Next Week : A MISSING HUSBAND. TOWARDS THE SOUTH POLE. The Proposed Exploration of the Antarctic Sea.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 358, 10 April 1889, Page 6

Next Week : A MISSING HUSBAND. TO WAR DS THE SOUTH POLE. The Proposed Exploration of the Antarctic Sea.

It appears to be probable that Professor Neumary, 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 advocate of such schemes would have doubted the wisdom of exposing human lives and treasure to the risk of Antarctic seas. All the be&t 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 Thompson says : ' We can only anticipate disasters, multiplied a hundred-fold, should the South Pole ever become a goal of rivalry among nations.' For various reasons* the great lone land under the southern cross is more difficult of access than the north. It is much colder there than in the Arctic circle. There seem to be no such warm currents as are to be found in the north — such, for instance, as the Labrador current, or that around the south coast of Spitzbergen. Such emanations from the torrid regions of the earth do much to mitigate the rigours of the northern sea 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 in the Antarctic regions is always below the freezing point of sea water, and bitter tempestuous winds and fogs and blinding snow storms are all but incessant. No Arctic explorer has ever gone beyond the bounds of vegetation. At least lichens and seaweed have been found wherever northern navigators have penetrated, but in the awful solitude of the south, Sir James Ross found not the slightest trace of vegetable life, either on the land or in the sea, yet he never came within 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 obtained by covoring that further distance ; but even this is doubtful. — ' London Daily News.'