Chap. VII.]
LATITUDE 78º 10′ S.
201
1842
deep, so filled with ice that we were unable to get further into it; its outline was much more broken and indented than we had found it last year further to the westward, and its perpendicular cliffs had dwindled down to less than half their elevation at their attachment to Cape Crozier, at the foot of Mount Terror.
The temperature of the sea near the bottom was 30º 8′, or about two degrees colder than due to the depth at a distance from the barrier; thus showing how trifling was the effect of this enormous mass, whose influence we might have expected to have been sufficient to have reduced the temperature of the sea to its freezing point, even at the distance of a mile and a half.
The Terror came up to us in about half an hour, when an interchange of signals took place. The latitude of the Erebus computed from our observations at noon was 78º 8′ S., that of the Terror, 78º 11′ S.; the mean of which, 78º 9′ 30″ S., was adopted as our latitude, which would place the face of the barrier in 78º 11′ S., in the longitude of 161º 27′ West. From this point it trended considerably to the northward of east, forbidding the hope of our reaching a higher latitude this season; and although we had only surpassed that of last year by about six miles, we could not help feeling that but for the success which had attended our exertions on that occasion, the result of our operations this year would have been more highly appreciated, and that in being permitted a second time to ex-
