The Worst Journey in the World Read Online Free

case. Later still, in
1873, the possibility of laying submarine cables made it necessary to
investigate the nature of the abyssal depths, and the Challenger proved
that not only does life, and in quite high forms, exist there, but that
there are fish which can see. It is now almost certain that there is a
great oxidized northward-creeping current which flows out of the
Antarctic Ocean and under the waters of the other great oceans of the
world.
    It was the good fortune of Ross, at a time when the fringes of the great
Antarctic continent were being discovered in comparatively low latitudes
of 66° and thereabouts, sometimes not even within the Antarctic Circle,
to find to the south of New Zealand a deep inlet in which he could sail
to the high latitude of 78°. This inlet, which is now known as the Ross
Sea, has formed the starting-place of all sledging parties which have
approached the South Pole. I have dwelt upon this description of the
lands he discovered because they will come very intimately into this
history. I have also emphasized his importance in the history of
Antarctic exploration because Ross having done what it was possible to do
by sea, penetrating so far south and making such memorable discoveries,
the next necessary step in Antarctic exploration was that another
traveller should follow up his work on land. It is an amazing thing that
sixty years were allowed to elapse before that traveller appeared. When
he appeared he was Scott. In the sixty years which elapsed between Ross
and Scott the map of the Antarctic remained practically unaltered. Scott
tackled the land, and Scott is the Father of Antarctic sledge travelling.
    This period of time saw a great increase in the interest taken in science
both pure and applied, and it had been pointed out in 1893 that "we knew
more about the planet Mars than about a large area of our own globe." The
Challenger Expedition of 1874 had spent three weeks within the Antarctic
Circle, and the specimens brought home by her from the depths of these
cold seas had aroused curiosity. Meanwhile Borchgrevink (1897) landed at
Cape Adare, and built a hut which still stands and which afforded our
Cape Adare party valuable assistance. Here he lived during the first
winter which men spent in the Antarctic.
    Meanwhile, in the Arctic, brave work was being done. The names of Parry,
M'Clintock, Franklin, Markham, Nares, Greely and De Long are but a few of
the many which suggest themselves of those who have fought their way mile
by mile over rough ice and open leads with appliances which now seem to
be primitive and with an addition to knowledge which often seemed hardly
commensurate with the hardships suffered and the disasters which
sometimes overtook them. To those whose fortune it has been to serve
under Scott the Franklin Expedition has more than ordinary interest, for
it was the same ships, the Erebus and Terror, which discovered Ross
Island, that were crushed in the northern ice after Franklin himself had
died, and it was Captain Crozier (the same Crozier who was Ross's captain
in the South and after whom Cape Crozier is named) who then took command
and led that most ghastly journey in all the history of exploration: more
we shall never know, for none survived to tell the tale. Now, with the
noise and racket of London all round them, a statue of Scott looks across
to one of Franklin and his men of the Erebus and Terror, and surely they
have some thoughts in common.
    Englishmen had led the way in the North, but it must be admitted that the
finest journey of all was made by the Norwegian Nansen in 1893-1896.
Believing in a drift from the neighbourhood of the New Siberian Islands
westwards over the Pole, a theory which obtained confirmation by the
discovery off the coast of Greenland of certain remains of a ship called
the Jeannette which had been crushed in the ice off these islands, his
bold project was to be frozen in with his ship and allow the current to
take him over, or as near as