island, in lat. 76° 8' S., lon. 168° 12′ E.; and still steering to the southward, early the next morning a mountain of twelve thousand four hundred feet above the level of the sea was seen emitting flame and smoke in splendid confusion. This magnificent volcano received the name of 'Mount Erebus.' It is in lat. 77° 33′ S., and lon. 167° E. An extinct crater to the eastward of Mount Erebus, of somewhat less elevation, was called 'Mount Terror.' Finally, on the 2d of February, the two vessels reached the latitude of 78° 4' S., and on the 9th had traced the continuity of the land to lon. 191° 23′ E., in lat. 78°. This great southern land which Captain Ross traced from 70° S. to 79° S., and between the longitudes of 167° and 179° E., he named 'Victoria Land.'"1

As it has been sneeringly said that Ross sailed over the continent discovered by Wilkes, it will be observed that Wilkes skirted along the land between the longitudes of 100° and 165° E., on a nearly east and west course, and in about the latitude of 66°, a distance of three thousand eight hundred miles of that latitude; in other words, he discovered the northern coast of the Antarctic continent, while Ross appears to have turned its eastern cape, in 172°, three hundred miles to the eastward, and run down along its eastern coast. It is strange that, while so many Arctic expeditions have been undertaken, no subsequent attempt has been made to verify or extend these discoveries. England's flag is still in advance of all others towards both poles.

The little Flying Fish was sold in China, and became an opium trader and smuggler on that coast. She established the impossibility of penetrating farther south than lat. 70° between the lon. of 90° and 105° E.

The first merchant vessel to carry the stars and stripes through the Straits of Magellan was the Endeavor, of Salem, Captain David Elwell, in 1824. He was living in Salem in 1868, being then eighty years old.

The first vessel of war to carry our flag from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan, though many little sealing schooners under our flag had preceded her, was the United States schooner Shark, Lieutenant-Commanding A. Bigelow. She passed Cape Virgin Nov. 28, 1839, and took her departure from Cape Pillar, on the west coast, Dec. 31, 1839, commencing the new year in the Pacific, having been in the Straits thirty-three days and a half, of which two hundred and forty-eight hours were passed under way, and five hundred and twenty-five at anchor.

1 Extract from a letter from Captain Ross, dated H. M. S. Erebus, Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land, 7th April, 1841.

Autaretio Continent as even by the U.S. Ship Vincennes, February 14 1810, Lat. 65 M 40. Long, un si Reduced from the Map of Wilkes's Exploring Expedition.

An account of her passage, officially communicated by Captain Bigelow to the Secretary of the Navy,' says: "I have been thus minute in describing the passage of the Shark through the Straits of Magellan, I believe the first public vessel of the United States which has passed through them, thinking that you, Sir, in common with the officers of the navy, might feel some interest in the narration. It has long been a disputed question whether it be advisable for small vessels to pass through the Straits from east to west, in preference to doubling the Cape. My experience would tend to discourage a stranger to the route from attempting it, in the month of December at least, though it is quite probable that the winds may have been as adverse to the southward of the Cape as in the Strait, and that we were peculiarly unfortunate in our weather. Steam has now made the passage through the Straits, either way, easy and common. My conclusion, from the experience of a single passage only, is that, for small vessels, the passage from west to east is preferable to going round, as wood and water can be obtained, and the distance shortened. At any time while we were in the Straits a passage to the eastward could easily have been made in four days, and sooner, were the navigator acquainted with the channel, so as not to fear being under way in the night. No vessel would be likely, however, to pass without touching to wood and water; and a week might be profitably occupied, even with a fair wind, in getting through. I should doubt the policy of making the passage either way with large vessels, though our whaling-ships frequently pass both ways. No vessel could be better calculated to pass through the Straits than the Shark, with the exception of her being a dull sailer. This, however, is in a measure compensated by her great capacity to bear sail. I doubt if a large, or even moderate-sized, square-rigged vessel could have made the passage, under similar circumstances, in double the time." 2

1 Army and Navy Chronicle, April 30, 1840.

2 Fernâo Magalhaens, as called in Portuguese, but known to English readers as Ferdinand Magellan, the first to pass through these Straits, which have immortalized his name, entered them on the 21st of October, 1520, and, consulting the calendar for a name, called it, in honor of the day, 'The Strait of the Eleven Thousand Virgins;' and on the 28th of November his squadron left the Strait and launched into the great south sea, to which, from the gentle winds that propelled them over waters almost unruffled, Magellan gave the name of 'Pacific.' On leaving Cabo Deseado (Wished-for Cape) at the western entrance, he re-named the strait the 'Strait of the Patagonians.' He was thirty-eight days in passing through. Cavendish, in 1587, entered the Straits early in January, and left them late in February, and was, therefore, nearly or quite two months in making their passage. In 1599, on the 6th of April, a fleet of seven ships of Holland, under the command of Admiral Simon de Cordes, after a summer spent on the coast of Africa,

The twin screw steam schooner Midas, Captain William Poor, owned by R. B. Forbes and others, was the first American steamer to carry our flag around the Cape of Good Hope for China, in 1844. She left New York on the 4th of November of that year, and was the first American steamer to ply in Chinese waters. She returned from China, under sail, to New York via Rio Janeiro, where she took a China cargo. Her machinery was taken out, and she ran out of Savannah for some time, owned by Messrs. Paddleford & Fay.

The bark Edith, four hundred tons, Forbes rig, and owned by R. B. Forbes and T. H. Perkins, Jr., was the first auxiliary screw steamer under the American flag that went to the British Indies, and she was the first American square-rigged screw steamer to visit China. She was launched in 1844, sailed from New York, Jan. 18, 1845, for Bombay, commanded by Captain George W. Lewis, and returned via Rio Janeiro, like the Midas, under sail, with a China cargo. She was next chartered to the War Department; took stores to Brazos Santiago; was employed in the Gulf of Mexico during our war with Mexico; and finally sold to the War Department and sent to California, where she was transferred to the navy, and lost off Santa Barbara.

The first American propeller packet ship to carry our flag to England was the Massachusetts, of seven hundred and thirty-four tons, owned by R. B. Forbes, and having engines designed by Ericsson. She was launched at East Boston, July 22, 1845, and sailed from New York, commanded by Captain A. H. White, Sept. 17, 1845.

reached the Straits of Magellan. Five months longer the fleet struggled in these Straits, where, as if in the home of Eolus, all the winds of heaven seemed to be holding their revel. An incident which marked their departure from the Straits deserves to be remembered. Admiral De Cordes raised on the shore, at the western mouth of the channel, a rude memorial, with an inscription that the Netherlanders were the first to effect this dangerous passage with a fleet of heavy ships. On the following day, in commemoration of the event, he founded an order of knighthood. The chief officers of the squadron were the knights commanders, and the most deserving of the crews were the knights brethren. The members of the fraternity made solemn oath to De Cordes, as general, and to each other, that "by no danger, no necessity, nor by fear of death, would they ever be moved to undertake any thing prejudicial to their honor, to the welfare of the Fatherland, or to the success of the enterprise in which they were engaged, pledging themselves to stake their lives in order, consistently with honor, to inflict every possible damage on the hereditary enemy, and to plant the banner of Holland in all those territories whence the King of Spain gathered the treasures with which he carried on his perpetual war against the Netherlands."

Thus was instituted on the desolate shores of Terra del Fuego (the Fireland) the order of the "Knights of the Unchained Lion," with such rude ceremonies as were possible in those solitudes. The harbor where the fleet anchored was called 'Chevalier's Bay,' but it would be vain to look on modern maps for the heroic appellation. Of all the seven ships, only one returned to Holland.