Through the First Antarctic Night 1898 1899
9781465684387
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
For three hundred years explorers have been active in pushing aside the realms of the unknown towards the north pole; but the equally interesting south pole has, during all this time, been almost wholly neglected. There have been expeditions to the far south, but compared to arctic ventures they have been so few and their work within the polar circle has been so little that the results have been largely forgotten. It is not because valuable results have not been obtained in the antarctic, but because the popular interest in the arctic has completely overshadowed the reports of the antipodes. The search for the North west and the North east passages, which commerce demanded to reach the trade of the Orient during the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth centuries, fixed the public eye persistently northward. This extended effort to find an easy path to the wealth of Asia was fruitless, but it was followed by a whale fishery, a sealing industry, and a fur trade, which has proven a priceless boon to mankind. As a result of these two periods of trade exploration, we have now entered upon a third stage, a period of scientific research which will not, and should not, end until the entire area is outlined in the growing annals of exact knowledge. The antarctic has a history somewhat similar, but it is almost forgotten. Until 1772 the south frigid zone was pictured by fiction writers in flowery phraseology. They placed here a fertile country, projecting far northward into the Atlantic and the Pacific. This land was supposed to be inhabited by a curious race of people who possessed a super abundance of gold, precious stones, and other material wealth. To learn the truth of this new “land of promise” Capt. James Cook was sent out in 1772. Cook, with a thoroughness which characterised all his efforts, circumnavigated the globe close enough to the antarctic circle to convince the world that if land of large extent existed around the south pole it must be far beyond the usual ice limits. Sixty years later, through the efforts of American and British sealers who had searched every known rock of the southern seas for fur seals, and sea elephants, the United States, England, and France, fitted out rival expeditions. The combined work of these expeditions marked the second period of antarctic exploration and resulted in the re establishment of a great polar continent on the Austral chart. Sixty years again passed before another expedition was sent to press beyond the southern barriers of ice. The voyage of the Belgica is the beginning of a third revival of antarctic exploration which has been brought about by determined efforts, made almost simultaneously in England, Germany, Belgium, and the United States. This third period of antarctic research, like the third stage of arctic exploration, is wholly in the interest of science. The first country to complete the outfit of a modern expedition was Belgium. England and Germany now have expeditions in preparation, but the honour of being the first to send a scientific venture, with trained specialists and appropriate equipment to the antarctic, belongs to Belgium.
