Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/403

], and being assured that no considerable portion of land could lie between our tracks, I considered it would be a waste of time to follow his footsteps up to that latitude, should it even at this late period of the season prove attainable; I therefore preferred devoting the few remaining days of the navigable season to exploring between those meridians upon which we had been permitted to carry our researches so many degrees to the southward of any of our predecessors. We accordingly tacked at 3, and stood to the south-west. Thick weather prevailed throughout the rest of the day and greater part of the night, during which we saw only a few pieces of ice and no bergs, which gave us the more confidence in carrying sail, a rather hazardous proceeding, which nothing but the urgency of the case could justify; and daylight again appeared without our having occasion to regret having adopted it.

Between 2 and 3 we entered the Antarctic circle, only three days earlier than we had crossed it in former seasons, returning from our more successful operations. We tried for, but did not obtain, soundings, with four hundred and fifty fathoms, and there was so much swell that our experiments on the temperature failed. Several whales, sooty albatross, Cape pigeons, blue petrel, and two or three white petrel were seen in the course of the day. We also observed that the colour of the sea had changed from its beautiful