noon
This was one of those called `` quebrantahnesos '' by the Spaniards . This bird of the Magellanian waters is very remarkable ; its curved and slender wings have a span of from thirteen to fourteen feet , equal to that of the wings of the great albatross . Nor is the latter wanting among these powerful winged creatures ; we saw the dusky-plumed albatross of the cold latitudes , sweeping towards the glacial zone . On the 30th of November , after observation taken at noon , it was found that we had reached 66 ° 23 ' 3 '' of latitude . The _ Halbrane _ had then crossed the Polar Circle which circumscribes the area of the Antarctic zone . Since the _ Halbrane _ has passed beyond the imaginary curve drawn at twenty-three and a half degrees from the Pole , it seems as though she had entered a new region , `` that region of Desolation and Silence , '' as Edgar Poe says ; that magic person of splendour and glory in which the _ Eleanora 's _ singer longed to be shut up to all eternity ; that immense ocean of light ineffable . It is my belief -- to return to less fanciful hypotheses -- that the Antarctic region , with a superficies of more than five millions of square miles , has remained what our spheroid was during the glacial period .