Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/51

Rh can only be appreciated after the expedition shall have sailed. The observatory at St. Helena (the officers and instruments for which will be landed by Captain Ross) will in all probability,—and that at the Cape (similarly circumstanced in this respect) may possibly,—be in activity by the time the ships arrive at Kerguelen's Land, which we would recommend as a very interesting station for procuring a complete and as extensive a series of corresponding observations as the necessity of a speedy arrival at Van Diemen's Land for the establishment of the fixed observatory at that point will allow; taking into consideration the possibility of obtaining during the intermediate voyage a similar series at some point of the coast discovered by Kemp and Biscoe. In the ulterior prosecution of the voyage, a point of especial interest for the performance of similar observations will be found in New Zealand, which, according to the sketch of the voyage laid before us by Captain Ross, will probably be visited shortly after the establishment of the Van Diemen's Land observatory. The observations there will have especial interest, since, taken in conjunction with those simultaneously making in Van Diemen's Land, they will decide the important question, how far that exact correspondence of the momentary magnetic perturbations which has been observed in Europe, obtains in so remote a region, between places separated by a distance equal to that between the most widely distant European stations.

In the interval between quitting Van Diemen's Land and returning to it again, opportunities will no doubt occur of performing more than one other series of magnetometer observations, the locality of which may be conveniently left to the judgment of Captain Ross, bearing in mind the advantage of observing at stations as remote as possible from both Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand.

The research for the southern magnetic pole and the exploration of the antarctic seas will afford, it may be presumed, many opportunities of instituting on land hitherto unknown, or on firm ice when the vessel may be for a time blockaded, observations of this description; and in the progress of the circumnavigation, the line of coast observed or supposed to exist under the name of Graham's Land, or those of the islands in that vicinity, South Shetland, Sandwich Land, and finally on the