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We now seemed to have got out from among the ice-islands, with which, from South Georgia to the latitude of 46° south, this ocean seems at this season of the year to be overspread. In latitude 44° 00' south, we saw the last piece of ice, and in the whole, we had been twenty-eight days among the ice, and sailed a distance of 800 leagues.
It is certain, that we saw not a river, or stream of water, on all the coast of Georgia, nor on any of the southern lands. Nor did we ever see a stream of water run from any of the ice-islands. How are we then to suppose that there are large rivers? The valleys are covered, many fathoms deep, with everlasting snow; and, at the sea, they terminate in icy cliffs of vast height.
The former was the more generally received hypothesis, for the ice-islands passed were too large to have been formed in the open ocean. On the 18th January, S. lat. 64 degrees was reached, and great perpendicular blocks of ice were met with, the height of which varied from ninety to 100 feet, whilst the breadth exceeded 3000.
On the 21st the wind allowed the vessels to approach the beach, and deep ravines were soon made out, evidently the result of the action of melted snow. As the ships advanced navigation became more and more perilous, for the ice-islands were so numerous that there was hardly a large enough channel between them for any manoeuvring.
Many of them were half black, apparently with earth from the land to which they had adhered, or else, with mud from the bottom on which they had lain: for it is well known, that ice-islands, after having been driven about at sea for a length of time, become so light and spungy in that part which has been immersed in the water, that the upper part becomes heavier, and thereby they frequently overset, and may, by such a change, show some part of the ground on which they had rested.
He duly reached first the Auckland and then the Campbell Islands, and after having, like his predecessors, tacked about a great deal in a sea strewn with ice-islands, he came beyond the sixty-third degree to the edge of the stationary ice, and on the 1st January, 1841, crossed the Antarctic Circle.
Many of those masses rose above the sea more than two hundred feet perpendicularly, and showed wall-like surfaces of half a league in length. At the point where the schooners happened to be just at that moment, the ice-islands were not so large, but quite as high, and consequently were more easily agitated.
Soon after we had sun-shine, but the air was cold; the mercury in the thermometer stood generally at thirty-five, but at noon it was 37°; the latitude by observation was 60° 4' S., longitude 29° 23' W. We continued to stand to the east till half-past two o'clock, p.m., when we fell in, all at once, with a vast number of large ice-islands, and a sea strewed with loose ice.
It is here where the ice-islands are formed; not from streams of water, but from consolidated snow and sleet, which is almost continually falling or drifting down from the mountains, especially in the winter, when the frost must be intense. During that season, the ice-cliffs must so accumulate as to fill up all the bays, be they ever so large.
It may be answered that, if we conceive the till and its boulders to have been drifted to their present place by ice, the lateral pressure may have been supplied by the stranding of ice-islands. We learn, from the observations of Messrs. Dease and Simpson in the polar regions, that such islands, when they run aground, push before them large mounds of shingle and sand.
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