Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/167

] The ships were warped up to the head of the harbour, and moored in a situation convenient for ready intercourse with the observatories; and although our operations were much impeded by frequent violent gales, we were enabled to get all the magnetometers placed and adjusted in time to take our part in the simultaneous observations made on the previously agreed on term-days of the 29th and 30th May in all the foreign and British observatories that constitute the great system of magnetic co-operation. It happened most fortunately to be a time of unusual magnetic disturbance, so that our first day's simultaneous observations proved the vast extent and instantaneous effect of the disturbing power, whatever it might be, affecting the magnetometers at Toronto in Canada and at Kerguelen Island, nearly antipodal to each other, simultaneously and similarly in all their strange oscillations and irregular movements, and thus immediately afforded one of the most important facts that the still-hidden cause of magnetic phenomena has yet presented.

A most interesting and valuable series of hourly magnetometric observations was continued night and day throughout the whole period of our stay at this island, with such exactness to time, and so much zeal and unwearying perseverance, by the officers of the Erebus and Terror, under the more immediate direction of Commander Crozier, that not a single break occurred, nor was a single hour's observation lost.