334 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
is enough to say that the halo of romance thrown round 
the Arctic regions by Franklin’s fate and his wife’s de- 
votion turned the eyes of the few among the public who 
cared for these things from the more sombre south. All 
polar exploration and polar research clung round the 
nearer problem of the north, and the south was all but 
forgotten. The fascination of the valueless North-West 
and North-East Passages had kept the world’s attention 
for centuries while all the time the whole volume of trade 
flowed in the South-East and South-West Passages by the 
Capes of Good Hope and Horn through the all but 
unknown Southern Ocean where no exploring ship was 
destined to sail again for yet thirty years. 
All the same there were not wanting men who, con- 
cerning themselves with the phenomena of nature and 
the safety of sailors rather than the emotions of the gen- 
eral public, saw the immense importance of increasing 
our fragmentary knowledge of the remotest south. First 
amongst these stands Matthew Fontaine Maury, an 
officer of the United States Navy, a profound scientific 
investigator, and the most brilliant writer who ever at- 
tempted to put into words the wonders of the sea as they 
are revealed to an appreciative mind by the patient 
study of facts. Maury’s “ Physical Geography of the 
Sea ” is so full of charm, so permeated by his own enthu- 
siasm that even now, after the data have been corrected 
almost beyond recognition by subsequent research, and 
the theories shown to be fallacious or imperfect, the book 
remains the most popular treatise on the oceans. As 
Superintendent of the United States Hydrographic Office 
Maury did much to improve the science of navigation 
and the study of oceanic and atmospheric phenomena not 
in his own country only but throughout the world. His 
