Antarctic

“ The striking incident of meeting ice at sea for the first time in one's life, and especially falling in with those giant Antarctic icebergs—grim sentinels of the Antarctic—produces even in most matter-of-fact individuals a sense of wonder and awe. Their stupendous size, their exquisite architectural composition, more magnificent than the temples and pyramids of Egypt, more overpowering in solemnity than the Sphinx—make the most thoughtless think for a moment of the Power that controls the forces of nature. ”

“ Except for the little touch of colour at sunrise this morning, the weather has been one of a type which we now style gray days. These gray days are entirely characteristic of the antarctic. There is no brightness, no sparkle, no moving wind or water, nothing to infuse new life or to lighten our spirits. The atmosphere is heavy, but not opaque, the sky is low and gray, the extensive pans and bands of new ice are a smoky colour, the water is leaden, and only the snow-decked old pans form a contrast to the gray monotony, and even these take on a dirty aspect. ”

“ As far as the actual weather was concerned the Antarctic can offer nothing better than that which we were experiencing, fine and clear, the air crisp and cold, yet not sufficiently so to be unpleasant. As the sun sloped down to the horizon with the gentle decline it takes in these latitudes, in contrast to the suddenness with which it disappears in the tropics, we had a beautiful long sunset, the sky taking the most wonderful colours, crimson, amber and gold. ”

“ Is there not embosomed in the antarctic continent a Mediterranean, the shores of which are favourable to the growth and the launching of icebergs of tremendous size? and is not the entrance to this sea near the meridian of Cape Horn, perhaps to the west of it? Circumstances like these beget longings, and we sigh for fresh antarctic explorations. Surely, when we consider the advantages which the improvements of the age, the lights of the day, would afford an exploring expedition there now ”

“ Those who have felt the peace of a summer night in Norway or Iceland, where the day sleeps with wide-open eyes, can fancy the quiet beauty of such a night among the white floes of the Antarctic.
To-day has passed, glistering in silky white, decked with sparkling jewels of blue and green, and we thought surely we had seen the last of Nature’s white harmonies; [Pg 53] then evening came, pensive and soothing and grey, and all the white world changed into soft violet, pale yellow, and rose.
ICE FLOE, ANTARCTIC.
A dreamy stillness fills the air. ”

“ The sensation of having real earth under our feet was new to us. For more than a year we had roamed about over the moving frozen waters of the antarctic sea, with no sight of land, and no feeling of stability. When we mount the first hill we shall sit down and watch and wait to see if it, too, does not move like the hills of ice upon which we have rested so long. ”

“ The skirts of the Antarctic Continent had proved to be rich in minerals wherever the rocks could find a place to penetrate through the gigantic burden of ice, and the principal nations had quarreled over the possession or control of these protruding bits of wealth-crammed strata. But behind the bordering cliffs of ice, rising in places a thousand feet above the level of the sea, and towering farther inland so high that this region was, in mean elevation, the loftiest on the planet, nothing but ice could be seen. ”

“ Whatever merit there may be in going to the Antarctic, once there you must not credit yourself for being there. To spend a year in the hut at Cape Evans because you explore is no more laudable than to spend a month at Davos because you have consumption, or to spend an English winter at the Berkeley Hotel. It is just the most comfortable thing and the easiest thing to do under the circumstances. ”

“ The sea is the warm place of the Antarctic, for the temperature never falls below about 29° Fahr., and a seal which has been lying out on the ice in a minus thirty temperature, and perhaps some wind, must feel, as he slips into the sea, much the same sensations as occur to us when we walk out of a cold English winter day into a heated conservatory. ”

“ I had hoped to find the Antarctic continent in these latitudes bounded by a rocky and attractive coast like that in the vicinity of Cape Adare; the nearest well-explored region. It had proved otherwise, only too well endorsing the scanty information supplied by D'Urville and Wilkes of the coastline seen by them. A glance at the austere plateau and the ice-fettered coast was evidence of a rigid, inhospitable climate. ”

“ They are extraordinarily like children, these little people of the Antarctic world, either like children, or like old men, full of their own importance and late for dinner, in their black tail-coats and white shirt-fronts—and rather portly withal. ”

“ They rise almost without a break to a height of thirteen thousand feet. Between us and them is the Barrier to the south, and the sea to the north. Unless a blizzard is impending or blowing, they are clearly visible, a gigantic wall of snow and ice and rock, which bounds our view to the west, constantly varied by the ever-changing colour of the Antarctic. Beyond is the plateau. ”

“ That the Antarctic continent, if it exists—it may be an archipelago—is covered with a thick ice-sheet there can be no doubt; but that the character of the land differs from that of Greenland is evident from the table-shaped form of the icebergs, so different from the rugged masses met with in the Arctic seas. From the purely scientific -standpoint it would be of the highest interest to ascertain the nature of the fossil plants which exist in the Antarctic land, if, indeed, there are any. That Greenland, even in the tertiary age, had a climate like that of Southern Europe, has been demonstrated ”

“ The Antarctic Regions are of exactly opposite character to the Arctic Regions; whereas in the Arctic Regions there exists a polar basin of considerable depth, surrounded by an almost complete ring of continental land, composed of the northern parts of Europe, Asia and America, in the Antarctic Regions we have an extensive continental land mass surrounded by a continuous ocean. ”

“ 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. In the summer, the southern zone, as we all know, enjoys perpetual day, owing to the rays projected by the orb of light above its horizon in his spiral ascent. ”

“ As regards land work in the Antarctic Regions, this can be undertaken more satisfactorily after we have obtained a more definite idea of the confines of the Great Southern Ocean around Antarctica. At present there is too much hazy conjecture, and we find what one believes to be part of Antarctica itself another declares to be an island. But the land work has begun, and to the keen landsman there is no reason why it should not be going ahead. ”

“ A better fate, I trust, awaits the treasures that the hoped-for Expedition will bring back, for so prolific is the ocean that the naturalist need never be idle, no, not even for one of the twenty-four hours of daylight during a whole Antarctic summer, and I look to the results of a comparison of the oceanic life of the Arctic and Antarctic regions as the heralding of an epoch in the history of biology. ”

“ Next day, after landing the magistrate’s dog, which had somehow been left aboard, we steamed along the coast towards Royal Bay, where the German Antarctic Expedition of 1892-3 had wintered, and here, shortly after 2 p.m., we dropped anchor quite close to a great glacier that was rotten with crevasses. Great masses of ice kept constantly tumbling down with a continual rumbling, and as they entered the water they sent out waves towards us like the wash of a giant ship proceeding at full speed. The whole bay was covered with growlers and smaller fragments of ice. ”

“ The natural conditions in the antarctic region, that is, a continuous permanent surface from year to year, as compared with the north polar ocean, which may become intersected with lanes of open water at any time as the result of a storm—makes it possible for a party equipped like my north-pole party, to establish and maintain a regular route and system of transporting supplies right through the antarctic night. ”

“ That the primitive home of humanity-of all life, indeed-may have been the North Pole, many sober men of science believe. If similar conditions are found to have existed in the Antarctic continent as formerly did in Greenland, a term of great value will be contributed to one of the most interesting problems of science. ”

“ To know that there is always in readiness a perfect supply of the most excellent fresh water is one of the greatest boons to ships navigating in the Arctic Regions, and a luxury which is forbidden to ships navigating in other seas. In the Antarctic, since one seldom or never meets with such pools, one has to pick out a nice old hummocky piece of sea ice or a bergy bit that has been chipped off one of the great bergs, and take some boat-loads of this ice on board. The ice is put into large tubs or barrels, and steam is blown through. ”

“ Those who are interested in the proposed expedition in Australia are right in believing that a thorough knowledge of Antarctic conditions would be of the greatest service to a continent whose climate must be largely determined by those conditions ; doubtless also the whaling industry might gain much by the information which the proposed expedition would obtain. Arctic exploration has in these respects been of the greatest: service to the northern hemisphere. ”

“ There in the White South, beyond the Antarctic Convergence that runs across three oceans to mark the physical boundary of Antarctica, is the Bulgarian base St. Kliment Ohridski on Livingston Island in the Antarctic Peninsula region of Western Antarctica.
People still know little about that continent. It is the highest, driest and coldest place on earth, a land of penguins, seals, glaciers and icebergs, stretching over a vast area of 14 million square kilometres around the South Pole. A continent where few people have had the chance to step on and get touched by its beauty. ”

“ Names of persons who have made outstanding discoveries in Antarctica or, through their work with Antarctic expeditions, have made outstanding contributions to scientific knowledge or to the techniques of Antarctic exploration ”

“ The meteorologist had always in view the effect of Antarctic climate on the other southern continents, the geologist looked on ice from a seaman's point of view, and the biologist not unwillingly put whales in the forefront of his programme. The accounts which follow on these very practical points show how closely scientific work in the Antarctica is in touch with, and helps on the economic development of, the inhabited lands to the north. ”

“ The work of the Challenger, Valdivia, Gauss and Scotia in the South Atlantic and South Indian Oceans has given us a clue to the possible connections between Africa, South America and Antarctica, and now it is of great interest and importance to get more soundings to the south of Australia and New Zealand, to show more exactly what the conformation of the floor of the ocean is in those longitudes. That is one of the most important investigations for future Antarctic exploring ships to carry out. ”

“ Sir James Ross, in his most successful South Pole Expedition, during the years 1839-43, sailed over some of this land, and confirmed the rest. The Antarctic, as well as the Arctic honors he secured for England, by turning a corner of the land, and sailing far southward, along an impenetrable icy barrier, to the latitude of seventy-eight degrees, nine minutes. It is an elevated continent, with many lofty ranges. ”

“ The possibilities of exploration in the far south are many, and properly to understand them we must first review the regions actually known. Perhaps it is not correct to say that anything antarctic is actually known. ”

“ The general result seems to be that opposite Australia there is a great land mass whose outer edge runs for many degrees along the Antarctic Circle, shooting abruptly south into a great bight opposite New Zealand. ”

“ As a rule great sheets spread over the seas which fringe the Antarctic continent in the autumn, grow thicker and thicker during the winter and spring, and break up when the temperatures of sea and air rise in summer. ”

“ Up to the present, antarctic history has to record no great loss of life, no awful calamities, like the arctic tragedies. If due precaution is taken, none should be reported. The arctic and the antarctic are alike only in degrees of cold and in the quantities of ice. ”

“ The Antarctic continent is covered with an ice-cap, which along some coasts is buttressed by ice cliffs terminating in the sea, and on coasts facing east is bordered with lofty mountains through which glaciers have forced their way. Throughout the Antarctic regions there is evidence of much more extensive glaciation in former ages. The glaciers are for the most part receding, although there are proofs that some are still moving down to the sea. But there are fixed masses of ice on the sea coast, in the form of cliffs: tongues which could not have been deposited or fed by existing glaciers. ”

“ THE GLACIATION OF ANTARCTICA The great Antarctic continent offers a unique problem to the glacial climatologist, for here we have a land area with the theoretical snow-line already at sea-level, and accordingly covered with a thick ice-sheet that leaves only a few mountain ranges and nunataks exposed above its surface, and yet in the past these ice-sheets and glaciers have attained a thickness several thousand feet greater, and have extended further north. ”