98
A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.
1772.
December.
Monday 14.the 14th) acquainted the captain that he plainly saw the land. This news soon brought us all upon deck: We saw an immense field of flat ice before us, broken into many small pieces on the edges, a vast number of islands of ice of all shapes and sizes rose beyond it as far as the eye could reach, and some of the most distant considerably raised by the hazy vapours which lay on the horizon, had indeed some appearance of mountains. Several of our officers persisted in the opinion that they had seen land here, till Captain Cook, about two years and two months afterwards (in February 1775) on his course from Cape Horn towards the Cape of Good Hope, sailed over the same spot, where they had supposed it to lie, and found neither land nor even ice there at that time. Numbers of pinguins, pintadas, fulmars, snowy and blue petrels[1] attended this vast extent of ice, and different species of cetaceous animals spouted up the water around us: two of them, shorter than other whales, were particularly noticed, in respect of their bulk and of a white or rather fleshy-colour. A great degree of cold in these icy regions entirely precluded the idea of a summer, which we had expected at this time of the year; our thermometer stood at 31° in the morning, and did not rise beyond 33° at noon, though the latitude we observed this day was only 54° 55′ south. We passed through quantities of broken ice in the
December.
Monday 14.the 14th) acquainted the captain that he plainly saw the land. This news soon brought us all upon deck: We saw an immense field of flat ice before us, broken into many small pieces on the edges, a vast number of islands of ice of all shapes and sizes rose beyond it as far as the eye could reach, and some of the most distant considerably raised by the hazy vapours which lay on the horizon, had indeed some appearance of mountains. Several of our officers persisted in the opinion that they had seen land here, till Captain Cook, about two years and two months afterwards (in February 1775) on his course from Cape Horn towards the Cape of Good Hope, sailed over the same spot, where they had supposed it to lie, and found neither land nor even ice there at that time. Numbers of pinguins, pintadas, fulmars, snowy and blue petrels[1] attended this vast extent of ice, and different species of cetaceous animals spouted up the water around us: two of them, shorter than other whales, were particularly noticed, in respect of their bulk and of a white or rather fleshy-colour. A great degree of cold in these icy regions entirely precluded the idea of a summer, which we had expected at this time of the year; our thermometer stood at 31° in the morning, and did not rise beyond 33° at noon, though the latitude we observed this day was only 54° 55′ south. We passed through quantities of broken ice in the
- ↑ Aptenodytes antarctica; Procellaria capensis, glacialis, nivea, & vittata.
afternoon,
