112 



DISCtn'KHY 



Qiurn \'ictoria. by Mr. Lytton Strachuy,' the author 

 of Eminent Victorians. Wc hope all libraries will get 

 possession of copies of these books and that our readers 

 will lose no time in. reading them. An account of 

 Queen \'ictoria will apear in these pages next month. 



Antarctic Exploration in 

 the Future 



By F. Debenham, B.A. 



Fellow o/ Gonvillc and Caius College, Cambridge 



The question is often raised, even in geographical 

 circles, as to whether there is any field for further 

 exploration in the polar regions now that both the 

 Poles have been reached by man. Such a question 

 discloses the extent to which the world has been led 

 to believe that the poles themselves were important, 

 and shows also how little is known of the less spectacular 

 sides of polar work. It is answered very effectively 

 by the fact that immediately after the discovery of 

 the South Pole a large British expedition set out for 

 the Antarctic, and that at present the first man to reach 

 that point, Captain Amundsen, is occupied in an 

 attempted drift across the North Polar Ocean. In 

 both cases we may allow something for the fascination 

 of the work itself, but we must also account for the 

 support that is given by men who cannot go themselves. 



The episode of the siege of the poles has now passed, 

 leaving a wonderful tradition and stories of human 

 bravery and endurance that are in themselves an asset 

 to mankind. But now that it has passed, we can per- 

 haps obtain a better view of polar work, and bring it 

 into a more natural perspective. If we ignore for the 

 moment the narratives of that siege, we shall find that 

 the history of polar exploration is really the history 

 of adventurous trade, one expedition after another 

 setting out to find either new trade routes or natural 

 resources, or even to develop polar industries them- 

 selves. And we may say at once that their aim has been 

 achieved, that the world as we know it has profited well 

 by its polar resources. A very brief inquiry into the 

 profits of the Greenland whaling, or the Arctic fur 

 and seal industry, or even the mineral deposits of 

 Greenland and Spitzbergen, will show that they are far 

 greater than the expense of finding those resources. 

 In the lesser known Antarctic seas we already have a 

 young and vigorous whaling industry which has 

 produced a value of over twenty million sterling in 

 the last decade. 



Early in the nineteenth century a new type of story 

 ' Chatto & Windus, 15s. 



comes on the page of polar history.and together with the 

 adventurous trader wc find the adventurous scientist. 

 One of the earliest expeditions of that type was the 

 British one under Sir James Clark Ross, and its chief 

 aim was the careful observation of magnetic data in 

 the vicinity of the South Magnetic Pole, which was 

 duly carried out. A rich harvest of geographical 

 discovery was reaped at the same time. Since then 

 we have had, and will continue to have, both types of 

 expedition, or both aims in one expedition. 



But whether it is the adventurous scientist or the 

 adventurous trader that carries out polar work, we 

 must emphasise the adjective rather than the noun, 

 in other words, the impulse underlying either is ad- 

 venture. Exploration in general and polar exploration 

 in particular is an instinct, developed more strongly 

 in some nations than in others perhaps, and it is to 

 that instinct that we really owe the whole of our 

 geographical knowledge. Reading our polar history 

 from that inside point of view, we shall find it certainly 

 instructive and often amusing to note how, in the 

 preamble of objects before any expedition, the veneer 

 of scientific or industrial reasons so barely covers the 

 real impulse, the search for the unknown and the 

 yearning for adventure. 



The existence of this instinct is alone sufficient to 

 vouch for a continuous future for polar work, for men 

 will invent reasons for it or carry it out with no reason 

 at all. It becomes then our business to see what good 

 reasons there may be, to direct this impulse, as it 

 were, into useful channels. 



We can classify the aims of polar knowledge into 

 three parts. There is the aim of the true geographer 

 who yearns to fill in the blank spaces on his map, to 

 know with reasonable certainty the outline and relief 

 of every part of the globe. There is the aim of the 

 merchant, the trader, and the miner to discover and 

 develop all the natural resources of the world, whatever 

 their latitude. There is the aim — a modern one — of 

 the world scientist to complete his geo-physical data 

 in high latitudes as well as in temperate and tropical 

 regions. His immediate purpose may be the actual 

 shape of the earth — geodesy — it may be the relation 

 between the land masses — geology — or it may be 

 any one of a number of sciences which depend on a com- 

 plete knowledge of the earth's surface — meteorology, 

 oceanography, earth magnetism, and others. If the 

 first appeals to our sentiment, the second appeals to 

 our pocket and the third to our brain and indirectly 

 also to our pocket, for it must be remembered that 

 what is the pure science of one generation is often the 

 applied and industrial science of the next. 



The first aim, then, is that of pure discovery, and we 

 may turn to our maps to see what remains unknown. 



In the South Polar rcgions.as a glance at the map will 



