We stood to the south till two o’clock next morning, when we resumed our course to the E., with a faint breeze at S. S. E., which having ended in a calm, at six, I took the opportunity of putting a boat in the water to try if there were any current; and the trial proved there was none. Some whales were playing about us, and abundance of penguins; a few of the latter were shot, and they proved to be of the same sort that we had seen among the ice before, and different both from those on Staten Land, and from those at the isle of Georgia. It is remarkable, that we had not seen a seal since we left that coast. At noon we were in the latitude of 56° 44ʹ S., longitude 25° 33ʹ W. At this time we got a breeze at E., with which we stood to the S., with a view of gaining the coast we had left; but at eight o’clock the wind shifted to the S., and made it necessary to tack and stand to the E; in which course we met with several ice-islands and some loose ice, the weather continuing hazy with snow and rain. No penguins were seen on the 5th, which made me conjecture that we were leaving the land behind us, and that we had already seen its northern extremity. At noon we were in the latitude of 57° 8ʹ S., longitude 23° 34ʹ W., which was 3° of longitude to the east of Saunders’s isle. In the afternoon the wind shifted to the W., this enabled us to stretch to the S., and to get into the latitude of the land, that, if it took an east direction, we might again fall in with it. We continued to steer to the S. and S. E. till next day at noon, at which time we were in the latitude of 58° 15ʹ S., longitude 21° 34ʹ W., and seeing neither land nor signs of any, I concluded that what we had seen, which I named Sandwich Land, was either a group of islands, or else a point of the continent; for I firmly believe that there is a track of land near the pole which is the source of most of the ice that is spread over this vast Southern Ocean. I also think it probable that it extends farthest to the north opposite the southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans, because ice was always found by us farther to the north in these oceans than any where else, which I judge could not be, if there were not land to the S.; I mean a land of considerable extent. For if we suppose that no such land exists, and that ice may be formed without it, it will follow of course that the cold ought to be every where nearly equal round the pole, as far as 70° or 60° of latitude, or so far as to be beyond the influence of any of the known continents; consequently we ought to see ice every where under the same parallel, or near it; and yet the contrary has been found. Very few ships have met with ice going round Cape Horn; and we saw but little below the sixtieth degree of latitude, in the Southern Pacific Ocean. Whereas in this ocean, between the meridian of 40° W. and 50° or 60° E., we found ice as far N. as 51°. Bouvet met with some in 48°; and others have seen it in a much lower latitude.