HUMAN ENTERPRISE. 553 



valour and energy, without undergoing the severest privations and 

 most terrible sufferings. 



Their efforts and their sacrifices, let us add, have not been barren. 

 Not only has the great North- West Passage from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific been finally explored, but the discovery of an open and com- 

 paratively warm sea around the geographical pole of our globe the 

 discovery, too, of the magnetic pole, and of the double pole of 

 cold ought to be ranked with the most brilliant scientific achieve- 

 ments on which our age can pride itself. Thanks to those heroes of 

 science, the Arctic Polar region is now extensively known and very 

 generally surveyed. It is not possible to say so much of the Antarctic 

 Polar region. There the approach is not facilitated by any conti- 

 nent, or, indeed, any fraction of a continent. The " Land of Fire " 

 (Tierra del Fuego), which is the nearest point, is not calculated 

 to brighten the hopes of the explorer, and the difficulties and 

 perils which oppose themselves to his southward progress seem 

 insurmountable. Three illustrious travellers sons of England, France, 

 and America respectively Sir James Ross, Dumont D'Urville, and 

 Rear-Admiral Charles "Wilkes, attempted, however, in the first half 

 of the present century, to penetrate the mystery which enshrouds this 

 extremity of our globe. 



After sailing for many days amongst prodigious icebergs, which 

 sometimes threatened to crush his ships, and sometimes to immure 

 them in a gloomy prison, Dumont D'Urville considered himself fortu- 

 nate in sighting, on the very line of the Antarctic Circle, a range of 

 black rocky cliffs which he named Clarie Coast and Adelie Land. 

 About the same time Rear-Admiral Wilkes discovered, in 67 4' south 

 latitude, and 147 30' east longitude, a bay which he called the Bay 

 of Disappointment, because he found himself there stopped short by 

 impassable ice, and deceived in his hope of reaching the Austral Con- 

 tinent. The same navigator, in 65 59' south latitude, and 105 18' 

 east longitude, saw, or thought he saw, an extent of coast which he 

 computed at 65 miles in length, and 3000 feet in elevation above 

 the sea-level. This coast appeared to him entirely covered with 



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