Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/192

114 The accounts published, by the authority of Captain D'Urville, in the local papers stated, that the French ships sailed from Hobart-town on the 1st of January, 1840, and discovered land on the evening of the 19th; on the 21st some of the officers landed upon a small islet lying some distance from the main land, and procured some specimens of its granitic rock. D'Urville traced the land in a continuous line one hundred and fifty miles, between the longitudes of 136° and 142° east, in about the latitude of the antarctic circle. It was entirely covered with snow, and there was not the least appearance of vegetation: its general height was estimated at about one thousand three hundred feet. M. D'Urville named it "Terre Adélie." Proceeding to the westward, they discovered and sailed about sixty miles along a solid wall of ice one hundred and fifty feet high, which he, believing to be a covering or crust of a more solid base, named "Côte Clairée." It must have been extremely painful to the enterprising spirit of D'Urville to be obliged to relinquish a more extended exploration of this newly-discovered land; but the weakly condition of his crews imperatively demanded of him to discontinue their laborious exertions, and return to a milder climate to restore the health of his enfeebled people, upon finding that the western part of the Côte Clairée turned away suddenly to the southward. He accordingly bore away on the 1st of February, and reached Hobart-town on the 17th of the same month, after an