ANTARCTIC MAPS. 263 



IV. COLLECTION OT? ANTARCTIC MAPS. 



THE selection of maps relating to the Antarctic regions is naturally 

 much smaller than that of the Arctic. The southern regions have 

 never held the same place in public estimation and interest as the 

 northern. The contiguity of the north pole to Europe, from which, 

 in early times, all the trade and commerce of the world emanated, 

 and the importance attached- to finding a shorter passage to India 

 and Cathay, to avoid the necessity of rounding the much-dreaded 

 Cape of Storms, all tended to this difference; and although the 

 practicability of a north-west or a north-east passage has long been 

 set at rest, the special interest attached to the North has been 

 maintained. 



2. The first voyage on which discoveries were made in the 

 South, was that of the Good Nevus, one of five Dutch ships fitted 

 out at Rotterdam in 1599. The vessel was commanded by one 

 Dirk Gerritz, who, in passing south of Cape Horn, reported having 

 seen land, which must have been the islands of South Shetland.* 



3. In 1675 La Roche discovered South Georgia. 



4. Although Kerguelen Island can scarcely be called Polar 

 land, its latitude in the southern hemisphere being nearly the 

 same as England in the northern, still, where so little was known, 

 it was an important discovery, and the honour is due to the 

 talented, but unfortunate, Frenchman, Yves J. Kerguelen, whose 

 name it bears, and who made two islands off the west coast on 

 the same day (iyth January, 1772) that his countryman Marion 

 discovered the island named after himself. Captain James Cook 

 visited the island in his third voyage in 1776 1779. Mr. Robert; 

 Rhodes greatly added to our knowledge of the island in 1799, by 



* The author has made inquiry as to whether any record of this discovery 

 exists among the archives of the Netherlands Government, but none has been 

 found. 



