ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION.* 



By (t. S. Griffiths. 



My experience during the four years which have elapsed since this 

 project was first mooted in Melbourne is that any reference to the sub- 

 ject is sure to be met with the query Cut bonof What good can it do? 

 What benefic can come from it? What is the object to be served by 

 such an expedition? 



In setting myself to the task of answering these questions let me 

 observe that it would indeed be strange if an unexplored region 

 S,000,000 square miles in area — twice the size of Europe — and grouped 

 around the axis of rotation and the magnetic pole could fail to yield 

 to investigators some novel and valuable information. But when we 

 notice that the circle. is engirdled without by peculiar physical condi- 

 tions which must be correlated to special physical conditions within, 

 3peculation is exchanged for a confident belief that an adequate reward 

 must await the skilled explorer. The expected additions to the geog- 

 raphy of the region are, of all the knowledge that is to be sought for 

 there, the least valuable. Where so many of the physical features of 

 the country — the hills, the valleys, and the drainage lines — have been 

 buried beneath the snow of ages, a naked outline, a bare skeleton of a 

 map, is the utmost that can be delineated. Still, even such knowledge 

 as this has a distinct value, and as it can be acquired by the explorers 

 as they proceed about their more important researches, its relatively 

 small value ought not to be admitted as a complete objection to any 

 enterprise which has other objects of importance. Our present acquaint- 

 ance with the geography of the region is excessively limited. Ross 

 just viewed the coasts of Victoria Land between 163° E. and 160° W. 

 longitude; he trod its barren strand twice, but on each occasion for a 

 few minutes only. From the adjacent gulf he measured the heights of 

 its volcanoes, and from its offing he sketched the walls of its icy barrier. 

 Wilkes traced on our map a shore line from 97° E. to 167° E. longitude, 

 and he backed it up with a range of mountains, but he landed nowhere. 

 Subsequently Ross sailed over the site assigned to part of this land, 



* An address on "The Objects of Antarctic Exploration,'' delivered at the aunnal 

 meeting of the Bankers' lustitute of Australia, at Melbourne, on ^Yedne.sday, August 

 27. (From JSature, October 16, 1890, vol. xlii, pp. 601-004.) 



293 



