A COUNTRY DOOMED BY NATURE - A Brief History of the Circumnavigators - page 254

far from dismayed when the convoy was scattered by a combination
of wind and fog.
The vessels all reached the ice barrier in about 65°S on what
D'Urville had named Adeólie Coast and each travelled along it hoping
to find a way through into clear water. Wilkes, in the Vincennes, sur-
veyed some 1,600 miles of the permanent ice limit between 150°E
and 97°E. Yet 'surveyed' is not a wholly appropriate word. Sighting
conditions changed from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.
Calm weather and clear visibility could give way with little warning
to fog or storms which forced the Vincennes away from the ice-edge.
There were times when the lookouts saw what was unmistakably
land. These stretches of coast were marked on the chart. But so were
others. Wilkes later confessed that the procedure he and his officers
followed was that of 'laying down the land, not only where we had
actually determined it to exist, but in those places also in which
every appearance denoted its existence'. 10 He had come to believe
(correctly as it transpired) that the 'icy barrier' marked the edge of
a great polar continent. Intent on claiming this great discovery for
the USA, he allowed himself to be deceived by the mirage-like effects
of clouds and ice-formations. He even deduced the proximity of land
from discoloration of water or the presence of basking seals or wal-
ruses. He thus marred an important piece of geographical detection
by producing a chart showing several stretches of coastline, some of
which were simply wrong. Moreover, he omitted from his map some
of the discoveries of earlier explorers who were not American.
Wilkes was under orders from his government to keep the res-
ults of his expedition secret until he had made his official report.
However, he could not resist the temptation to put one over on his
rivals. On his return to New Zealand in April 1840, he left a letter and
a tracing of his Antarctic chart which was relayed to Hobart for Cap-
tain Ross, the commander of the British expedition due to explore
the polar region the following season. It was, as Wilkes insisted, a