Here, again, is a description of the view which unfolded itself to the eyes of those on board the ships on December 23rd, while anchored to a large floe voyage are to be found in a very enter- only a steep cliff or bold rock standing taining volume, entitled "From Edin- out in deep contrast here and there, burgh to the Antarctic," recently the only inhabitants being birds or issued. The return in blubber and seals; and even the bird-life, with the whalebone was, unhappily, disappoint- exception of penguins, is scanty." ingly small, and in that one respect alone the expedition may be said to have fallen short of its work; in all others, however, the experiment was successful, though it is matter for re-in latitude 64° 23′ south, longitude, 56° gret that, the scientific being subject to 14' west, and with the mountains of the commercial side of the undertak- Palmer's Land in the distance. "The ing, opportunity was not given for a scene," writes Dr. Donald, "on this longer stay in the south and for corre- evening from the ship's deck was one spondingly further researches. Mr. of the most impressive I ever witBruce tells us that the Balena was nessed. In the west lay this chain of never within six miles of land, save in snow-clad mountains thrown into the case of the Danger Islets. These various shades of light and dark by islets were sighted on December 23rd, the low sun, with here and there the and between that date and the middle face of a cliff or black rock standing of July, the Balena circled roughly be- out in deep contrast to the surrounding tween latitude 62° south and 64° 10' snow. To the south the icefloe, studsouth, and longitude 52° and 57° west, ded with numerous small bergs and her westerly boundary being that part hummocks, stretched as far as the eye of Louis Philippe Land which forms could reach; out to the eastward lay a Erebus and Terror Gulf, bounded to long chain of bergs, their perpendicular the southern extremity by Seymour faces tinged bright red by the sun's Islands and to the north by Joinville rays. Between these bergs and the Land. Such land as was encountered floe lay an open expanse of dark water. was completely snow-clad, except on To the north was the loose scattered the steepest slopes. Big icebergs were ice, small bergs and dark water-channumerous, the highest seen being two nels through which we had just hundred and fifty feet out of the steamed. Throw over this the lilac water. They were most thickly dis-glamour so frequently seen in the Anttributed to the south-east of Danger arctic, which, combined with the absoIslets and sixty-five large bergs were counted from the deck at one time. lute stillness and quiet, broken only occasionally by the splash or the harsh quangk of a penguin, or the soft tweet of the snow-petrel, made up a magnificent and imposing spectacle. The sighting of Clarence Island, one of the South Shetland groups, brought to the mind of Dr. Donald fond recollections of the north. "The part It may be noted here that Dr. sighted by us," he says, "lies only Donald attributes the marked differsome sixty miles nearer the Pole than ence of structure between the icebergs our own Northern Shetlands. But of the south and those of the north, to what a difference between the two the different geological formation of places ! Our own Shetlands bright the land, in the two quarters, that in with ladies dressed in light summer the north being for the most part comgarments, and carrying tennis-racquets posed of water-bedded rocks, while in and parasols; the South Shetlands, the south no rudimentary formations even in the height of summer, clad in have been seen, and "therefore, as an almost complete covering of snow, the geologist would explain, not conducive to the formation of deep ravines." 1 From Edinburgh to the Antarctic; by W. G. Burn Murdoch, artist, supplemented by the Science Notes of the Naturalists of the Expedition, W. S. Bruce, J. J. W. Campbell, and C. W. Donald, M.B. Prior to the date of Captain Cook's memorable voyages, the exploration of the higher southern latitudes was Maire, and finally reached the Pacific. carried on very fitfully, and was left Seventeen years earlier another Dutchprincipally to the casual, and some- man, Dirck Gerritz, in a vessel of only times involuntary, efforts of the whale one hundred and fifty tons, which and seal fishers and the adventurous formed part of the East India squadron merchantman. Without doubt very of Simon of Cordes, had been driven little was accomplished and very little by, bad weather from the western enwas known about the Antarctic. And trance of the Straits of Magellan as far even after Captain Cook nothing was south as latitude 62°, and discovered done by any government, save the the islands now known as the South Russian, for the study of South Polar Shetlands. To him it was a coast rephenomena until towards the end of sembling that of Norway, mountainous the fourth decade of the present cen- and covered with snow. His statetury. Between the year 1775, when ment was regarded as apocryphal until Cook was last in the Antarctic, and Mr. William Blyth, in the year 1819, the year 1840, when the expeditions re-discovered the islands while on a of D'Urville, Wilkes, and Ross were voyage from Monte Video to Valpathere, only one man succeeded in raiso. The Dutch navigator, De penetrating to a point further south Gonneville, was credited with having, than Cook's farthest, and the primary even before Gerritz, discovered a purpose which took Weddell into that Terra Australis to the south of Africa; part of the world was the pursuit of but we know from Pigafetta, the biogthe whale and the seal. Between the rapher of Magellan, that the phrase same dates no man but Bellingshausen" Antarctic Pole" was a very loose succeeded in making any substantial one, and was taken to mean the addition to Cook's discoveries. Every-southern hemisphere, which is a vastly thing done in this direction down to different matter. Moreover, De GonneCook may be briefly stated. Cape Horn was rounded for the first time in 1616 by a Dutch expedition, which had set out from Amsterdam in the Hoorne (or Horn) and the Eendracht (or Unity), to find a new western route to the East Indies, and so to evade the ordinance of the States-General prohibiting all Dutch ships, not engaged in the service of the Dutch East India Company, from passing by the Cape of Good Hope to the eastward, or through the Straits of Magellan to the westward. The Hoorne was burned at the entrance to the Straits of Magellan, and some of her timbers were found on the spot half a century later by Sir John Narborough, whom Charles the Second sent to Patagonia for gold. The other vessel pushed on, doubled and named the Horn after the lost ship (which had also received its name from the place of that name in Holland, of which one of the principals in the undertaking was a native), discovered and named (after the Amsterdam merchant who conceived the idea) the Straits of Le ville brought home to France with him the son of the sovereign of his newfound land, which is of itself sufficient to prove that he did not penetrate far south; but his story, and the sight of his dusky captive, set the hearts of his countrymen beating with wild hopes for over a century and a half. The philosopher said that a vast southern continent did exist, and must of necessity exist, in order to maintain the balance of the earth. One of the instructions given to the astronomer Halley (who was an officer in the navy), when despatched to the South Seas in 1699, was that he should endeavor to discover the unknown land supposed to be in the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean. It was mainly to search for this land, magnified by rumor into a country of vast extent and unlimited resources, that Kerguelen in 1772 embarked on the voyage which led to the discovery of the isl ands that now bear his name. Heavy weather prevented him from approaching close enough to examine the land; and so, rushing home, he gave a highly unaware whether Sandwich Land was a group of islands, or part of the expected continent. The place, he said, lay so far south and was so very uninviting that knowledge concerning it was utterly futile. exaggerated account of his discovery, | sample before him in South Georgia. leading men to believe that the south- But even on the top of this reflection ern continent had at length been he turned the Resolution's head to the found. He was sent out again in the east-south-east, and came very near to Rolland, and in December, 1773, was being wrecked on the still less inviting again driven off. Next month an coast of Sandwich Land. The northofficer from his companion frigate country collier was driving heavily L'Oiseau managed to land, and he, in before a strong breeze, with a thick the name of France, took possession fog enveloping everything and with of the so-called Terra Australis with a blinding sleet falling, when a momenmuch formality and flourish. Almost tary lifting of the fog showed land dead at the very time that this pantomime ahead at a distance of only three or was proceeding, Captain Cook, in the four miles. Finding himself in this Resolution, and Captain Furneaux, in predicament, Cook hauled his wind to the Adventure, were sailing past the the north, but seeing it was impossible islands fifty miles to the south. On to weather the land in this quarter, he the very day that Kerguelen first tacked in one hundred and seventysighted his islands (on January 13th, five fathoms of water, a mile and a 1772), M. Marion du Fresne discov- half from some breakers. He did not ered two islands lying between lati- investigate this coast with any degree tudes 40° and 47° south. He took of minuteness. When he left he was them to be outlying islands of the great continent, and to signalize his hope that this might be so, he called one of them L'Ile de l'Espérance, or Hope Island; it is now known as Marion Island, and its neighbor as Prince Edward Island. It was not until the results of Cook's second expedition became known that the idea of a southern continent was abandoned, or rather very considerably modified. Many maps down to the end of the eighteenth century show a continuous stretch of land extending in an oblique line from Cape Horn almost as far north as the fortieth parallel. Cook himself, who was no better informed than the rest of mankind until he found out the truth for himself, was sent out to see if there really was a continent, and sailed with the assumption that there was. When he re-discovered South Georgia, he concluded, like Du Fresne, that he had hit upon the skirts of this continent; but he did not immediately run home with the news. He sailed round the islands and called one part Cape Disappointment, to give lasting expression to his chagrin. It was salve to his injured spirit to reflect that if the continent did really exist further south, and most men nowadays believe that it does, it was at any rate not worth discovering, to judge of the bulk by the The finding of the Sandwich group marked the virtual termination of Cook's labors in the remote southern seas. From these he turned his ship's head in the direction of the Cape of Good Hope, where he arrived on March 22nd, 1775. He had quitted that colony before (on his second great voyage) in company with the Adventure under Captain Furneaux, on November 22nd, 1772, in search of Bouvet's Land, had soon become separated from his consort, had spent one hundred and seventeen days in cruising up and down in an unsuccessful search for this land, and for the other lands of which rumor spoke and of which he had heard from Baron Plattenburg, governor of the Cape, and had experienced a taste of true Antarctic weather. He was at one time driven along by fierce gales that washed with their waves over the tops of icebergs sixty feet high; and at another he lay ice-bound in the midst of squalls accompanied by snow, sleet, and drizzling rain that froze on the yards and sails as they fell, covered the whole of the proximity of field-ice. Shortly after the ice itself came into view from the mast-head, and by eight o'clock the ship was close to its edge. It extended east and west far beyond the reach of mere eyesight. The southern half of the horizon was illuminated by the light reflected from the ice to a great height. Ninety-seven ice-mountains were counted scattered over the field, and many loomed large as a ridge of mountains piled high one above another until they were lost in the clouds. Such was the scene that met Cook's eyes at the most southerly point he ship with icicles, and made the sails | hundred bergs in their neighborhood. as stiff as sheet-iron. The Resolution It was on this particular cruise that covered three thousand six hundred Cook reached his most southerly latiand sixty leagues without once coming tude of 71° 10′ in longitude 106° 54′ into sight of land, left the meridian of west, but otherwise the episode was Cape Circumcision a long way behind, uneventful. It was on January 29th, and penetrated as far south as latitude 1774, that, after picking his way for 67° 15′ in longitude 40° east, with no many days through the ice, with the company but that of albatrosses and usual round of strong gales, snow, and petrels, and no variety from the monot-sleet, Cook found himself standing to ony of sea and ice, with their attendant the south in a region where there were dangers and excitements, but the occa- few obstacles. Early next morning the sional spout of a whale in the distance clouds over the horizon before him and the still more occasional phenom- presented an unusual degree of snowenon of an Aurora Australis. The white brightness, which was a sign capers of the icebergs seem to have afforded some diversion. "The large pieces," we read, "which break from the ice-islands are much more dangerous than the islands themselves. The latter are so high out of the water that we can generally see them, unless the weather be very thick and dark, before we are very near them; whereas the others cannot be seen in the night till they are under the ship's bows. These dangers were, however, now become so familiar to us that the apprehensions they caused were never of long duration, and were in some measure compensated both by the seasonable managed to reach. He saw it was imsupplies of fresh water the ice-islands afforded us (without which we must have been greatly distressed), and also by their very romantic appearance, greatly heightened by the foaming and lashing of the waves into the curious holes and caverns which are formed in many of them; the whole exhibiting a view which at once filled the mind with admiration and horror, and can only be described by the hand of an Cook was wrong in surmising that able painter." no man would ever venture further The Resolution and the Adventure than he had done. The Russians, who met at their appointed place of rendez-❘ were in the Antarctic in 1821, and who vous, Queen Charlotte Sound, on May discovered Peter the First Island and 18th, and spent some months cruising Alexander the First Island, returned about the New Zealand coast and among the Society and Friendly Islands, during which they again became separated. On November 26th the Resolution rounded Cape Palliser on her way to the south alone, and her men spent Christmas in the thick of the ice, and next morning counted two possible to penetrate further and turned to the north again; but so thick was the ice around his vessel that it was not until February 6th following that he contrived to bring her clear of it. In all he made three attacks on the South Pole, and it was during the third, when he changed his ground, that he came upon South Georgia and Sandwich Land. home under the erroneous impression that they had beaten Cook on the strength of having reached the latitude of 70° 30′ south. They deserve credit for having first struck the Antarctic continent as we know it nowadays; but Weddell in the brig Jane of one hundred and sixty tons, with the cutter to recognize the fine spirit of Mr. C. Enderby, to whom, through the liberal instructions given to his captains, we owe so many important discoveries. Beaufoy of sixty-five tons for company, record of their accomplishment. In contrived in 1822 to reach latitude 74° this connection one must not neglect 15′ south in longitude 34° 16′, where open water was still found. Having regard to all the circumstances of the case, the smallness of his vessels (one of them the merest cockleshell) and the lateness of the season, this achievement of his ranks as one of the most remarkable in the annals of South Polar exploration, and one regrets to think that the man who accomplished it should have died at the last in poverty. He was desirous of penetrating still further south, but the wind and other conditions were against him; and no one who cares to remember that he had to pass homewards through a thousand miles of sea cumbered with ice-islands, and having before him the certainty of heavy weather, dense fogs, and long nights, will be disposed to accuse him of having thrown away his chances. When the Erebus and Terror arrived at Hobart Town, Tasmania, on August 16th, 1840, Ross learned something of what had been accomplished immediately before by Captain Dumont D'Urville and his companions in the Astrolabe and the Zelée, and by Lieutenant Wilkes and his companions in the Vincennes, Peacock, and Porpoise. The French expedition had struck the mainland on January 21st previously, had traced it in a continuous line for one hundred and fifty miles between the longitudes of 136° and 142° east in about the latitude of the Antarctic circle, and proceeding to the westward had sailed for sixty miles along a solid wall of ice one hundred and fifty feet high, which D'Urville, believing it to be a covering or crust of a more solid base, named Côte Clairée. The siege, so to speak, was raised on February 1st, because of the weakly condition of the crews of the two ships, an unfortunate contingency which, it may be remarked, also took the American expedition off the ground long before its leader would otherwise have retreated. It does not detract in the least from the credit of D'Urville's discoveries that Balleny had a year earlier anticipated him in sighting Côte Clairée, the icebarrier of which the latter took to be Nor must one forget the splendid achievements of the Enderby whalers. Captain Biscoe in the brig Tula, in 1830-1, discovered Enderby Land, and further west the group of islands, the principal of which is now known by the discoverer's name. On January 7th, 1839, Captain Balleny in the schooner Eliza Scott, and Captain Freeman in the dandy-rigged cutter Sabrina of only fifty-four tons, left New Zealand, crossed Bellingshausen's track seventeen days later, and on February 1st reached a point two hundred and twenty miles south of the Russian explorer's furthest in this meridian. an immense iceberg, while the land Later on, the pack-ice having compelled them to work to the north-west, the two sealers found themselves off a group of five islands in latitude 66° longitude 163° east, which figure on Ross's expedition was the most sucthe maps as the Balleny Islands. On cessful of all ever undertaken in this one of these, from the summit of which region, but his ships spent three seasmoke was proceeding, Captain Free- sons in the Antarctic. The appearance man landed. Still later, after having of the two rival expeditions on the passed along close to the land to which ground chosen and made public many D'Urville in the following year gave months in advance for the scene of the name of Terre Adélie by right of operations of the English ships, caused a supposed priority of discovery, the Ross to change his plans, and he actwo vessels struck the continent, and cordingly selected a point much more the name of Sabrina Land stands as a to the eastward (170° east) from which beyoud he mistook for clouds. No other expedition has done so much in seven weeks as did the French one under the gallant D'Urville. |