92 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
means the Americans took entirely out of our hands this 
valuable article of trade. ,, 
The whole question of American enterprise in the 
Antarctic regions has been discussed by Mr. Balch in his 
“ Antarctica/' a work embodying a great deal of careful 
research into old records, and to this we are much in- 
debted. The first light on the subject comes from 
Swain's Island, which does not now appear on the chart, 
but it is reported on the authority of Edmund Fanning 
that an island to which he gave that name was discov- 
ered in 1800 in 59 0 30' S., ioo° W., by Captain Swain, 
of Nantucket, and that it was “ resorted to by many 
seals." It is probably Dougherty Island. 
According to a communication which was made by 
Captain J. Horsburgh, Hydrographer to the East India 
Company, to Professor Heinrich Berghaus, the distin- 
guished author of the “ Physical Atlas," American seal- 
ers had been at work in the South Shetlands since 1812, 
and had kept their field of operations a profound secret 
in order to exclude competitors. The shadowy forms 
of Captain Swain, of Nantucket, and his crew of phan- 
tom Yankees may be imagined breaking in upon the 
“ rookeries " of those mist-wreathed island beaches 
slaying, skinning and boiling out the blubber of un- 
known and now perhaps extinct species of seals. We 
have seen that so far as the trade in seal oil was con- 
cerned the Americans had no monopoly. To the later 
explorations initiated by the enlightened firm of Enderby 
Brothers, we devote a special chapter; but their associa- 
tion with the far southern trade began before the cen- 
tury. We first hear of their ships in the southern seas 
in October, 1808, when the Snow Swan under James 
Lindsay, and the Otter under Thomas Hopper on a 
