The Sheaves Also Were Frozen So Fast In The
Blocks, That It Required Our Utmost Efforts To Get A Top-Sail Down And Up;
The Cold So Intense As Hardly To Be Endured; The Whole Sea, In A Manner,
Covered With Ice; A Hard Gale, And A Thick Fog.[6]
Under all these unfavourable circumstances, it was natural for me to think
of returning more to the north; seeing no probability of finding any land
here, nor a possibility of getting farther south.
And to have proceeded to
the east in this latitude, must have been wrong, not only on account of the
ice, but because we must have left a vast space of sea to the north
unexplored, a space of 24 deg. of latitude; in which a large tract of land
might have lain. Whether such a supposition was well-grounded, could only
be determined by visiting those parts.
While we were taking up ice, we got two of the antarctic peterels so often
mentioned, by which our conjectures were confirmed of their being of the
peterel tribe. They are about the size of a large pigeon; the feathers of
the head, back, and part of the upper side of the wings, are of a light-
brown; the belly, and under side of the wings white, the tail feathers are
also white, but tipped with brown; at the same time, we got another new
peterel, smaller than the former, and all of a dark-grey plumage. We
remarked that these birds were fuller of feathers than any we had hitherto
seen; such care has nature taken to clothe them suitably to the climate in
which they live.
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