Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/40

26 beautiful plains traversed by streams, and the comfortable mansions, surrounded by pleasure grounds, of the wealthier settlers, the perfection of agricultural landscape, recall to the recollection scenes so similar in our own country, that imagination could easily find a counterpart to many of the richest scenes of rural beauty which our most admired counties possess. Indeed, after being a short time in this charming country, it is difficult to feel that we are at the farthest distant point of the earth from our own loved land; and wherever we went, the hearty welcome and liberal hospitality with which we were received, seemed to strengthen, in no small degree, the impression of resemblance to our own happy island, except that in this the necessities of travellers being so much greater, offers a proportionally wider field for the exercise of these generous sentiments and conduct.

Towards the end of June we had finished all the repairs and refitment of the ships; had embarked provisions and stores to last us for three years, and were busily employed preparing the vessels for sea, intending, before the season for making another attempt to penetrate to the southward, to visit Sydney, in New South Wales, and the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand, for the purpose of getting magnetometric observations comparative with those of Rossbank Observatory, Van Diemen's Land, as we had done last year at Aukland Island, with the view to ascertain whether the cause of