Recent Exploring Expeditions to the Pacific and the South Seas, Under the American, English, and French Governments

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T. Nelson and sons, 1853 - Antarctica - 508 pages
 

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Page 135 - Quito, are about fourteen feet from the tip of one wing to that of the other, and the smallest only eight.
Page 464 - Singapore is an island about twenty-seven miles long by fourteen wide, with an area of 206 square miles, situated at the southern extremity of the Malay Peninsula, from which it is separated by a narrow strait about three-quarters of a mile in width. There are a number of small islands adjacent to it, which form part of the settlement.
Page 477 - The latter was preferred, as being more likely to extend our researches into higher latitudes, and as affording a better chance of afterwards attaining one of the principal objects of our voyage ; and although we could not but feel disappointed in our expectation of shortly reaching the magnetic pole, yet these mountains, being in our way, restored to England the honour of the discovery of the southernmost known land, which had been nobly won by the intrepid Bellinghausen, and for more than twenty...
Page 494 - ... which nothing could justify during such a gale and with so high a sea running, but to avert the danger which every moment threatened us of being dashed to pieces. The heavy rolling of the vessel, and the probability of the masts giving way each time the lower yard-arms struck against the cliffs, which were towering high above our mast-heads, rendered it a service of extreme danger to loose the mainsail; but no sooner was the order given than the daring spirit of the British seaman manifested...
Page 494 - Erebus, collision was inevitable. We instantly hove all aback to diminish the violence of the shock ; but the concussion when she struck us was such as to throw almost every one off his feet; our bowsprit, foretopmast, and other smaller spars, were carried away...
Page 284 - Some of the bergs were of magnificent dimensions, one-third of a mile in length, and from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet in height, with sides perfectly smooth, as though they had been chiselled. Others, again, exhibited lofty arches of manycoloured tints, leading into deep caverns, open to the swell of the sea, which rushing in, produced loud and distant thunderings. The flight of birds passing in and out of these caverns...
Page 52 - Fuego. There was a degree of mysterious grandeur in mountain behind mountain, with the deep intervening valleys, all covered by one thick, dusky mass of forest. The atmosphere, likewise, in this climate, where gale succeeds gale, with rain, hail, and sleet, seems blacker than anywhere else. In the Strait of Magellan looking due southward from Port Famine, the distant channels between the mountains appeared from their gloominess to lead beyond the confines of this world.
Page 88 - The Chilian government, or rather the old Spanish law, encourages by every method the searching for mines. The discoverer may work a mine on any ground, by paying five shillings; and before paying this he may try, even in the garden of another man, for twenty days.
Page 494 - ... clear the end of the berg, and of feeling that she was safe. But she left us completely disabled j the wreck of the spars so encumbered the lower yards that we were unable to make sail so as to get headway on the ship ; nor had we room to wear round, being by this time so close to the berg that the waves, when they struck against it, threw back their sprays into the ship.
Page 150 - Pacific, we might expect their descendants, though they should never become more enlightened than the South Sea Islanders, or the Esquimaux, to spread, in the course of ages, over the whole earth, diffused partly by the tendency of population to increase, in a limited district, beyond the means of subsistence, and partly by the accidental drifting of canoes by tides and currents to distant shores.

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