THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN. 



391 



CHAPTER XXXVIL 



THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN. 



Oomparative View of the Antarctic and Arctic Regions. — Inferiority of Climate of the former. — Its 

 Causes. — The New Shetland Islands. — South Georgia. — The Peruvian Stream. — Sea-birds. — The Gi- 

 ant Petrel. — The Albatross. — The Penguin. — The Austral Whale. — The Hunchback. — The Fin-back. 

 — The Grampus. — Battle with a Whale. — The Sea-elephant. — The Southern Sea-bear. — The Sea- 

 leopard. — Antarctic Fishes. 



npHE Antarctic regions are far more desolate and barren than the Arctic. 



Here we have no energetic hunters, hke the Esquimaux, chasing the seal 

 or the walrus ; no herdsmen following, like the Samoiedes or the Lapps, their 

 reindeer to the brink of the icy ocean ; but all is one dreary, uninhabitable 

 waste. While within the Arctic Circle the musk-ox enjoys an abundance of 

 food, and the lemming is still found thriving on the bleakest islands, not a sin- 

 gle land quadruped exists beyond 56° of southern latitude. 



Summer flowers gladden the sight of the Arctic navigator in the most north- 

 ern lands yet reached ; but no plant of any description — not even a moss or a 

 lichen — has been observed beyond Cockburn Island in 64° 12' S. lat. ; and while 

 even in Spitzbergen vegetatioa ascends the mountain slopes to a height of 3000 

 feet the snow-line descends to the water's edge in every land within or near the 

 Antarctic Circle. 



An open sea, extending towards the northern pole as far as the eye can reach, 

 points out the path to future discovery ; but the Antarctic navigators, with one 

 single exception, have invariably seen their progress arrested by barriers of ice^ 

 and none have ever penetrated beyond the comparatively low latitude of 

 78° 10'. 



Even in Spitzbergen and East Greenland, Scoresby sometimes found the 

 heat of summer very great ; but the annals of Antarctic navigation invariably 

 speak of a frigid temperature. In 1773, when Captain Phipps visited Spitzber- 

 gen, the thermometer once rose to +58|-°; and on July 15, 1820, when the 

 " Hecla" left her winter-quarters in Melville Island (74° 47' N.), she enjoyed a 

 warmth of +56°. But during the summer months spent by Sir James Ross 

 in the Antarctic Polar area, the temperature of the air never once exceeded 

 -f41°5'. In Northumberland Sound (76° 42' K), probably the coldest spot 

 hitherto visited in the north, the mean of the three summer months was found 

 to be +30° 8', while within the Antarctic Circle it only amounted to +27° 3'. 



The reader may possibly wonder why the climate of the southern polar re- 

 gions is so much more severe than that of the high northern latitudes ; or why 

 coasts and valleys, at equal distances from the equator, should in one case be 

 found green with vegetation, and in another mere wastes of snow and ice ; but 

 the predominance of land in the north, and of sea in the south, fully answers 



