Thus we clearly see that this land lay out of the
track, not only of those navigators, whose object being to get into the
Pacific by the course best known, pass through the Straits of Magellan and
Le Maire, or keep as near Cape Horn as possible, but also of those who were
sent out expressly to search for land in a high southern latitude.
The intelligence of the discovery of New South Shetland, and that its
coasts abounded in Spermaceti whales, and in seals, quickly and powerfully
roused the commercial enterprise both of the British and the Americans. In
the course of a short time, numerous ships of both these nations sailed to
its coasts; but from their observations and experience, as well as from a
survey of it which was undertaken by the orders of one of His Majesty's
naval officers, commanding on the southwest coast of America, it was soon
ascertained that it was a most dangerous land to approach and to continue
near. Its sterility and bleak and forbidding appearance, from all the
accounts published respecting it, are scarcely equalled, certainly are not
surpassed, in the most inhospitable countries near the North Pole; while
ships are suddenly exposed to most violent storms, from which there is
little chance of escaping, and in which, during one of the seal-catching
seasons, a great number were lost.
There are, however, counterbalancing advantages: the seals were, at least
during the first seasons, uncommonly numerous, and taken with very little
trouble or difficulty, so that a ship could obtain a full cargo in a very
short time; but, in consequence of a very great number of vessels which
frequented the coasts for the purpose of taking these animals, they became
soon less numerous, and were captured with less ease.
