300 ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION. 



what that condition may be. Maury maintained that the conjunction 

 will make the climate of the South Polar area milder than that of the 

 north. His theory is that the saturated winds being drawn up to great 

 heights within the Antarctic must then be eased of their moisture, and 

 that simultaneously they must disengage vast quantities of latent heat ; 

 and it is because more heat must be liberated in this manner in the 

 South Polar regions than in the north that he infers a less severe cli- 

 mate for the Antarctic. He estimates that the resultant relative differ- 

 ences between the two polar climates will be greater than that between 

 a Canadian and an English winter (Maury's Meteorology, p. 4G6). 

 Ross reports that the South Polar summer is rather colder than that 

 of the north, but still the southern winter may be less extreme, and so 

 the mean temperature may be higher. If we examine the weather 

 reports logged by Antarctic voyagers, instead of the temperature 

 merely, the advantage still seems to rest with the south. In the first 

 place, when the voyager enters the Antarctic he sails out of a tem- 

 pestuous zone into one of calms. To demonstrate the truth of this 

 statement I have made an abstract of Ross's log for the two months 

 of January and February, 1841, which he spent within the Antarctic 

 Circle. To enable everyone to understand it, it may be well to explain 

 that the wind force is registered in figures from 0, which stands for a 

 dead calm, up to 12, which represents a hurricane. I find that during 

 these 60 days it never once blew with the force 8 — that is, a fresh gale; 

 only twice did it blow force 7, and then only for half a day each tiuie. 

 Force 5 to 6 — fresh to strong breezes — is logged on 21 days. Force 1 

 to 3— that is, gentle breezes — prevailed on 34 days. The mean wind 

 force registered under the entire 60 days was 3.43 — that is, only a 4 to 

 5 knot breeze. On 38 days blue sky was logged. They never had a 

 single fog, and on 11 days only was it even misty. On the other hand, 

 snow fell almost every second day. We find such entries as these: 

 "Beautifully clear weather," and "Atmosphere so extraordinarily clear 

 that Mount Herschel, distant 90 miles, looked only 30 miles distant." 

 And again, "Land seen 120 miles distant; sky beautifully clear." Nor 

 was this season exceptional, so far as we can tell, for Dr. McCormack, 

 of the Erebus, in the third year of the voyage, and after they had left 

 the Antarctic for the third and last time, enters in his diary the fol- 

 lowing remark. He says : "It is a curious thing that we have always 

 met with the finest weather within the Antarctic circle; clear, cloudless 

 sky, bright sun, light wind, and a long swell" (McCormack's Antarctic 

 Voyage, vol. i, p. 345). It would seem as if the stormy westerlies, so 

 familiar to all Australian visitors, had given to the whole southern 

 hemisphere a name for bad vveather, which, as yet at least, has not been 

 earned by the South Polar regions. It is probable, too, that the almost 

 continuous gloom and fog of the Arctic (Scoresby's Arctic Regions, 

 pp. 97 and 137) July and August have prejudiced seamen against the 

 Antarctic summer. The true character of the climate of this region is 



