These repeated additions to the general knowledge gradually discredited Captain Cook's assertion. The newly opened areas were found to be replete with whales, seals, and other commercially valuable animals, and ships of the mercantile marine continued to push nearer and nearer the Pole. In 1822 a firm of traders sent out two vessels to the Antarctic under the command of Captain Weddell, after whom the great Antarctic seal is named. The vessels were small ships in comparison with the modern build. One, the larger, was the _Jane_, a brig of 160 tons, and the other a cutter, the _Beaufoy_, 65 tons. As Captain Weddell had already done much geographical service in the South, his employers instructed him to do all he could to discover fresh lands, and to penetrate as far into the ice to the South as was possible. He succeeded so well in carrying out the latter part of his instructions that, on February 28, 1823, he carried the flag to 74° 1' S. For some years nothing more of note was done, but in 1831, Captain Biscoe, on board the brig _Tula_, located land--named Enderby's Land, after his employers--in 65° 57' S. latitude and 47° 20' E. longitude. Wind and storms intervening, he was unable to do more than identify one promontory, which he named Cape Ann. The year following Biscoe added to his record the discovery of Adelaide Island, Graham's Land, and a range of mountains he named after himself, Biscoe's Range. He landed on the newly discovered territory on February 21, 1832, and took possession of it in the name of Great Britain. Seven years later, on board the _Eliza Scott_, Biscoe found an island in 66° 44' S. latitude and 165° 45' E. longitude, the shores of which were so precipitous that no landing could be effected. Describing it, he wrote: "But for the bare rocks from where the icebergs had broken, we should scarcely have known it for land, but as we stood in for it we plainly perceived smoke arising from the mountain tops. It is evidently volcanic, as specimens of stones, or rather cinders, will prove." Two years earlier the French Government had taken up the work the British Government had neglected from the time of Captain Cook's condemnation, and had despatched two ships, the _Astrolabe_ and the _Zelée_, to try and get into higher latitudes than those reached by Weddell. The Government of the United States also sent out vessels to continue the work already so successfully done by American whaling skippers. The voyages did not add materially to the discovery of land, although some valuable scientific facts were observed and recorded. The British Government then bestirred itself, and two ships, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_, were placed under the command of Sir James C. Ross, with Captain Crozier as second in command, to proceed to the Antarctic regions and explore them. CHAPTER XIV VOYAGES OF THE _EREBUS_ AND _TERROR_