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Updated: June 21, 2025
In provisioning the ships, every possible precaution was taken against scurvy, with the dangers of which Ross was familiar from his experience in Arctic waters. The vessels sailed from England in September, 1839, calling at many of the Atlantic Islands, and arrived in Christmas Harbour, Kerguelen Land, in the following May.
Early this morning the small vessel was again seen in the far distance and some hours later a boat from it landed the Captain's brother and two of the crew. The two latter were brought to us at the school. As they spoke only French the islanders did not know what else to do with them. I tried to carry on a conversation with them and learnt they were going to Kerguelen Island for sealing.
The escape of Miss Augusta Smithers and of the little Lord Holmhurst as we suppose that we must now call him from the ill-fated Kangaroo, and their subsequent rescue, on Kerguelen Land, by the American whaler, will certainly take rank as the most romantic incident of its kind in the recent annals of shipwreck.
From the time when we had to reckon with any likelihood of meeting icebergs, the temperature of the water was also taken every two hours during the night. As Kerguelen Island lay almost directly in the course we intended to follow, it was decided for several reasons that we should call there, and pay a visit to the Norwegian whaling-station.
Rodney's Life, vol. ii. p. 242. Chevalier, p. 311. Kerguelen: Guerre Maritime de 1778. Letter of De Grasse to Kerguelen, p. 263. Troude: Batailles Navales.
Again he adds, "Various difficulties also remain to be solved; for instance, the occurrence, as shown by Dr. Hooker, of the same plants at points so enormously remote as Kerguelen Land, New Zealand, and Fuegia; but icebergs, as suggested by Lyell, may have been concerned in their dispersal.
Suffice it to say, that, at the end of a fortnight's time, they at length reached a magnificent stretch of blue water, which Mr Meldrum said was Hillsborough Bay, on the eastern side of Kerguelen Land. Hurrah they had crossed the isthmus, and arrived so far towards the end of their destination!
We were then, for reasons which it is not worth while to specify, in the close neighbourhood of Kerguelen Land; and now, when I open an atlas and look at the tiny dots on the map of the Southern Ocean, I see as if engraved upon the paper the enraged physiognomy of that gale. Another, strangely, recalls a silent man. And yet it was not din that was wanting; in fact, it was terrific.
He was holding her to him like a child whilst she held to her the little sea elephant, and so they remained, the three of them until the big blow, failing to tear Kerguelen from its foundations, began to pause like a spent madman.
Neither of the men replied for a moment, then La Touche said: "There wasn't another boat could have got away." The sun was well risen now, the clouds were high and breaking and the far away land shewed up, vast in the distance, with a white line of snow-covered peaks against the sky, desolate as when Kerguelen first sighted them.
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