Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The preacher was Henry Nott, one of the missionaries who,
with the active help of King Pomare II had brought Christianity to the
islands. (There was a considerable relapse into paganism after the
king's death in 1824.)
As soon as the weather became warmer, Bellingshausen poin-
ted
Vostok's
bow once more to the southern Pacific and the Antarctic.
In January 1821 he discovered the first land located within the
circle: two islands which he named Peter Island and Alexander Is-
land. When he eventually left the Antarctic Circle for the South Shet-
lands and the warmer seas beyond, Bellingshausen had added to the
charts another 42° of explored ocean above the line. It was a con-
siderable achievement. (All the captains who steered their vulner-
able little ships through that maze of towering, fragmenting ice com-
mand our admiration.) Yet it attracted little public attention. Nor did
the voyage of English whaler John Biscoe, ten years later (1830-32).
He followed a similar route to Bellingshausen's but reached farther
south at several points and identified at a distance the coast of
Enderby Land, the first part of the continent to be discovered within
the circle.
Perhaps the reason for the public's apathy was its preoccupa-
tion with the brave voyages of Parry and Franklin in their search
for the North-West Passage. Another decade was to elapse before
any more scientific expeditions were launched towards the Antarc-
tic. But then everything happened with a rush. Within the space of
two years, no fewer than three national projects were mounted -
one French, one British and one American. Jules Seóbastien Ceósar Du-
mont D'Urville was a scholar-captain in the tradition of Bougainville.
In addition to his native tongue, he had mastered four European lan-
guages, as well as Greek and Hebrew, and was a keen student of
botany and entomology. Early in his career he established a unique
place in history. During the course of a Mediterranean hydrographic
survey he called at the Greek island of Melos. There a local peasant
