ealed, and the limits of the habitable globe were made known.
Incidentally it may be remarked that Cook was the first to describe the
peculiarities of the Antarctic icebergs and floe-ice."[6]

A Russian expedition under Bellingshausen discovered the first certain
land in the Antarctic in 1819, and called it Alexander Land, which lies
nearly due south of Cape Horn.

Whatever may have been the rule in other parts of the world, the flag
followed trade in the southern seas during the first part of the
nineteenth century. The discovery of large numbers of seals and whales
attracted many hundreds of ships, and it is to the enlightened
instructions of such firms as Messrs. Enderby, and to the pluck and
enterprise of such commanders as Weddell, Biscoe and Balleny, that we owe
much of our small knowledge of the outline of the Antarctic continent.

"In the smallest and craziest ships they plunged boldly into stormy
ice-strewn seas; again and again they narrowly missed disaster; their
vessels were racked and strained and leaked badly, their crews were worn
out with unceasing toil and decimated with scurvy. Yet in spite of
inconceivable discomforts they struggled on, and it does not appear that
any one of them ever turned his course until he was driven to do so by
hard necessity. One cannot read the simple, unaffected narratives of
these voyages without being assured of their veracity, and without being
struck by the wonderful pertinacity and courage which they display."[7]

The position in 1840 was that the Antarctic land had been sighted at a
few points all round its coasts. On the whole the boundaries which had
been seen lay on or close to the Antarctic Circle, and it appeared
probable that the continent, if continent it was, consisted of a great
circular mass of land with the South Pole at its centre, and its coasts
more or less equidistant from this point.

Two exceptions only to this had been found. Cook and Bellingshausen had
indicated a dip towards the Pole south of the Pacific; Weddell a still
more pronounced dip to the south of the Atlantic, having sailed to a
latitude of 74 deg. 15' S. in longitude 34 deg. 16' W.

Had there been a Tetrahedronal Theory in those days, some one might have
suggested the probability of a third indentation beneath the Indian
Ocean, probably to be laughed at for his pains. When James Clark Ross
started from England in 1839 there was no particular reason for him to
suppose that the Antarcti