342 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
it has afforded training to a number of scientific men 
whose names, already well known, are destined to occupy 
a high place on the roll of students of nature. 
The other design was not accomplished ; the prophet of 
the Antarctic was never to enter his land of promise. 
Dr. Neumayer suggested that an expedition for Antarc- 
tic research should be fitted out as a preliminary to the 
Transit of Venus Expedition in 1874. The Vienna 
Academy of Sciences took the matter up cordially on the 
advice of Admiral Tegetthoff, and Dr. Neumayer was 
promised the command of an expedition to set out from 
Hamburg towards the end of 1870. The outbreak of 
the Franco-Prussian War and the birth of the German 
Empire interrupted the expedition, but Admiral Tegett- 
hoff revived it in the following year, and all was going 
well when the sudden death of the Admiral brought the 
plan to an untimely end. So Austria-Hungary lost the 
honour of renewing South Polar research, and Dr. Neu- 
mayer the opportunity of becoming an explorer. 
War and death — the catastrophes of nations and of 
men — broke the smooth run of the thread of our history 
not once but many times. Yet, after each check, another 
voice was raised in support of a renewal of Antarctic re- 
search. The Astronomer Royal, Sir G. B. Airy, had 
pointed out the desirability of securing a station for ob- 
serving the transits of Venus of 1874 and 1882 south of 
the Antarctic Circle and somewhere near the meridian 
of 105° E., and the general voice of Arctic navigators 
was in favour of this being done by dispatching a pre- 
liminary expedition to find a suitable spot. Staff Com- 
mander J. E. Davis, formerly Second Master on the 
Terror, whose vivid description of the collision with the 
Erebus was quoted in an earlier chapter, read a paper to 
