We hoped that the night would not again be darkened by the ever-present black mist, and pushed rapidly landward to get a good view before midnight. But this was not to be, for as the sun sank in the south-west the wind came out of the north-east with a sooty smoke which blocked out our horizon. The distance was too great to make a good study of the land. In a general way this coast-line resembles the northern parts of the Greenland landscape. About the largest islands there are many small, ice-free isles, or rocks, which serve as resting-places for seals, penguins, cormorants, and gulls. On the larger islands, and especially on Livingston Island, there are high peaks and rounded, dome-like hills, which are crowned with snow, but whose sides are mostly bare and wind-rasped. The valleys are filled with huge glaciers, which send tongues out to the sea. We saw no glaciers, however, which came out from any distance into the water. The limit of the ice was generally at high-water mark, where it wasted away in small fragments. From what we later learned of the lands farther south, it is extremely probable that moss and lichens are here abundant, but there is no hope for grass or trees. It is very curious that this group of islands, about one hundred in number, with a thousand miles of accessible coast-line, and several good harbours, free of ice for much of the year, should remain unclaimed by any government, and unsettled by human efforts. It would be a humane mission if our government would take possession of these islands, and place there a lighthouse, with a supply station, for the preservation of ship-wrecked sailors. Vessels are lost in this vicinity almost every year, and we do not know but that some poor seamen are not now stranded on one of the many desolate islands, awaiting the relief which never comes. During the night of the 20th, the ship was kept moving slowly southward. It was another night of anxiety, though there were few icebergs about, and no pack-ice; yet the proximity to an unknown coast and the uncertainty of our position, with unsettled weather, made us all but comfortable. In the morning it was misty. Numerous small icebergs were about us, and while trying to dodge these we made another discovery--we struck a rock. This time we did not go on to it as easily as we did in Beagle Channel. We struck with a force that made the ship tremble and crack from stem to stern. We needed no call to come on deck, but after reaching it, we could not see what had happened. “We struck an iceberg,” some one said. “Yes; a black one,” said Knudsen. A few moments later the fog lifted, and we saw white crests and black rocks about us on every side. The good old ship was turned; she rolled off and struck two or three other rocks, and then steamed away, none the worse for it. As we withdrew we watched the small icebergs being dashed to pieces on the same rocks, and wondered if that would not be our fate with the next encounter.