45 



year, and held his own, the pack would have soon drifted past 

 him. At the discussion on Dr. Murray's paper on Antarctic 

 exploration read at the Boyal Geographical Society's meeting 

 on the 27th November last, Sir E. Vesey Hamilton said that 

 ■with a steamer Boss's forty -four days" in the pack would 

 probably have been reduced to four. "And he went on: — " I 

 believe now that the amount of work that was done by Sir 

 James Eoss in three seasons could be done in one season with 

 modern steam power, and I have some knowledge of ice 

 navigation, having been three winters and five summers in 

 the Arctic regions. Now the greatest enemy to a sailing ship 

 is a gale in the ice heavily packed, as we have seen from the 

 diagrams ; then the ships are in great peril, perhaps for 

 steam as well as sailing ships; but after the gale comes a 

 calm, when the ice opens out and the steamer would im- 

 mediately make rapid progress, while the sailing ship might 

 be unable to move for some days." 



And it is not only in cases like these mentioned by Sir 

 Vesey Hamilton, that sailing ships are at a disadvantage. The 

 readers of Sir James Boss's account of his voyages will come 

 over and over again to passages describing how calms and 

 contrary winds or currents baffled the great navigator at 

 most critical times when a coastline had to be left unexplored 

 or an opening in the ice left unentered. Had it been possible 

 to have taken advantage of these lost opportunities, how- 

 much might the bounds of our knowledge of Antarctic 

 regions been enlarged. 



I have shown on the accompanying chart what, with 

 regard to certain subjects, are the "bounds of our present 

 knowledge of those regions. It is based on information given 

 in Dr. Murray's charts — our greatest authority on the 

 subjects referred to. As regards the conformation of the 

 coasts of Antarctic land or lands, what is known is distinguish- 

 able from what is hypothetical by difference of shading; and 

 sources of the knowledge are shown by the tracks of all 

 navigators known to have crossed the Antarctic Circle. Their 

 voyages are well summarised in Mr. Sprent's paper recorded 

 10. our transactions. The chart also shows the bathymetric 

 curves, and the summer temperature curves of the circum- 

 polar ocean and air— important factors in relation to Antarctic 

 exploration. 



With respect to what has already been done in Antarctic 

 regions by far the most important performances were those 

 of Weddell in 1823, and of Eoss in 1841 and 1842. Weddell's 

 track, between 30 deg. and 40 deg. of west longitude, traverses 

 the deep basin of the South Atlantic, and he did not get 

 much beyond the 2,000 fathom curve. The relatively warm 

 water that exists in the deeper parts of the Antarctic ocean 

 probably accounts for the open water Weddell found. Sir 



