very close to, perhaps even complete the attainment of the pole.
The wind veered to the southward, and the snow ceased; several pieces of ice with rock on them were passed, and at 11 a.m. Franklin Island was Feb. 15.seen at a distance of seven leagues ahead of us. We ran to leeward of it at 3 p.m., and when five miles N.N.W. from it we sounded in fifty fathoms, rocky bottom. Some streams of ice appearing soon afterwards, we hauled more to the southward to avoid them; and as we closed the main land we got in amongst a great quantity of brash ice of a brownish yellow colour; some of it was collected and placed under a powerful microscope, but we were unable to ascertain the true nature of the colouring matter[1]; by most of us it was believed to be the fine ashes from Mount Erebus, not more than eighty miles south of us.
At 11 p.m., being nearly calm, we sounded in three hundred and eighty fathoms, greenish-coloured mud and clay: Beaufort Island at the time bearing true south.
The wind was so light and variable, and the sludge and pancake ice so thick, we could scarcely get the ships through it. Mount Erebus was seen at 2 30 a.m., and the weather becoming very clear, Feb. 16.we had a splendid view of the whole line of coast, to all appearance connecting it with the main land, which we had not before suspected to be the case.
- ↑ See M. Ehrenberg's account of the minute forms of organic life of which this substance is composed, in the Appendix.
