272 REPORT— 1891. 



view, — for, in fact, the ojjposite opinion may perhaps be justly 

 formed, — but solely because from a commercial standpoint- 

 there is not apparently anything to be gained by the explora- 

 tion of the frozen south. There is no north-west passage to be 

 discovered which shall open up an easier and shorter route 

 to the East Indies, which was the principal reason primarily 

 for Arctic exploration, and consequently there has been no 

 traditional history handed down to the nineteenth century of 

 the failure of our ancestors to discover the road to the South 

 Pole, which would make it a point of honour with their de- 

 scendants to endeavour to succeed in similar attempts. But 

 yet men have adventured far on the way to the frozen south ; 

 and Ross and Wilkes, and still more recently Nares, in the 

 "Challenger," have all left records which will require to be 

 verified when it shall be considered necessary and of sufficient 

 importance to do so ; and it would almost seem as though that 

 task were one imposed specially by Nature for the inhabitants 

 of the New World to accomplish, lying as it does at what 

 may be termed the very doorstep of Australasia. The Old 

 World has combated for centuries with the grim horrors of the 

 North Pole, and even now can claim but a small amount of 

 success. Does it not seem fit that Young Australia and New 

 Zealand should investigate and tell us some of the history and 

 secrets of the Antarctic Circle, which by reason of their own 

 geographical position they have the greatest interest in? 



And this interest is not altogether one of sentiment only : it 

 is one which in times past has touched the pockets of various 

 portions of the community, as it occasionally does now. Al- 

 though Cape Horn has ceased to be the main route for pas- 

 sengers from Australia to England since the opening of the 

 Suez Canal, there is still a very large trade both of steam and 

 sailing vessels from Australia and New Zealand that will never 

 use another route unless the Panama Canal be opened ; and it 

 almost seems as though New Zealand should be the more in- 

 terested of the two countries in doing all that may be done to 

 remove any misconception of a route, which may have arisen 

 from an imperfect knowledge of the borders of an unexplored 

 country and sea, or perhaps even from the adoption of a name 

 for that part of the ocean to which, strictly speaking, it has no 

 title, and wdiich is perhaps misleading, for surely no one will seri- 

 ously contend that the weather even of New Zealand is such 

 as would justify the word "Pacific" being applied to it, and, 

 that being so, one can scarcely expect the change to be for the 

 better when Cape Horn is mentioned in the place of New Zea- 

 land ; but they are both equally in the South Pacific, and a 

 comparison of the weather experienced at the two places is not 

 so impossible as may be imagined, for there are times in the 

 higher southern latitudes, more especially during the winter 



