re frozen in, "wireless"
could be installed and the news immediately communicated through
Macquarie Island to Australia.

At noon on December 27 whales were spouting all round us, and appeared
to be travelling from west to east. Albatrosses of several species
constantly hovered about, and swallow-like Wilson petrels--those nervous
rangers of the high seas--would sail along the troughs and flit over the
crests of the waves, to vanish into sombre distance.

Already we were steaming through untravelled waters, and new discoveries
might be expected at any moment. A keen interest spread throughout the
ship. On several occasions, fantastic clouds on the horizon gave hope
of land, only to be abandoned on further advance. On December 28 and 29
large masses of floating kelp were seen, and, like the flotsam met with
by Columbus, still further raised our hopes.

The possibility of undiscovered islands existing in the Southern Ocean,
south of Australia and outside the ice-bound region, kept us vigilant.
So few ships had ever navigated the waters south of latitude 55
degrees, that some one and a quarter million square miles lay open to
exploration. As an instance of such a discovery in the seas south of New
Zealand may be mentioned Scott Island, first observed by the 'Morning',
one of the relief ships of the British Expedition of 1902.

The weather remained favourable for sounding and other oceanographical
work, but as it was uncertain how long these conditions would last, and
in view of the anxiety arising from overloaded decks and the probability
of gales which are chronic in these latitudes, it was resolved to
land one of the bases as soon as possible, and thus rid the ship of
superfluous cargo. The interesting but time-absorbing study of the
ocean-depths was therefore postponed for a while.

With regard to the Antarctic land to be expected ahead, many of Wilkes's
landfalls, where they had been investigated by later expeditions, had
been disproved. It seemed as if he had regarded the northern margin
of the solid floe and shelf-ice as land; perhaps also mistaking bergs,
frozen in the floe and distorted by mirage, for ice-covered land.
Nevertheless, his soundings, and the light thrown upon the subject by
the Scott and Shackleton expeditions, left no doubt in my mind that
land would be found within a reasonable distance south of the position
assigned by Wilkes. Some authorities had held that any land existing
in this region wou