THE OCEAN WORLD. 
54 
drawing from tlie earth the combustible so needed to malce it habit- 
able, thus furnishing the means of overcoming the rigorous climatic 
conditions of these inhospitable regions. 
The Antarctic Pole is probably surrounded by an icy canopy, not 
less than two thousand five hundred miles in diameter, and numerous 
circumstances lead to the conclusion that the vast mass has diminished 
since 1774, -when the region was visited by Captain Cook. The 
Antarctic region can only be approached during the summer, namely, 
in December, January, and February. 
The first navigator who penetrated the Antarctic Circle was the 
Dutch captain, Thcodoric de Grlieritk, whose vessel formed part of the 
squadron commanded by Simon de Cordes, destined for the East 
Indies. In January, 1600, a tempest having dispersed the squadron, 
Captain Gheritk was driven as far south as the sixty-fourth parallel, 
where he observed a coast which reminded him of Norway. It was 
mountainous, covered with snow, stretching from the coast to the 
Isles of Solomon. The report of Simon de Cordes was received with 
great incredulity, and the doubts raised were oidy dissipated when the 
New South Shetland Islands were definitively recognised. The idea 
of an Antarctic continent is, however, one of the oldest conceptions oi 
speculative geography, and one wiiich mariners and philosophers alike 
have found it most difficult to relinquish. The existence of a southern 
continent seemed to them to be the necessary counterpoise to the 
Arctic laud. The Terra Australis incognita is marked on all the maps 
of Mercator, round the South Pole, and when the Dutch officer, 
Kerguelen, discovered, in 1772, the island which hears his name, he 
quoted this idea of Mercator as the motive which suggested the voyage- 
In 1774, Captain Cook ventured up to and beyond the seventy-first 
degree of latitude under the one hundred and ninth degree west 
longitude. He traversed a hundred and eighty leagues, between the 
fiftieth degree and sixtieth degree of south latitude, without finding the 
land of which mariners had spoken: this led him to conclude that 
mountains of ice, or the great fog-hanks of the region, had been 
mistaken for a continent. Nevertheless, Cook clung to the idea of 
the existence of a southern continent. “ I firmly believe,” he says> 
that near the Pole there is land where most part of the ice is formed 
which is spread over the vast Southern Ocean. I cannot believe that 
