CHAPTER XIX 
* BY WILLIAM S. BRUCE, NATURALIST TO S.S. BALDEN A 
WITH the exception of a flying visit made in 1874 by 
H.M.S. Challenger, the Antarctic regions have been 
entirely neglected since Ross's Expedition of 1839-43, 
and have been well nigh forgotten. An accident of 
commerce led in the autumn of 1892 to a slight revival 
of scientific interest. A fleet of whalers set out in Sep- 
tember from Dundee to search the Antarctic seas for 
the Bowhead (Balcena mysticetus), or some similar whale. 
The fleet consisted of the Balasna, in which Mr. Burn- 
Murdoch and myself sailed, the Active, the Diana, and 
the Polar Star. Our vessels, after a voyage which was 
— prolonged to thirty or forty days beyond the calculated 
time, met at the southern ice in Erebus and Terror Gulf. 
There we found an earlier arrival, the Norwegian sealing 
vessel Jason (Captain Larsen) — the ship in which Nansen 
set out from Iceland for his famous crossing of Green- 
land. The Jason was strictly on commerce bound, 
though the spirit of the great explorer, who had sailed 
in her, had in some measure descended on Captain 
Larsen, for, without any special resources, he showed 
a zeal for extending our knowledge of these regions 
that would not have been unworthy of the leader of 
a purely scientific expedition. But the four Dundee 
