Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3.: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth CenturyVerne, Jules
History
Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3.: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century
Verne, Jules
Discoveries in geography; Explorers; Voyages and travels
Back again in S. lat. 62 degrees, Bellinghausen once more steered
eastwards without encountering any obstacles, and on the 5th March,
1820, he made for Port Jackson to repair his vessels.
The whole summer was given up by the Russian navigator to a cruise
about Oceania, when he discovered no less than seventeen new islands,
and on the 31st October he left Port Jackson on a new expedition. The
first places sighted on this trip were the Macquarie Islands; then
cutting across the 60th parallel, S. lat. in E. long. 160 degrees, the
explorers bore east between S. lat. 64 degrees and 68 degrees as far as
W. long. 95 degrees. On the 9th January, Bellinghausen reached 70
degrees S. lat., and the next day discovered, in S. lat. 69 degrees 30
minutes, W. long. 92 degrees 20 minutes, an island, to which he gave
the name of Peter I., the most southerly land hitherto visited. Then
fifteen degrees further east, and in all but the same latitude, he
sighted some more land which he called Alexander I.'s Land. Scarcely
200 miles distant from Graham's Land, it appeared likely to be
connected with it, for the sea between the two districts was constantly
discoloured, and many other facts pointed to the same conclusion.
From Alexander I.'s Land the two vessels, bearing due north, and
passing Graham's Land, made for New Georgia, arriving there in
February. Thence they returned to Cronstadt, the port of which they
entered in July 1821, exactly two years after they left it, having lost
only three men out of a crew of 200.
We would gladly have given further details of this interesting
expedition, but we have not been able to obtain a sight of the original
account published in Russian at St. Petersburg, and we have had to be
content with the _resume_ brought out in one of the journals of the
Geographical Society in 1839.
[Illustration: Map of the Antarctic Regions, showing the routes taken
by the navigators of the 19th Century. _Engraved by E. Morieu._]
At the same period a master in the Royal Navy, James Weddell by name,
was appointed by an Edinburgh firm to the command of an expedition, to
obtain seal-skins in the southern seas, where two years were to be
spent. This expedition consisted of the brig _Jane_, 160 tons, Captain
Weddell, and the cutter _Beaufort_, sixty-five tons, Matthew Brisbane
commander.
The two vessels left England on the 17th September, 1822, touched at
Bonavista, one of the Cape Verd Islands, and cast anchor in the
following December in the port of St. Helena, on the eastern coast of
Patagonia, where some valuable observations were taken on the position
of that town.
Weddell put to sea again on the 27th December, and steering in a
south-easterly direction, came in sight, on the 12th January, of an
archipelago to which he gave the name of the Southern Orkneys. These
islands are situated in S. lat. 60 degrees 45 minutes, and W. long. 45
degrees.
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