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and 63° latitude, and 54° and 63° longitude; and land has been since observed still more to the southward.

In September 1822, Mr. Weddell sailed on a sealing adventure in the Jane, a brig of 160 tons, accompanied by the Beaufoy, a cutter of 65 tons, both fitted out in the ordinary way, and provisioned for two years. The smaller vessel was commanded by Mr. Matthew Brisbane. On the 14th of November, in latitude 14 S.,' says Mr. W., we closed with a Portuguese schooner, having a cargo of slaves, bound to Bahia, and I boarded her. My officers were seriously impressed with the idea of making her a prize; but I was aware that we could not legally do so. This inability I much regretted, as we were of sufficient force to have relieved 250 fellow creatures from a cruel bondage. The men slaves were stowed in the hold, and almost suffocated by the smallness of the place; the women and children were seated on the lee-side of the deck, many of them shackled by the feet. As it was out of my power to render them any assistance, much as I deplored their miserable situation, I returned on board, and the vessels separated.'

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On the 19th of December, the ships put into Port St. Elena, in latitude 44° 34' 16", and on the 20th again set sail. January 2, 1823, Mr. Weddell endeavoured to ascertain the precise locality of l'Aigle shoal, discovered, in 1817, by a Captain 'Bristow; but, with a run of 14 miles, and a view of 10 more from the mast-head, he was unable to find it near the spot where it is laid down. On the 12th, the South Orkneys were in sight, and Mr. W., after having explored them, and made some further attempts to discover land between the Orkneys and the points of coast known by the name of Sandwich Land, determined on taking a clear run to the southward. This course he held until the 20th of February, when he deemed it prudent to return.

. Our latitude at this time............was 74° 15', and longitude 34° 16' 45'; the wind blowing fresh at south, prevented, what I most desired, our making further progress in that direction. I would willingly have explored the S. W. quarter, but taking into account the lateness of the season, and that we had to pass homewards through 1000 miles of sea strewed with ice islands, with long nights, and probably attended with fogs, I could not determine otherwise than to take advantage of this favourable wind for returning.'

It should seem from this, that, in all attempts to pursue discovery in the regions of the South Pole, much will depend on the direction in which the effort is made. Ice islands, in their formation, invariably attach themselves to the shore; and field ice does not appear likely to be produced in deep water. Capt. Weddell infers from these facts, and from the various

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circumstances which presented themselves during this part of his voyage, that the tracts of coast beyond South Shetland, do not range higher than the 74th parallel; and in that case, unless land should occur still further southward, there seems every probability of a navigable sea, even as far as the Antarctic Pole.

On March 12th, the ships came to anchor in Adventure Bay, South Georgia, after having been nearly five months under sail, During his sojourn in this desolate place, Captain Weddell, ascending a mountain for the purpose of taking the altitude of the sun when at some distance from the meridian, found the mercury of his artificial horizon, so much affected by some strange internal agitation of the ground, not perceptible in any other way, as to prevent the possibility of getting an observation. Not a breath of air was stirring. South Georgia extends in length about ninety-six miles, and its average breadth may be about ten, though in some parts it is so deeply indented with bays, as to present a very narrow surface. Since the report made by Captain Cook first drew the attention of mercantile adventurers to the multitudes of sea-elephants and fur-seals found on these shores and on those of the island of Desolation, it is probable that not fewer than two thousand tons of shipping have been annually employed in this navigation. From South Georgia alone, 20,000 tons of oil, and 1,200,000 skins, have been procured.

It seems to have been the peculiar fortune of Mr. Weddell, to obtain the means of correcting erroneous notions and positions in hydrography. By boldly stretching on to the southward, he has destroyed the hypothesis which connected Sandwich Land with shores ranging in the rear of South Shetland. Ina subsequent part of his course, he disproved the asserted existence of South Iceland; and, during a previous voyage (in 1820) he had taken considerable but fruitless pains to verify the situation of the Aurora Islands, which, in 1794, were the objects of actual survey by a Spanish frigate, the Atrevida, sent out for the express purpose. The earlier accounts of these islands are too vague to deserve much notice; and the observations of the ships, Aurora and San Miguel, may be supposed to have been made in a slovenly manner; but, that the captain and officers of a man-of-war should so grossly mistake as to place islands in a specific point without authority, seems incredible. Yet, the thorough and seaman-like investigation of Mr. Weddell, appears to set the matter beyond dispute. We shall cite the very distinct account of his manœuvres in examination of this matter.

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At seven in the evening (Jan. 27, 1820) we had passed over the (laid down) latitude and longitude of these islands, without observing the least appearance of land, We obtained and continued in the parallel of latitude, running through the plate assigned to them till we arrived in the longitude of 46°. I considered the allowance for error in longitude to be pretty ample; particularly since the Atrevida sailed from Port Soledad in the Falkland islands; from which, to the place for our investigation was but about three days' sail hence her common reckoning could not have erred much, and she had chronometers which should have been nearly exact. These considerations produced in my mind a degree of surprize; and I could not at that moment, reconcile my experience with the facts which had been asserted. I was resolved, however, not to abandon the object of my pursuit, without being fully satisfied of the truth or falsity of this geographical problem. It was now remarkably clear; and, from the mast-head, land of common height might have been seen at the distance of eight leagues; but still, nothing of the kind was observed. We next steered S.S.E., into the latitude of 53° 17', and then W. by S., in order to get sight of the southern island; but in vain-not the smallest indication of land appeared.

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The situation for the middle island bore now S. 33° E., distant eight miles. We had a clear view of six or seven leagues, but nothing like land was to be seen. The only chance now left us for finding these Auroras, I conceived, was by making various courses between the latitudes of 53° 15′ and 52° 37′; and this we did, till we reached the longitude, by chronometers, of 46° 29'. Having all this time seen nothing resembling land, except fog-banks which had often given us severe disappointment, we returned westward; and on the 5th, our latitude at noon was 52° 44', and longitude by chronometers 48° 33'. We had thus again passed over the site of these islands to no purpose.'

It is not improbable, that the Atrevida may have mistaken the Shag Rocks, in lat. 53° 48' and long. 43° 25', for these visionary islands. In May, the Jane and Beaufoy took up their winter quarters in Quaker Harbour, situated in one of the Falkland Islands. The local supplies seem limited to water and peat, as the seals and sea-elephants have been nearly exterminated by the thoughtless devastation of their hunters. Early navigators, from the disproportion in size between the male and the female seal, together with the fact, that the former appropriates to himself a considerable number of the latter, seem to have taken the larger one for the mother, and the attendant ones for the young. Hence, probably, arose the mistaken notion of the prodigious fecundity of the seal, and the consequent havoc made under the supposition of their inexhaustible multiplication. In 1820, a French vessel, ele

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gantly and expensively fitted out,' arrived at Port Egmont, for a cargo of skins and oil. The commander was a lieutenant in the French navy, and his father, while navigating these seas forty-two years previously to that date, had found the shores of the harbour in question, lined with sea-elephants. and seals. The son expected the same to be the case; but, · as none were to be found, he abandoned the voyage, with great loss, no doubt, to his employers.' New Island, at the west end of the Falklands, was, in 1814, the scene of a singular and atrocious transaction. Captain Barnard, an American, found here the crew, about thirty in number, of an English vessel which had been wrecked on her passage from Port Jackson. He treated then, with the utmost kindness, and though the countries were then at war, promised to land them in his passage home, at some port in the Brazils. From whatever cause, (and it should not be forgotten that Captain B., 'tells his own tale,) suspicions arose in the minds of the guests, that their host did not intend to keep his promise, and they took advantage of his temporary absence with a part of his crew, to overpower the remainder, and set sail, leaving Barnard and four companions absolutely without supplies or resources. Here he remained during two years, and his anxieties were increased by the insubordination of his men. supplies were casual; their dog occasionally hunted down a pig; and the eggs of the albatross, with, in the second season, potatoes, the produce of a few planted by Capt. B. were their food. They were not relieved until December, 1815, when they were taken off by an English whaler. A British man of war, which had been previously despatched from Rio Janeiro. for the express purpose of releasing then, failed of discovering their abode.

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Mr. Weddell describes the climate of these regions as far more temperate than it appears to have been half a century ago. At that time, immense bodies of ice were found in so low a latitude as 50, but during three voyages which he has recently made to these regions, Mr. W. has never seen southern ice drifting to the northward of South Georgia.

Port Louis, in the Falkland Islands, presented, in 1820, rather a busy scene. Captain Freycinet, after having spent nearly three years in a voyage of science round the world, in the French corvette l'Uranie, through want of caution in entering this port, had struck on a ledge of sunken rocks, and, though the frigate floated off, she afterwards sank in water too deep to admit of repairing or moving her. The captain of an American ship contrived, by dexterous management, to conceal from Freycinet, that the English vessel of Mr. Weddell was in the

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neighbourhood, and made his own bargain for the transport of the French crew to the river Plate. An armed ship of rather suspicious quality lay, moreover, in the neighbourhood; and Mr. W. received a very polite letter, signed Jewitt, Colonel of the Marine of the United Provinces of South America, and • Commander of the frigate Heroind,' inviting him to an interview. He, of course, complied, and found the crew dying of scurvy, at the rate of five or six a day. He gave the commander every information as to the means of restoration, and piloted his frigate to a better anchorage.

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On the 7th of October, the Jane and Beaufoy left the Falklands, on a second trip to South Shetland, and soon had a specimen of the dangers of polar navigation. A tremendous hurricane placed them in circumstances of much danger. They were subsequently exposed to severer hazards, and after encountering extreme peril, aggravated by the slight fabric of the ships, having only two and a half inch plank in the bottom,' they found the South Shetlands inaccessible, through the accumulation of ice, and on the 16th of November, stood to the northward. These Islands are, of course, uninhabitable, though valuable in commerce as the resort of the sea-elephant and the fur-seal one of them appears to be volcanic. The Bay of St. Francis, among the islands of Cape Horn, afforded the vessels a shelter, and brought them into contact with the natives. Mr. Weddell, though he has given in a rather interesting manner, the particulars of his intercourse with the savages, has not added much to our previous knowledge of their habits and character They seem to be on the lowest scale in respect of civilization. On the 3d of April, the vessels entered the harbour of Monte Video.

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An Appendix contains, besides observations on the Navigation round Cape Horn, a collection of useful tables and calculations. The charts are numerous, and there are three or four tolerable plates.

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