THE SOUTH POLE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 889, 15 March 1889, Page 11

THE SOUTH POLE.

It appears to be possible that Professor Neumayr, of the Hamburg Marine Observatory, will succeed in getting a South Polar expedition organised. It might have been supposed that until some greater measure of success had attended similar adventures in the Arctic regions, the most ardent advocates of such schemes would haye doubted the wisdom of exposing human lives and treasure to the risks of Antarctic seas. All the best authorities are agreed that the difficulties to be encountered in the South are much greater than in the North, and the hideous stories which gained currency after the return of the last Arctic expedition might well have sickened the boldest of this generation sufficiently to deter them from any assault upon the stronghold of King Winter in the South. In comparing the difficulties of Arctic and Antarctic adventure Sir Wyville Thomson says:-/We can onlv anticipate disasters, multiplied a hundredfold, should the South Pole ever become a goal of rivalry among nations.’ For various reasons the great lone land under the Soutnern Gross is more difficult of access than the North. It is much colder there than in Hie Arctic Circle. There seems to be no such warm currents as are to be found in the Horth—such, for instance, as the Labra-

dor current, or that round the Sou-.h coast of Spitzborgen. Such emanations from the torrid regions of tho earth do much to mitigate tho rigours of the northern seas at certain points and bring about the most striking variations of temperature, breaking up the ice at certain seasons, and opening the way to navigation far beyond points otherwise attainable. Any enterprise of this kind will, of course, be pushed on during the summer months —during January, February, and the early part of March, that is. But even in the height of summer the temperature of the air. in Antarctic regions is always below the freezing point of sea-watfr, and bitter, tempestuous winds and fog 3 and blinding snowstorms are all but incessant. No Arctic explorer has ever gone beyond the bounds of vegetation. At least licnens and seaweed have been found wherever northern navigators have penetrated, bub in the awful solitudes of the South Sir James Ross found not tho faintest trace of vegetable life, either on the land or in the sea, vet he never came within less than 700 miles of the South Pole. The magnetic pole has been approached within 150 miles, and it seems possible that important scientific results might be attained by covering that further distance ; but even this is doubtful.