Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/394

296 the numerous sea-elephants, and the discoloration of the water and ice, they were strongly impressed with the idea of land being in the vicinity; but on sounding with one hundred fathoms no bottom could be found: Lieutenant Commandant Ringgold felt convinced, from the above circumstances and the report that penguins were heard, that land was near, and thought he could discern to the south-east something like distant mountains," just in the position of the mountainous land laid down in Wilkes's chart, over which we sailed, but not near that of Balleny Islands, cannot but tend to confirm the conclusions I had before arrived at; for I can hardly understand how, professing as he does to have "prepared a chart, laying down the land, not only where we had actually determined it to exist, but those places in which every appearance denoted its existence," could have omitted to place on such a chart the land which Lieutenant Ringgold thought he saw, and who has since declared himself "to have very little doubt about it," and therefore I can have no doubt that the land must have been placed upon the chart on this authority, or upon none whatever.

I trust, at any rate, so far as I am concerned, that I have clearly shown that I could not be expected to suppose,—for no one who has read these statements can even now suppose,—that the land marked on Lieutenant Wilkes's chart which we sailed over in the Erebus and Terror could have been intended to represent Balleny Islands: first, because of its being placed at least seventy miles