Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/466

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422
CHATHAM ISLAND.

penguins within the Antarctic circle. The larger kind, "Aptenodytes antarctica," attains a great size. I preserved one, weighing seventy-five pounds. It is a scarce bird, generally met with singly; and I have never seen more than two or three together; whilst the two smaller species congregate in immense numbers. I know not to what cause we can assign this very remarkable paucity of individuals in the larger species.

After reaching the latitude of 71° 30′, in the meridian of 15° west, we returned to the Cape of Good Hope, on the 4th of April, 1843; thus completing the circumnavigation of the globe.




APPENDIX, No. V.

Referred to p. 115., Vol. II.


Chatham Island, placed to the east of 180° upon old charts, and to the west of the same meridian upon the directory of Captain Dumont D'Urville, compiled in 1835, is situated in 43° 52′ south latitude, and 179° 14′ west longitude (from Paris), and is, so far as we could judge, about eighty to ninety miles in circumference. It has a good bay, of eleven miles in length, and of about the same depth, open to the south-west winds. At the bottom of this bay, on the right, towards the east, behind a red point, there is a cove, where three or four ships may find shelter by anchoring very close to the shore, in six or seven fathoms water, upon a good holding ground of sand, so as to have the red point to bear W. ¼ S.W. or even west, if the draught of water of the vessel will admit. Further in, towards the south, is a bank of rocks covered with floating seaweed, near which there are three and a

    tunity of examining, when belonging to H.M.S. Hecla, in the last attempt to reach the North Pole, present not a vestige of lava or basalt, but are constituted chiefly of the primary and transition rocks.