Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/144

 Antarctic Circle, he stood farther to the east than we did, and penetrated as high as latitude 78° south, where  he discovered land. Coasting many weary miles along its frozen shores, on the 28th he discovered two mountains, the highest of which is 12,400 feet, having  on its summit an active volcano, which the admiral  named Mt. Erebus. The other, which is 10,000 feet high, he named Mt. Terror. These mountains are situated in latitude 76° south, longitude 168° east. Well might the discoverer of the north magnetic pole feel  proud of his discoveries in these unknown and untraversed regions. The English admiral named it Victoria Land. The ceremony of taking possession was in the name of Her Most Gracious Sovereign Majesty, Queen  Victoria. He made two subsequent voyages in these seas, but they did not prove as successful as the first. In 1845 Lieutenant Moore of the British navy sailed in the bark Pagoda from Cape Town on a scientific cruise  to the Antarctic regions. He penetrated a little farther south than Ross, and thus completed the observations  left by him, and confirmed the discovery of an Antarctic  Continent by our squadron. As our discovery of some portions of the Antarctic Continent has been called in  question by a few Englishmen, who have rendered a verdict not proved, it would probably be wiser for me, as I  am the only known survivor of the six hundred and  eighty-seven men who served in the expedition under  Commodore Wilkes, to keep silent, but my American  pride will not allow me to do so.

In tracing the English maps of to-day, I find no mention on many of them of our discovery of the Antarctic