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The last day of the same month they cast anchor off Santa Cruz de Teneriffe which D'Urville chose as a halting-place in preference to one of the Cape Verd Islands, in the hope of laying in a stock of wine and also of being able to take some magnetic observations which he had been blamed for neglecting in 1826, although it was well known that he was not then in a fit state to attend to such things.
In 1839 a French expedition under Dumont d'Urville again visited and explored the South Shetlands; while, in the following year, Captain Wilkes, of the United States navy, discovered the land named after him.
In spite of the roughness of the sea, and constant bad weather throughout his voyage of 108 days, D'Urville had carried on all his usual observations on the height of the waves, which he estimated at 80 and occasionally as much as 100 feet, off Needle Bank; the temperature of the sea at various depths, &c.
"Now," says D'Urville, "the horizon was so light that we could trace all the irregularities of Louis Philippe's Land. From Mount Bransfield to the south it is lofty, and of fairly uniform surface, resembling a vast, unbroken ice-field.
Be this as it may, of these Harfours D'Urville states, that they reminded him of the ordinary type of the Australians, New Caledonians, and the black race of Oceania, from their sooty colour, coarse but not woolly hair, thick beards, and habit of scarifying the body.
Not until the 26th April was Hogoley Archipelago sighted, where D'Urville bridged over the gaps left by Duperrey in his exploration, and only on the 2nd May did the coasts of Guam come in sight. Anchor was cast at Umata, where a supply of fresh water was easily found, and the climate much milder than at Agagna.
At this station a sloop was put under orders to proceed to the island of Laguemba, where was an anchor which D'Urville would have been well pleased to obtain, as he had lost two of his own while at Tonga.
This done and a fresh stock of provisions having been laid in, he resumed his voyage. It would be useless to linger with Dumont d'Urville at New South Wales, to the history of which, and its condition in 1826, he devotes a whole volume of his narrative.
This is what Captain Hull had done during this cruise; but on his next voyage he calculated on reaching a higher latitude, and, if necessary, going in sight of Clarie and Adelie Lands, whose discovery, contested by the American Wilkes, certainly belongs to the illustrious commander of the "Astrolabe" and the Zelee, to the Frenchman, Dumont d'Urville.
On trying to discover the cause of this sudden retreat, it was observed that the sailors on the island Pangaï Modou were being forcibly dragged off by the natives. D'Urville was about to fire off a cannon, when he decided that it would be safer to send a boat to shore.
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