TRANSACTIONS OP THE SECTIONS. 45 



the least chance of success, I shall urge the sending from this country an exploring 

 expedition to the eight millions of unknown square miles about the South Pole. I 

 hope that my letter to you upon the subject was sufficiently clear to satisfy your 

 mind, and conclusive to enlist your influence with Her Majesty's Government and 

 the English people in the cause of Antarctic exploration. It is an enterprise in which 

 the British nation may well take the lead, for it is nearer to them than to the rest of the 

 world. There is Melbourne, your great commercial mart, that is already, in amount 

 of shipping, a rival of Liverpool. It is within less than two weeks' run by steamer 

 from the borders of this unknown region. So, you observe that these eight millions 

 of unknown square miles lie at your door, and the responsibility of permitting them 

 so to lie longer will lie there loo. " You go ; we'll come." An expedition might 

 be sent from Australia with little or no risk. Two propellers, or even two vessels 

 with auxiliary steam-power, might be sent out, so as to spend our three winter 

 months in looking for a suitable point along the Antarctic Continent to serve as a 

 point of departure for over-land, or over-ice parties. Having found one or more 

 such places, vessels, properly equipped for land and ice and boat expeditions, might 

 be sent the next season, there to remain, seeking to penetrate the barrier, whether 

 of mountain or of ice, or both, until the next season, when they might be relieved by 

 a fresh party, or return home to compare notes, and be governed accordingly. You 

 know the barometer at all those places which have a rainy and a dry season, stands 

 highest in the dry, lowest in the wet. Now, I do not find any indications that the 

 Antarctic barometer has months of high range : it is low all the year. Therefore — 

 if I be right in ascribing the apparent tenuity of the air there to the heat that is 

 liberated during the condensation of vapour, from the heavy precipitation that is con- 

 stantly taking place along the sea front of those " barriers " — we should be correct 

 in inferring that the difference in temperature between the Antarctic summer and 

 winter is not very marked. If, in a case like this, we might be permitted to indulge 

 the imagination, we might fancy the " barrier" to be a circular range of mountains, 

 and that beyond these lies the great Antarctic basin. Beyond this range, as beyond 

 the Andes, we may fancy a rainless region, as in Peru,— a region of clear skies and 

 mild climates. Though the air in passing this range might be reduced below the 

 utmost degree of Arctic cold, yet being robbed of its vapour, it would receive as 

 sensible the latent heat thereof. Passing off to the Polar slope of these mountains, 

 this air then would be dry air ; descending into the valleys, and coming under the 

 barometric pressure at the surface, it would be warm air. Leslie has explained how, 

 by bringing the attenuated air down from the snow-line, even of the tropics/and 

 subjecting it to the barometric weight of the superincumbent mass, we may raise its 

 temperature to intertropical heat by the mere pressure. In like manner, this Ant- 

 arctic air, though cold and rare while crossing the "barrier," yet receiving heat 

 from its vapours as they are condensed, passing over into the valleys beyond, and 

 being again subjected to normal pressure, may become warm. We have abundant 

 illustrations of the modifying influences upon climate which winds exercise after 

 having passed mountains and precipitated their vapour. The winds which drop the 

 waters of the Columbia river, &c. on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, 

 make a warm climate about their base on this side, so much so that we find in Pied- 

 mont Nebraska the lizards and reptiles of Northern Texas. Indeed, trappers tell me 

 that the Upper Missouri is open in fall long after the Lower is frozen up, and in 

 spring long before— several weeks— the ice in the more southern parts has broken 

 up. The eastern slopes of Patagonia afford even a more striking illustration of 

 climates being tempered by winds that descend from the mountains, bearing with them 

 the heat that their vapour has set free. Thus you observe, that an exploring party 

 after passing the barrier might, as they approach the pole, find the Antarctic climate 

 to grow milder instead of colder. It would be rash in the present state of our in- 

 formation to assert that such is the case j but that such may be the case should not 

 be ignored by the projectors and leaders of any new expedition to those regions. 

 The existence of an open sea in the Arctic ocean has, with a great degree of proba- 

 bility, been theoretically established. But the circumstances, as strong as they are, 

 which favour the existence of an open water there, are not so strong and direct as 

 are the proofs and indications of a mild polar climate in the Antarctic regions. I 

 have examined the immense library of log-books here for the lines of Antarctic ice- 



