The History of the South Pole[2]

“Life is a ball In the hands of chance.”

Brisbane, Queensland, April 13, 1912.

Here I am, sitting in the shade of palms, surrounded by the most wonderful vegetation, enjoying the most magnificent fruits, and writing —­ the history of the South Pole.  What an infinite distance seems to separate that region from these surroundings!  And yet it is only four months since my gallant comrades and I reached the coveted spot.

I write the history of the South Pole!  If anyone had hinted a word of anything of the sort four or five years ago, I should have looked upon him as incurably mad.  And yet the madman would have been right.  One circumstance has followed on the heels of another, and everything has turned out so entirely different from what I had imagined.

On December 14, 1911, five men stood at the southern end of our earth’s axis, planted the Norwegian flag there, and named the region after the man for whom they would all gladly have offered their lives —­ King Haakon VII.  Thus the veil was torn aside for all time, and one of the greatest of our earth’s secrets had ceased to exist.

Since I was one of the five who, on that December afternoon, took part in this unveiling, it has fallen to my lot to write —­ the history of the South Pole.

Antarctic exploration is very ancient.  Even before our conception of the earth’s form had taken definite shape, voyages to the South began.  It is true that not many of the explorers of those distant times reached what we now understand by the Antarctic regions, but still the intention and the possibility were there, and justify the name of Antarctic exploration.  The motive force of these undertakings was —­ as has so often been the case —­ the hope of gain.  Rulers greedy of power saw in their mind’s eye an increase of their possessions.  Men thirsting for gold dreamed of an unsuspected wealth of the alluring metal.  Enthusiastic missionaries rejoiced at the thought of a multitude of lost sheep.  The scientifically trained world waited modestly in the background.  But they have all had their share:  politics, trade, religion, and science.

The history of Antarctic discovery may be divided at the outset into two categories.  In the first of these I would include the numerous voyagers who, without any definite idea of the form or conditions of the southern hemisphere, set their course toward the South, to make what landfall they could.  These need only be mentioned briefly before passing to the second group, that of Antarctic travellers in the proper sense of the term, who, with a knowledge of the form of the earth, set out across the ocean, aiming to strike the Antarctic monster —­ in the heart, if fortune favoured them.

We must always remember with gratitude and admiration the first sailors who steered their vessels through storms and mists, and increased our knowledge of the lands of ice in the South.  People of the present day, who are so well supplied with information about the most distant parts of the earth, and have all our modern means of communication at their command, find it difficult to understand the intrepid courage that is implied by the voyages of these men.