to the west, under double-reefed top-sails and courses, with a strong gale at north, attended with snow and sleet, which froze to the rigging as it fell, making the ropes like wires, and the sails like boards or plates of metal.  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.  At the same time we saw a few chocolate-coloured albatrosses; these, as well as the peterels above-mentioned, we no where saw but among the ice; hence one may with reason conjecture that there is land to the south.  If not, I must ask where these birds breed?  A question which perhaps will never be determined; for hitherto we have found these lands, if any, quite inaccessible.  Besides these birds, we saw a very large seal, which kept playing about us some time.  One of our people who had been at Greenland, called it a sea-horse; but every one else took it for what I have said.  Since our first falling in with the ice, the mercury in the thermometer had been from 33 to 31 at noon-day.

On the 24th, the wind abated, veering to the N.W., and the sky cleared up, in the latitude of 67 deg. 0’ longitude 138 deg. 15’.  As we advanced to the N.E. with a gentle gale at N.W., the ice islands increased so fast upon us, that this day, at noon, we could see near 100 round us, besides an immense number of small pieces.  Perceiving that it was likely to be calm, I got the ship into as clear a birth as I could, where she drifted along with the ice, and by taking the advantage of every light air of wind, was kept from falling aboard any of these floating isles.  Here it was we spent Christmas day, much in the same manner as we did the preceding one.  We were fortunate in having continual day-light, and clear weather, for had it been as foggy as on some of the preceding days, nothing less than a miracle could have saved us from being dashed to pieces.[7]