in the polar regions of
the south.

On the 11th of January, 1823, Captain Benjamin Morrell, of the American
schooner Wasp, sailed from Kerguelen's Land with a view of penetrating
as far south as possible. On the first of February he found himself in
latitude 64 degrees 52' S., longitude 118 degrees 27' E. The following
passage is extracted from his journal of that date. "The wind soon
freshened to an eleven-knot breeze, and we embraced this opportunity
of making to the west; being however convinced that the farther we
went south beyond latitude sixty-four degrees, the less ice was to be
apprehended, we steered a little to the southward, until we crossed
the Antarctic circle, and were in latitude 69 degrees 15' E. In this
latitude there was no field ice, and very few ice islands in sight."

Under the date of March fourteenth I find also this entry. "The sea was
now entirely free of field ice, and there were not more than a dozen ice
islands in sight. At the same time the temperature of the air and water
was at least thirteen degrees higher (more mild) than we had ever found
it between the parallels of sixty and sixty-two south. We were now
in latitude 70 degrees 14' S., and the temperature of the air was
forty-seven, and that of the water forty-four. In this situation I found
the variation to be 14 degrees 27' easterly, per azimuth.... I
have several times passed within the Antarctic circle, on different
meridians, and have uniformly found the temperature, both of the air and
the water, to become more and more mild the farther I advanced beyond
the sixty-fifth degree of south latitude, and that the variation
decreases in the same proportion. While north of this latitude, say
between sixty and sixty-five south, we frequently had great difficulty
in finding a passage for the vessel between the immense and almost
innumerable ice islands, some of which were from one to two miles in
circumference, and more than five hundred feet above the surface of the
water."

Being nearly destitute of fuel and water, and without proper
instruments, it being also late in the season, Captain Morrell was now
obliged to put back, without attempting any further progress to the
westward, although an entirely open, sea lay before him. He expresses
the opinion that, had not these overruling considerations obliged him to
retreat, he could have penetrated, if not to the pole itself, at least
to the eighty-fifth parallel. I have given his ideas r