our return home. It was the 17th of December when we left. From the
first adverse winds prevailed, and in order to make any progress we
were obliged to keep well to the south. At length, on the 6th of
January, we sighted Desolation Island. We found it, indeed, a desolate
spot. In its vicinity we saw a multitude of smaller islands, perhaps a
thousand in number, which made navigation difficult, and forced us to
hurry away as fast as possible. But the aspect of this dreary spot was
of itself enough to repel us. There were no trees, and the multitude
of islands seemed like moss-covered rocks; while the temperature,
though in the middle of the antarctic summer, was from 38 to 58
degrees Fahr.

In order to get rid of these dangerous islands we stood south and
west, and at length found ourselves in south latitude 65 degrees,
longitude 60 degrees east. We were fortunate enough not to find any
ice, although we were within fifteen hundred miles of the South Pole,
and far within that impenetrable icy barrier which, in 1773, had
arrested the progress of Captain Cook. Here the wind failed us, and we
lay becalmed and drifting. The sea was open all around us, except to
the southeast, where there was a low line along the horizon
terminating in a lofty promontory; but though it looked like land we
took it for ice. All around us whales and grampuses were gambolling
and spouting in vast numbers. The weather was remarkably fine and
clear.

For two or three days the calm continued, and we drifted along
helplessly, until at length we found ourselves within a few miles of
the promontory above mentioned. It looked like land, and seemed to be
a rocky island rising from the depths of the sea. It was, however, all
covered with ice and snow, and from this there extended eastward as