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Chap. VIII.]
SOUTH MAGNETIC POLE.
245
1841
with the main land. I named it McMurdo Bay, after the senior Lieutenant of the Terror, a compliment that his zeal and skill well merited. The wind having shifted to the southward enabled us to resume our endeavours to approach the magnetic pole, and we accordingly stood away to the northwest, sailing through quantities of tough newly formed ice perfectly covered with the colouring matter I have before noticed. When the melted ice was filtered through bibulous paper, it left a very thin sediment, which on being dried became an impalpable powder, seeming to confirm our belief of its volcanic origin.
At 2 p.m. we had penetrated the pack so far as to have got within ten or twelve miles of the low coast line, when our further progress was stopped by heavy closely packed ice. To the north-westward we observed a low point of land with a small islet off it, which we hoped might afford us a place of refuge during the winter, and accordingly endeavoured to struggle through the ice towards it, until 4 p.m., when the utter hopelessness of being able to approach it was manifest to all; the space of fifteen or sixteen miles between it and the ships being now filled by a solid mass of land ice. We therefore wore round and hove to for Commander Crozier to come on board; and as he quite concurred with me in thinking it impossible to get any nearer to the pole, I determined at once to relinquish the attempt, as we could not hope at so late a period of the season that any more of the land ice would break