Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/174

96 to a gale, which continued to blow with frequent snow-squalls throughout the 21st, 22d, and 23d, which, together with the long dark nights of this season of the year, rendered it difficult, notwithstanding the constant firing of guns and burning of blue lights, to keep the ships in company with each other.

During the snow-squalls the temperature of the air invariably fell several degrees, and on one occasion was as low as 27°, although the sea maintained an uniform heat of about 36°; the vapour which rose from water of that temperature almost as speedily froze before it attained any considerable altitude, and kept us continually enveloped in haze and snow. We should have felt some alarm at meeting such large quantities of sea-weed had we not before observed that the masses which had been torn away from the shores of Prince Edward's and the Marion and Crozet's groups were met with only to the eastward of those islands, whilst scarcely any were seen as we approached them from the westward. Meeting with it now in such abundance confirmed me in the belief that there is a general tendency of the surface water in these parts to the eastward, most probably occasioned by the westerly winds, which, at this season, at any rate, prevail almost as steadily as do the trade winds in the equatorial regions.

We also found ourselves every day from twelve to sixteen miles by observation in advance of our