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