His scientific life now entered upon another and very characteristic phase. The bias of his mind, as he subsequently was wont to declare, was towards chemistry and the phenomena of light, rather than towards astronomy. Indeed, very shortly after taking his degree at Cambridge, he proposed himself as a candidate for the vacant chair of chemistry in that university; but, as he said with some humour, the result of the election was to leave him in a glorious minority of one. In fact Herschel had become an astronomer from a sense of duty, and it was by filial loyalty to his father's memory that he was now impelled to undertake the completion of the work nobly begun at Slough. William Herschel had searched the northern heavens; John Herschel determined to explore the southern, besides re-exploring northern skies. "I resolved," he said, "to attempt the completion of a survey of the whole surface of the heavens; and for this purpose to transport into the other hemisphere the same instrument which had been employed in this, so as to give a unity to the results of both portions of the survey, and to render them comparable with each other." In accordance with this resolution, he and his family embarked for the Cape on the 13th November 1833; they arrived in Table Bay on the 15th January 1834; and proceedings, he says, "were pushed forward with such effect that on the 22nd of February I was enabled to gratify my curiosity by a view of [kappa] Crucis, the nebula about [eta] Argus, and some other remarkable objects in the 20-ft. reflector, and on the night of the 4th of March to commence a regular course of sweeping."