Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/461

Rh above the numerous other lofty cones and crateriform peaks with which this extraordinary land is studded, from the seventy-second to the seventy-eighth degree of latitude. Its height above the level of the sea is 12,367 feet; and Mount Terror, an extinct crater adjoining it, which has, doubtless, once given vent to the fires beneath, attains an altitude little inferior, being 10,884 feet in height, and ending in a cape, from which a vast barrier of ice extended in an easterly direction, checking all further progress south. This continuous perpendicular wall of ice, varying in height from 200 to 100 feet, its summit presenting an almost unvarying level outline, we traced for about 300 miles, when the pack-ice obstructed all further progress. Soundings were obtained within a quarter of a mile of it; in 318 fathoms on a bottom of green mud.

This appeared to be the favourite haunt of the White Petrel; an Antarctic Lestris occasionally intruding on its icy domain: whilst, reposing on the ice, were numerous penguins and seals, and, in the open water, whales were spouting in all directions, chiefly the "Finner," and a beautiful piebald grampus, or small whale, spotted reddish brown and white. On our return we sighted Balleny Islands, in lat. 68°, and long. 169°; they present the same volcanic outline as the rest of the land to the southward.

On the second voyage south, we took our departure from the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, in the month of November, 1841, but did not meet with any land; having been beset for many weeks in the pack-ice, and our progress towards the Pole again checked by the Barrier, which we made more to the eastward than last season, in lat. 78° 10′ S., being the highest latitude we attained. On our return we doubled Cape Horn on the 2nd, and arrived at Port Louis, East Falkland Island, on the 6th of April 1842.

Prior to our third and last voyage across the Antarctic circle, we visited—