THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN. 391 



CHAPTER XXXVIL 



THE ANTARCTIC OC^AN. . 



Comparative View of the Antarctic and Arctic Regions.— Inferiority of Climate of tlie former.— Its 

 Causes.— Tiie New Shetland Islands.— South Georgia. — The Peiiivian Stream.— Sea-birds.— The Gi- 

 ant Petrel.— The Albatross.— The Penguin.— The Austral Whale.— The Hunchback.— The Fin-back. 

 —The Grampus.— Battle with a Whale.— The Sea-elephant.— The Southern Sea-bear.— The Sea- 

 leopard. — Antarctic Fishes. 



THE Antarctic regions are far more desolate and barren than the Arctic. 

 Here we have no energetic hunters, like the Esquimaux, chasing the seal 

 or the walrus ; no herdsmen following, like the Samoiedes or the Lapps, their 

 reindeer to the brink of the icy ocean ; but all is one dreary, uninhabitable 

 waste. "While within the Arctic Circle the musk-ox enjoys an abundance of 

 food, and the lemming is still found thriving on the bleakest islands, not a sin- 

 gle land quadruped exists beyond 56° of southern latitude. 



Summer flowers gladden the sight of the Arctic navigator in the most north- 

 ern lands yet reached ; but no plant of any description — not even a moss or a 

 lichen — has been observed beyond Cockburn Island in 64° 12' S. lat. ; and while 

 even in Spitzbergen vegetation, ascends the mountain slopes to a height of 3000 

 feet the snow-line descends to the water's edge in every land within or near the 

 Antarctic Circle. * 



An open sea, extending towards the northern pole as far as the eye can reach, 

 points out the path to future discovery ; but the Antarctic navigators, with one 

 single exception, have invariably seen their progress arrested by barriers of ice, 

 and none have ever penetrated beyond the comparatively low latitude of 

 78° 10'. 



Even in Spitzbei-gen and East Greenland, Scoresby sometimes found the 

 heat of summer very great ; but the annals of Antarctic navigation invariably 

 speak of a frigid temperature. In 1773, when Captain Phipps visited Spitzber- 

 gen, the thermometer once rose to -{-58^°; and on July 15, 1820, when the 

 " Hecla" left her winter-quarters in Melville Island (74° 47' N.),she enjoyed a 

 Avarmth of +56°. But during the summer months spent by Sir James Ross 

 in the Antarctic Polar area, the temperature of the air never once exceeded 

 + 41° 5'. In Northumberland Sound (76° 42' N.), probably the coldest spot 

 hitherto visited in the north, the mean of the three summer months was found 

 to be +30° 8', while within the Antarctic Circle it only amounted to +27° 3'. 



The reader may possibly wonder why the climate of the southern polar re- 

 gions is so much more severe than that of the high northern latitudes ; or why 

 coasts and valleys, at equal distances from the equator, should in one case be 

 found green with vegetation, and in another mere wastes of snow and ice ; but 

 the predominance of land in the north, and of sea in the south, fully answers 



