STEAM WHALERS 365 
and it has been happily falsified by the success and good 
fortune which have attended all expeditions to the far 
south as compared with those to the far north. The 
pessimistic view was not shared by the members of the 
Challenger scientific staff, and except Dr. von Neumayer 
himself, no one has spoken more strongly and continu- 
ously in support of Antarctic exploration than Sir John 
Murray, and he has been ably supported by Mr. J. Y. 
Buchanan. 
About 1880 Lieutenant Bove of the Italian Navy 
planned a scientific expedition which was to spend two 
winters in the Antartic ice following up Dallmann’s dis- 
coveries and making a circumnavigation as far south as 
possible by sailing westward, the direction which our 
readers are now perhaps tired of hearing has been shown 
to be the most promising by the troubles which have 
befallen everyone who followed tradition and the east- 
ward route. 
The project was taken up with enthusiasm in Italy, and 
it seemed for a time as if the nation which now holds the 
distinction of having carried its flag nearest the North 
Pole would have anticipated that achievement by planting 
it first nearest to the South Pole. The time was pecu- 
liarly appropriate. A great scheme of circumpolar re- 
search had been elaborated on von Neumayer’s initia- 
tive, in which almost all civilised nations were taking 
part, so that for twelve consecutive months in 1882-83 
simultaneous meteorological and magnetic observations 
would be made at the highest attainable latitudes right 
round the North Pole. It was on one of these that Lieu- 
tenant Greely of the United States Army and his whole 
party nearly perished from that terrible danger of polar 
exploration — a relief expedition which failed to relieve. 
