Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

ANTAECTIC EXPLOBATION. 13Wilkes, were attracted to itese waters in the hope of here fixing the exact positionof the south magnetic pole. They again visited the seas explored by Balleny,and both unhesitatingly asserted that they sighted true land, and not merelycontinuous bands of floating ice. D'Urville gave the name of Adelia to therugged coast from 3,000 to 4,000 feet high, which he observed to the south andfollowed westwards across some ten degrees of the meridian, without, however,lauding at any point. Farther west Wilkes also sighted land in four places, andFigr. C —EXPLOKATIONS IN THE SoUTH PoLAR WaTEES.Scale 1 : 100,000,000.Supposed Coutiaent,all the elevated ground, whether scattered islands or continuous land, has receivedthe general designation of Wilkes Land.Nevertheless James Ross, who followed a different track, threw some doubtson the reports of the three navigators who had followed each other in this oceanicregion. Nothing, in fact, is more deceptive than the hazy horizons of thesesouthern waters, where the rays of a low sun are refracted on the ice, and wherethe most practised eye is needed to distinguish between a real rocky crag and a"crystalline mountain detached from some distant glacier."Except at one point,