The rocks looked like iron.
It seemed a land of iron penetrated by this ocean stream which had made for itself a channel, and now bore us onward to a destination which was beyond all conjecture.
Through such scenes we drifted all that day.

Night came, and in the skies overhead there arose a brilliant display of the aurora australis, while toward the north the volcanic fires glowed with intense lustre.

That night we slept.

On awakening we noticed a change in the scene.

The shores, though still black and forbidding, were no longer precipitous, but sloped down gradually to the water; the climate was sensibly milder, and far away before us there arose a line of giant mountains, whose summits were covered with ice and snow that gleamed white and purple in the rays of the sun.
Suddenly Agnew gave a cry, and pointed to the opposite shore.
"Look!" he cried--"do you see?
They are men!" I looked, and there I saw plainly some moving figures that were, beyond a doubt, human beings..