c coast-line in the region of the magnetic Pole,
which he was to try to reach, did not continue to follow the Antarctic
Circle.

Ross left England in September 1839 under instructions from the
Admiralty. He had under his command two of Her Majesty's sailing ships,
the Erebus, 370 tons, and the Terror, 340 tons. Arriving in Hobart,
Tasmania, in August 1840, he was met by news of discoveries made during
the previous summer by the French Expedition under Dumont D'Urville and
the United States Expedition under Charles Wilkes. The former had coasted
along Adelie Land, and for sixty miles of ice cliff to the west of it. He
brought back an egg now at Drayton which Scott's Discovery Expedition
definitely proved to be that of an Emperor penguin.

All these discoveries were somewhere about the latitude of the Antarctic
Circle (66 deg. 32' S.) and roughly in that part of the world which lies to
the south of Australia. Ross, "impressed with the feeling that England
had ever _led_ the way of discovery in the southern as well as in the
northern region, ... resolved at once to avoid all interference with
their discoveries, and selected a much more easterly meridian (170 deg. E.),
on which to penetrate to the southward, and if possible reach the
magnetic Pole."[8]

The outlines of the expedition in which an unknown and unexpected sea was
found, stretching 500 miles southwards towards the Pole, are well known
to students of Antarctic history. After passing through the pack he stood
towards the supposed position of the magnetic Pole, "steering as nearly
south by the compass as the wind admitted," and on January 11, 1841, in
latitude 71 deg. 15' S., he sighted, the white peaks of Mount Sabine and
shortly afterwards Cape Adare. Foiled by the presence of land from
gaining the magnetic Pole, he turned southwards (true) into what is now
called the Ross Sea, and, after spending many days in travelling down
this coast-line with the mountains on his right hand, the Ross Sea on his
left, he discovered and named the great line of mountains which here for
some five hundred miles divides the sea from the Antarctic plateau. On
January 27, "with a favourable breeze and very clear weather, we stood to
the southward, close to some land which had been in sight since the
preceding noon, and which we then called the High Island; it proved to be
a mountain twelve thousand four hundred feet of elevation above the level
of the sea, emitting flame and smoke