Page:Enterprise and Adventure.djvu/193

Rh ready to sail, and on Jan. 1, 1840, weighed anchor for their voyage south. "On the fifteenth," says D'Urville, "we crossed the route of Cook in 1773, and from that time were in a sea that no keel had ever ploughed before." On the morning of the following day they saw the first ice—a mass of fifty feet in height by two hundred in length—a shapeless fragment long beaten and worn down by the action of the waves as it had slowly drifted from its original home into milder latitudes. Thenceforward, they saw icebergs daily, which soon began to increase in size until some which they steered cautiously among were from six hundred to a thousand feet in length, and not less than a hundred-and-thirty feet in height. Remarkably moderate weather, and a favourable wind, enabled them to steer towards the land, to reach which they had to make their way through an immense chain of icebergs, tubular in form, and prodigious in their dimensions. Their corvettes defiled tranquilly for many hours through these straits of a novel description. At times the channels presented a width of not more than three or four cables' length; and then the ships appeared to be buried beneath these glittering walls, towering perpendicularly to a height of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet, and seeming ready to overwhelm them with their giant masses. Then, suddenly opening out, they issued from them into spacious basins, surrounded by icebergs of strange and fantastic forms, recalling the palaces of crystal and of diamonds which figure abundantly in fairy tales. A clear sky, and a propitious breeze, helped the voyagers through this daring navigation. At length, they issued from these