privilege to name, are called Brooklyn and Van Wyck Islands; Brooklyn, in honour of the city of my home, and Van Wyck, in honour of the first Mayor of Greater New York. To the east of Belgica Strait the shore-line is unbroken. It has many deep indentations, but there is no passage into the Atlantic. A continuous wall of ice, from fifty to one hundred feet high, fronts the coast everywhere. This land is from two thousand to four thousand feet high, with mountains farther inland perhaps six thousand feet in altitude. Every valley and every surface which is not perpendicular is buried by a sheet of never-melting ice. We were not able to follow the coast of this country far enough south to determine the interesting question whether it is continuous with Grahamland or not. This land has received the name Terre de Danco, in memory of our late faithful companion, Lieutenant Emile Danco. CHAPTER XI FROM DANCOLAND TO ALEXANDER ISLANDS At about eight o’clock in the evening of the twelfth we select what seems to be a comfortable resting-place for the night. Owing to the great depth of water we cannot anchor; hence, in accordance with our previous habits, a little steam is kept up for an emergency movement, and the _Belgica_ is allowed to drift with the winds and the currents during the hours of rest. No one ever knew except the officers on the watch how many narrow escapes we had in our silent hours of slumber. Quietly but quickly the bark moves about, now in danger of being thrown against an iceberg; now being propelled by some mysterious force in a direct line for a rocky island, or the huge blue ice-wall of the mainland. Danger and destruction are always within sight. They are over the gunwale on every side. And then there is always the hazard of submerged reefs upon which we might easily and unexpectedly ride to a rapid end. Hair’s-breadth escapes have been on hand daily, until now we have become hardened to the real dangers which are constantly before us. But up to the present nothing has happened, and this freedom from casualties is due to the persistent watchfulness, the painstaking care, and the praiseworthy faithfulness of the officers and men on watch. The night is of special interest to me. There is something about the air, the water, the ice, and the land, which fixes my attention and makes sleep impossible. There is a glitter in the sea, a sparkle on the ice, and a stillness in the atmosphere, which fascinates the soul but overpowers the mind. There is a solitude and restfulness about the whole scene which can only be felt; it cannot be described. Here, to the east, the face of the mysterious land is clothed by the successive sheets of snows of the sleeping years of countless silent centuries. About us are scores of icebergs, huge table-topped, pyramidal, and castle-like masses, fragments of this same unknown blanket of accumulated snows which clothes every aspect of antarctic land.