and controversies. Yet another motive led D'Urville to anchor off Port Famine, rather than off Staten Island. His perusal of the accounts of the work of explorers who had penetrated into the Southern Seas convinced him that the end of January and the whole of February were the best times for visiting these regions, for then only are the effects of the annual thaw over, and with them the risk of over-fatigue to the crews.
This resolution once taken, D'Urville communicated it to Captain Jacquinot, and set sail for the strait. On the 12th December Cape Virgin was sighted, and Dumoulin, seconded by the young officers, began a grand series of hydrographical surveys. In the intricate navigation of the strait, D'Urville, we are told, showed equal courage and calmness, skill and presence of mind, completely winning over to his side many of the sailors, who, when they had seen him going along at Toulon when suffering with the gout, had exclaimed, "Oh, that old fellow won't take us far!" Now, when his constant vigilance had brought the vessels safely out of the strait, the cry was, "The —— man is mad! He's made us scrape against rocks, reefs, and land, as if he had never taken a voyage before! And we used to think him as useless as a rotten keel!"
We must now say a few words on the stay at Port Famine.
Landing is easy, and there is a good spring and plenty of wood; on the rocks are found quantities of mussels, limpets, and whelks, whilst inland grows celery, and a kind of herb resembling the dandelion. Another fruitful source of wealth in this bay is fish, and whilst the vessels were at anchor, drag-nets, trammels, and lines captured enough mullet, gudgeon, and roaches to feed the whole crew.
"As I was about to re-embark," says D'Urville, "a little barrel was brought to me which had been found hung on a tree on the beach, near a post on which was writtenPost Office. Having ascertained that this barrel contained papers, I took it on board and examined them. They consisted of notes of captains who had passed through the Straits of Magellan, stating the time of their visits, the incidents of their passage, with advice to those who should come after them, and letters for Europe or the United States. It seemed that an American captain, Cunningham by name, had been the originator of this open-air post-office. He had merely, in April, 1833, hung a bottle on a tree, and his fellow-countryman, Waterhouse, had supplemented it by the post with its inscription. Lastly, Captain Carrick of the schoonerMary Ann, from Liverpool, passed through the strait in March 1837, on his way to San Blas, California, going through it again a second time on his way back on the 29th November, 1837, that is to say, sixteen days before our own visit, and he it was who had substituted the barrel for the bottle, adding an invitation to all who should succeed him to use it as the receptacle of letters for different destinations. I mean to improve this ingenious and useful contrivance by forming an actual post-office on the highest point of the peninsula with an inscription in letters of a size so gigantic as to compel the attention of navigators who would not otherwise have touched at Port Famine. Curiosity will then probably lead them to send a canoe to examine the box, which will be fastened to the post. It seems likely that we shall ourselves reap the first fruits of this arrangement, and our families will be agreeably surprised to receive news from us from this wild and lonely district, just before our plunge into the ice of the Polar regions."
At low tide the mouth of the Sedger river, which flows into Famine Bay, is encumbered with sand-banks; some 1000 feet further on the plain is transformed into a vast marsh, from which rise the trunks of immense trees, and huge bones, bleached by the action of time, which have been brought down by the heavy rainfall, swelling the course of the stream.
Skirting this marsh is a fine forest, the entrance to which is protected by prickly shrubs. The commonest trees are the beech, with trunks between eighty and ninety feet high, and three or four in diameter; Winteria aromatica, a kind of bark which has long since replaced the cinnamon, and a species of Barbary. The largest beeches seen by D'Urville measured fifteen feet in diameter, and were about 150 feet high.
Unfortunately, no mammiferous animals or reptiles, or fresh or salt water shell-fish are found on these coasts; and one or two different kinds of birds with a few lichens and mosses were all the naturalist was able to obtain.
Several officers went up the Sedger in a yawl till they were stopped by the shallowness of the water. They were then seven and a half miles from the mouth, and they noted the width of the river where it flows into the sea to be between ninety and a hundred feet.
"It would be difficult," says M. de Montravel, "to imagine a more picturesque scene than was spread out before us at every turn. Everywhere was that indescribable wildness which cannot be imitated, a confused mass of trees, broken branches, trunks covered with moss, which seemed literally to grow before our eyes."
To resume, the stay at Port Famine was most successful; wood and water were easily obtained, repairs, &c., were made, horary, physical, meteorological, tidal, and hydrographical observations were taken, and, lastly, numerous objects of natural history were collected, the more interesting as the museums of France hitherto contained nothing whatever from these unknown regions beyond "a few plants collected by Commerson and preserved in the Herbarium of M. de Jussieu."
On the 28th December, 1837, anchor was weighed without a single Patagonian having been seen, although the officers and crew had been so eager to make acquaintance with the natives.
The difficulties attending navigation compelled the two corvettes to cast anchor a little further on, off Port Galant, the shores of which, bordered by fine trees, are cut by torrents resembling a little distance off magnificent cascades from fifty to sixty feet high. This compulsory halt was not wasted, for a large number of new plants were collected, and the port with the neighbouring bays were surveyed. The commander, however, finding the season already so far advanced, gave up his idea of going out at the westerly end of the strait, and went back the way he came, hoping thus to get an interview with the Patagonians before going to the Polar regions.
St. Nicholas Bay, called by Bougainville theBaie des Français, where the explorers passed New Year's Day, 1838, is a much pleasanter looking spot than Port Galant. The usual hydrographical surveys were there brought to a satisfactory issue by the officers under the direction of Dumoulin. A boat was despatched to Cape Remarkable, where Bougainville said he had seen fossil shells, which, however, turned out to be nothing but little pebbles imbedded in a calcareous gangue.
Interesting experiments were made with the thermometrograph, or marine thermometer, at 290 fathoms, without reaching the bottom, at less than two miles from land. Whereas the temperature was nine degrees on the surface, it was but two at the above-named depth, and as it is scarcely likely that currents convey the waters of the two oceans so far down, one is driven to the belief that this is the usual temperature of such depths.
The vessels now made for Tierra del Fuego, where Dumoulin resumed his surveys. Low exposed, and strewn with rocks which serve as landmarks, there were but few dangers to be encountered here. Magdalena Island, Gente Grande Bay, Elizabeth Island, and Oazy Harbour, where the camp of a large party of Patagonians was made out with the telescope, and Peckett Harbour, where theAstrolabestruck in three fathoms, were successively passed.
"As we struck," says D'Urville, "there were signs of astonishment and even of excitement amongst the crew, and some grumbling was already audible, when in a firm voice I ordered silence, and without appearing at all put out by what had happened, I cried, 'This is nothing at all, and we shall have plenty more of the same kind of thing.' Later these words often recurred to the memory of our sailors. It is more difficult than one would suppose for a captain to maintain perfect calmness and impassiveness in the midst of the worst dangers, even those he has reason to imagine likely to be fatal."
Peckett Harbour was alive with Patagonians, and officers and men were alike eager to land. A crowd of natives on horseback were waiting for them at the place of disembarkation.
Gentle and peaceable they readily replied to the questions put to them, and looked quietly at everything shown to them, expressing no special desire for anything offered to them. They did not seem either to be at all addicted to thieving, and when on board the French vessels they made no attempt to carry anything off.
Their usual height is from four and a half to five feet, but some are a good deal shorter. Their limbs are large and plump without being muscular, and their extremities are of extraordinary smallness. Their most noteworthy characteristic is the breadth of the lower part of the face as compared to the forehead, which is low and retreating. Long narrow eyes, high cheek-bones, and a flat nose, give them something of a resemblance to the Mongolian type.
They are evidently extremely languid and indolent, and wanting in strength and agility. Looking at them squatting down, standing or walking, with their long hair flowing down their backs, one would take them for the women of a harem rather than savages used to enduring the inclemency of the weather and to struggle for existence. Stretched upon skins with their dogs and horses about them, their chief amusement is to catch the vermin with which they swarm. They hate walking so much that they mount horses just to go down and pick up shells on the beach a few yards off.
A white man was living amongst these Patagonians; a miserable, decrepit-looking fellow, who said he came from the United States, but he spoke English very imperfectly, and the explorers took him to be a German-Swiss. Niederhauser, so he called himself, had gone to seek his fortune in the United States, and that fortune being long on the road, he had given ear to the wonderful proposals of a certain whaleman, who wanted to complete his crew. By this whaleman he was left with seven others and some provisions on a desert island off Tierra del Fuego to hunt seals and dress their skins. Four months later the schooner returned laden with skins, left the seal-hunters fresh provisions, went off again, and never came back! Whether it had been shipwrecked, or whether the captain had abandoned his sailors, it was impossible to ascertain. When the poor fellows found themselves deserted and their provisions exhausted, they embarked in their canoe and rowed up the Straits of Magellan, soon meeting with some Patagonians, with whom Niederhauser remained, whilst his companions went on. Well received by the natives, he lived their life with them, faring well when food was plentiful, drawing in his belt and living on roots when food was scarce.
Weary, however, of this miserable existence, Niederhauser entreated D'Urville to take him on board, urging that another month of the life he was leading would kill him. The captain consented, and received him as a passenger.
During his three months' residence amongst them, Niederhauser had learnt something of the language of the Patagonians, and with his aid D'Urville drew up a comparative vocabulary of a great many words in Patagonian, French, and German.
The war costume of the Fuegans includes a helmet of tanned leather protected by steel-plates and surmounted by a crest of cock's feathers, a tunic of ox-hide dyed red with yellow stripes, and a kind of double-bladed scimitar. The chief of Peckett Harbour allowed his visitors to take his portrait in full martial costume, thereby showing his superiority to his subjects, who would not do the same for fear of witchcraft.
On the 8th January anchor was finally weighed, and the second entrance to the strait was slowly navigated against the tide. The Straits of Magellan having now been crossed from end to end, and a survey made of the whole of the eastern portion of Tierra del Fuego, thus bridging over an important gulf in hydrographic knowledge, no detailed map of this coast having previously been made, the vessels steered for the Polar regions, doubling Staten Island without difficulty, and on the 15th January coming in sight of the first ice, an event causing no little emotion, for now was to begin the really hard work of the voyage.
Floating ice was not the only danger to be encountered in these latitudes: a dense fog, which the keenest sight could not penetrate, soon gathered about the vessels, paralyzing their movements, and though they were under a foresail only, rendering a collision with the ice-masses imminent. The temperature fell rapidly, and the thermometrograph marked only two degrees on the surface of the sea, whilst the deep water was below zero. Half-melted snow now began to fall, and everything bore witness that the Antarctic regions were indeed entered.
Clarence, New South Orkney Islands, could not be identified. Every one's attention had to be concentrated on avoiding blocks of ice. At midday on the 20th January the vessels were in S. lat. 62° 3' and W. long. 49° 56', not far from the place were Powell encountered compact ice-fields, and an immense ice-island was soon sighted, some 6000 feet in extent and 300 in height, with perpendicular sides greatly resembling land under certain conditions of the light. Numerous whales and penguins were now seen swimming about the vessels, whilst white petrels continually flew across them. On the 21st observations gave S. lat. 62° 53', and D'Urville was expecting soon to reach the 65th parallel, when at three a.m. he was told that further progress was arrested by an iceberg, across which it did not seem possible to cut a passage. The vessels were at once put about and slowly steered in an easterly direction, the wind having fallen.
"We were thus enabled," says D'Urville, "to gaze at our leisure upon the wonderful spectacle spread out before our eyes. Severe and grand beyond expression it not only excited the imagination but filled the heart with involuntary terror, nowhere else is man's powerlessness more forcibly brought before him.... A new world displays itself to him, but it is a motionless, gloomy, and silent world, where everything threatens the annihilation of human faculties. Should he have the misfortune to be left here alone, no help, no consolation, no spark of hope, would soothe his last moments. One is involuntarily reminded of the famous inscription on the gate of the Inferno of Dante—
"'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate.'"
"'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate.'"
D'Urville now set to work on a very strange task, which, as compared with others of a similar kind, was likely to be of considerable value. He had an exact measurement taken of the outlines of the iceberg. Had other navigators done the same we should have had some precise information as to the direction taken by icebergs, their movements, &c., in the southern Polar regions, a subject still wrapped in the greatest obscurity.
On the 22nd, after doubling a point, it was ascertained that the iceberg was bearing S.S.W. by W. A lofty and broken piece of land was sighted in these latitudes. Dumoulin had begun to survey it, and D'Urville was about, as he thought, to identify it with the New South Greenland of Morrell, when its outlines became dim and it sunk beneath the horizon. On the 24th the two corvettes crossed a series of floating islets, and entered a plain where the ice was melting. The passage, however, became narrower and narrower, and they were obliged to veer round, to save themselves from being blocked in.
Everything pointed to the conclusion that the edge of the ice was melting, the ice-islands fell apart with loud reports, the ice running off in little rivulets: there was undoubtedly a thaw, and Fanning had been right in saying that these latitudes should not be visited before February.
D'Urville now decided to steer for the north, and try to reach the islands of New South Orkney, the map of which had not yet been accurately laid down. The commander was anxious to survey that archipelago thoroughly, and to spend several days there before resuming his southerly course, so as to be in the Antarctic regions at the same time of year as Weddell.
For three days the explorer coasted along the southern shores of New South Orkney without being able to land; he then once more turned southwards, and came in sight of the ice again in S. lat. 62° 20' and W. long. 39° 28'.
A few minutes before midday a kind of opening was discovered, through which the vessels were forced at all risks. This bold manoeuvre was successful, and in spite of the heavy snow, the explorers penetrated into a small basin scarcely two miles in extent and hemmed in on every side by lofty walls of ice. It was decided to make fast to the ice, and when the order to cast anchor was given a young middy on board theZeléecried naively, "Is there a port here? I shouldn't have thought there were people living on the ice."
Great indeed was now the joyful enthusiasm on both vessels. Some of the young officers of theZeléehad come to empty a bowl of punch with their comrades of theAstrolabe, and the commander could hear their shouts of delight from his bed. He himself did not, however, look upon the situation in quite the same favourable light. He felt that he had done a very imprudent thing. Shut into acul-de-sac, he could only go out as he had come, and that he could not do until he had the wind right aft. At eleven o'clock D'Urville was awoke by a violent shock, accompanied by a noise of breaking, as if the vessel had struck on some rocks. He got up, and saw that theAstrolabe, having drifted, had struck violently against the ice, where she remained exposed to collision with the masses of ice which the current was sweeping along more rapidly than it did the vessel herself.
When day dawned the adventurers found themselves surrounded by ice, but in the north a blackish blue line seemed to betray the existence of an open sea. This direction was at once taken, but a thick fog immediately and completely enveloped both ships, and when it cleared off they found themselves face to face with a compact ice barrier, beyond which stretched away as far as the eye could reachAN OPEN SEA!
D'Urville now resolved to cut himself a passage, and began operations by dashing theAstrolabewith all possible speed against the obstacle. The vessel penetrated two or three lengths into the ice, and then remained motionless. The crew climbed out of her on to the ice armed with pickaxes, pincers, mattocks, and saws, and merrily endeavoured to cut a passage. The fragment of ice was already nearly crossed when the wind changed, and the motion of the waves in the offing began to be felt, causing the officers to agree in urging a retreat into the shelter of the ice-walls, for there was some danger if the wind freshened of the vessel being embayed against the ice and beaten to pieces by the waves and floatingdébris.
The corvettes had traversed twelve or fifteen miles for nothing, when an officer, perched in the shrouds, sighted a passage in the E.N.E. That direction was at once taken, but again it was found impossible to cut a passage, and when night came the crew had to make the ship fast to a huge block of ice. The loud cracking noises which had awoke the commander the night before now began with such violence that it really seemed impossible for the vessel to live till daylight.
After an interview with the captain of theZelée, however, D'Urville made for the north, but the day passed without any change being effected in the position of the vessels, and the next day during a storm of sleet the swell of the sea became so powerful as completely to raise the ice plain in which they were imprisoned.
More careful watch than ever had now to be kept, to guard against the pieces of ice flung long distances by this motion, and the rudder had to be protected from them by a kind of wooden hut.
With the exception of a few cases of ophthalmia, resulting from the continual glare of the snow, the health of the crews was satisfactory, and this was no little satisfaction to the leaders of the expedition, compelled as they were to be continually on thequi-vive. Not until the 9th February were the vessels, favoured by a strong breeze, able to get off, and once more enter a really open sea. The ice had been coasted for a distance of 225 leagues. The vessels had actually sustained no further damage than the loss of a few spars and a considerable portion of the copper sheathing, involving no further leakage than there had been before.
The next day the sun came out, and observations could be taken, giving the latitude as 62° 9' S., and the longitude 39° 22' W.
Snow continued to fall, the cold was intense, and the wind very violent for the three succeeding days. This continuance of bad weather, together with the increasing length of the nights, warned D'Urville of the necessity of giving up all idea of going further. When, therefore, he found himself in S. lat. 62° and W. long. 33° 11', in other words in that part of the ocean where Weddell had been able to sail freely in 1823, and the new explorer had met with nothing but impassable ice, he steered for New South Orkney. A whole month passed amongst the ice and fogs of the Antarctic Ocean had told upon the health of the crews, and nothing could be gained for science by a continuance of the cruise.
On the 20th the archipelago was again sighted, and D'Urville was once more driven out of his course in a northerly direction by the ice, but he was able to put off with two boats, the crews of which collected on Weddell Island a large number of geological specimens, lichens, &c., and some twenty penguins and chionis.
On the 25th February Clarence Island was seen, forming the eastern extremity of the New South Shetland Archipelago, a very steep and rugged district covered with snow except on the beach, and thence the explorers steered towards Elephant Island, resembling Clarence Island in every respect, except that it is strewn with peaks rising up black against the plains of snow and ice. The islets of Narrow, Biggs, O'Brien, and Aspland were successively identified, but covered as they are with snow they are perfectly inaccessible to man. The little volcano of Bridgeman was also seen, and the naturalists tried in vain to land upon it from two boats.
"The general colour of the soil," says the narrative, "is red, like that of burnt brick with particles of grey, suggestive of the presence of pumice-stone, or of calcined cinders. Here and there on the beach are seen great blackish-looking blocks, which are probably lava. This islet has, however, only one true crater, although thick columns of smoke are emitted from it, nearly all of them issuing from the base on the western side, whilst in the north are two other fumerolles, thirty or forty feet along the water. There are none on the eastern or northern side, or at the top, which is smooth and round. The bulk appears recently to have undergone some considerable modification, as indeed it must have done, or it could not now resemble so little the description given by Powell in December, 1822."
D'Urville soon resumed his southerly route, and on the 27th February sighted a considerable belt of land in the south-east on which he was prevented from landing by the fog and the continuous fall of very fine snow. He was now in the latitude of Hope Island—i.e. in S. lat. 62° 57'. He approached it very closely, and sighted before reaching it a low-lying land, to which he gave the name of Joinville. Then further on in the south-west he came to an extensive district which he named Louis Philippe, and between the two in a kind of channel, encumbered with ice, an island he called Rosamel.
"Now," says D'Urville, "the horizon was so light that we could trace all the irregularities of Louis Philippe's Land. We could see it stretching away from Mount Bransfield in the north (62° W. long.) to the S.S.W., where it faded away on the horizon. From Mount Bransfield to the south it is lofty, and of fairly uniform surface, resembling a vast, unbroken ice-field. In the south, however, it rises in the form of a fine peak (Mount Jacquinot), which is equal perhaps, indeed superior, to Bransfield; but beyond this peak it stretches away in the form of a mountain chain, ending in the south-west in a peak loftier than any of the others. For the rest, the effect of the snow and ice, together with the absence of any objects with which they can be compared, aid in exaggerating the height of all irregularities, and, as a matter of fact, the results of the measurements taken by M. Dumoulin showed all these mountains, which then appeared to us gigantic and equal to the Alps and Pyrenees at least, to be after all of very medium size. Mount Bransfield, for instance, was not more than about 2068 feet high, Mount Jacquinot 2121 feet, and Mount d'Urville, the loftiest of them all, about 3047 feet. Except for the islets grouped about the mainland, and a few peaks rising above the snow, the whole country is one long series of compact blocks of ice, and it is impossible to do more than trace the outlines of this ice-crust, those of the land itself being quite indistinguishable."
On the 1st March soundings gave only eighty fathoms with a bottom of rock and gravel. The temperature is 1°9 on the surface, and 0°2 at the bottom of the sea. On the 2nd of March, off Louis Philippe's Land, an island was sighted which was named Astrolabe, and the day after a large bay, or rather strait, to which the name of Orleans Channel was given was surveyed between Louis Philippe's Land, and a lofty, rocky belt, which D'Urville took for the beginning of Trinity Land, hitherto very inaccurately laid down.
From the 26th February then to the 5th March D'Urville remained in sight of the coast, skirting along it a little distance off, but unable entirely to regulate his course on account of the incessant fogs and rain. Everything bore witness to the setting in of a very decided thaw; the temperature rising at midday to five degrees above zero, whilst the ice was everywhere melting and running off in little streams of water, or falling with a formidable crush into the sea in the form of blocks, the wind meanwhile blowing strongly from the west.
All this decided D'Urville against the further prosecution of this voyage. The sea was heavy, the rain and fog incessant. It was therefore necessary to leave this dangerous coast, and make for the north, where on the following day he surveyed the most westerly islands of the New Shetland group.
D'Urville next steered for Conception, and very arduous was the voyage there, for, in spite of every precaution, the crews of both corvettes, especially that of theZelée, were attacked with scurvy. It was now that D'Urville measured the heights of some of the waves, with a view to the disproving of the charge of exaggeration which had been brought against him when he had estimated those he had seen break over Needle Bank at a height of between eighty and a hundred feet.
With the help of some of his officers, that there might be no doubt as to his accuracy, D'Urville measured some waves of which the vertical height was thirty-five feet, and which measured not less than 196½ feet from the crest to the lowest point, making a total length of 393 feet for a single wave. These measurements were an answer to the ironical assertion of Arago, who, settling the matter in his own study, would not allow that a wave could exceed from five to six feet in height. One need not hesitate a single moment to accept, as against the eminent but impulsive physicist, the measurements of the navigators who had made observations upon the spot.
On the 7th April, 1838, the expedition cast anchor in Talcahuano Bay, where the rest so sorely needed by the forty scrofulous patients of theZeléewas obtained. Thence D'Urville made for Valparaiso, after which, having entirely crossed Oceania, he cast anchor on the 1st January, 1839, off Guam, arrived at Batina in October, and went thence to Hobart's Town, whence, on the 1st January, 1840, he started on a new trip in the Antarctic regions.
At this time D'Urville knew nothing either of Balleny's voyage, or of the discovery of Sabrina's Land. He merely intended to go round the southern extremity of Tasmania with a view to ascertaining beneath which parallel he would meet with ice. He was under the impression that the space between 120° and 160° E. long. had not yet been explored, so that there was still a discovery to be made.
At first navigation was beset with the greatest difficulties. The swell was very strong, the currents bore in an easterly direction, the sanitary condition of the crews was far from satisfactory, and 58° S. lat. had not yet been reached when the presence of ice was ascertained.
The cold soon became very intense, the wind veered round to the W.N.W., and the sea became calm, a sure indication of the neighbourhood of land or of ice. The former was the more generally received hypothesis, for the ice-islands passed were too large to have been formed in the open ocean. On the 18th January, S. lat. 64° was reached, and great perpendicular blocks of ice were met with, the height of which varied from ninety to 100 feet, whilst the breadth exceeded 3000.
The next day, January 19th, 1840, a new land was sighted, to which the name of Adélie was given. The sun was now burning hot, and the ice all seemed to be melting, immense streams running down from the summits of the rocks into the sea. The appearance of the land was monotonous, covered as it was with snow. It ran from west to east, and seemed to slope gradually down to the sea. On the 21st the wind allowed the vessels to approach the beach, and deep ravines were soon made out, evidently the result of the action of melted snow.