424 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
Land and Kemp Land ; but an appeal to the authorities at 
home brought in reply definite instructions to return, 
and the Gauss anchored in the Elbe on November 24th, 
1903. The Kerguelen party had suffered severely on 
account of an outbreak of beri-beri, one of the scientific 
observers died in the Isle of Desolation, and the life of 
another was saved with difficulty. But the expeditions 
had amply fulfilled their primary object of accumulating 
collections and observations which it will take many 
years to work out fully. 
The first real Antarctic voyage, that of Cook in 1772, 
included, it will be remembered, both German and Swed- 
ish men of science, and the renewal of national Antarctic 
research a century and a quarter later found the British 
flag accompanied in those waters by the German and 
Swedish also. Dr. Otto Nordenskjold, a nephew of the 
hero of the North East Passage Baron A. E. Norden- 
skiold, planned an expedition in 1899 and succeeded after 
many disappointments in securing from private donors in 
Sweden funds sufficient for his enterprise. He had al- 
ready travelled as a geologist in the south of South 
America and was anxious to extend his researches to the 
land projecting from the unknown region toward Cape 
Horn. He had procured the Antarctic as his ship, the 
vessel which had been the first after the Erebus and 
Terror to revisit Victoria Land, and had since been en- 
gaged in scientific expeditions to the coast of Greenland. 
As captain he was fortunate in securing the services of 
C. A. Larsen who, when commanding the Jason, had 
twice visited the region for which he was again bound, 
and the scientific staff consisted of eight specialists, to 
whom a ninth, Dr. J. Gunnar Andersson, was subse- 
quently added. The expedition left Goteborg on October 
