AMERICAS FIRST POLAR EXPEDITION 



them to be given twenty-four lashes apiece, during the 

 three years. 



So the expedition ended as it had begun — in a public 

 scandal. Its bright deeds have outlived most of the scan- 

 dal. It restrained, somewhat, the anthrophagian tendency 

 in the South Seas, at least in so far as that tendency was 

 directed toward the American missionary, and in those 

 days the risk of being eaten incurred by missionaries in 

 that region was something more than a comic-paper joke. 

 It accomplished valuable scientific works, the results of 

 which were finally published by the Government, the 

 draftsmen brought home the South Seas races, in a series 

 of plates, which are to-day interesting, if somewhat quaint. 

 The collections of the horticulturist and the botanist fur- 

 nished materials for a work by Asa Grey. The philologist 

 produced a book on Ethnography. The conchologist wrote 

 on Zoophytes. The charts of the hydrographers are, even 

 now, the standards for many harbors in the Pacific. But on 

 their Antarctic charts, running around the Antarctic circle, 

 between the ninetieth and the one hundred and sixty-fifth 

 degrees of east longitude, there is a wavy line called Wilkes 

 Land. It is laid down upon the maps of all nations, but 

 upon the official charts of one nation — England — it appears 

 only by courtesy, and recent addresses upon Antarctic 

 discovery, delivered by the most eminent English geo- 

 graphers, include statements to the effect that Wilkes's 

 reports of an Antarctic continent need to be verified. It is 

 hardly necessary to present here the reasons for this incredu- 

 lity. They are set forth in Wilkes's narrative of the ex- 

 pedition in five volumes. The main contention of these 

 geographers is that the commander of the English expedi- 

 tion which followed Wilkes into the Antarctic regions, 

 Captain James Clarke Ross, sailed over a point where 

 Wilkes had indicated land upon his chart. At that point 

 no land was visible; what proof is there, ask the geog- 

 raphers, that the rest of the chart is reliable? There is, 

 moreover, something beside the absence of that particular 

 coast to serve as a pretext for doubt. One of the 

 charges in the court-martial of Wilkes — a charge entitled 

 " Scandalous Conduct Tending to the Destruction of Good 

 Morals " — cited that " the said Lieutenant Charles Wilkes 



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