The English Astronomer Royal, Halley, undertook a scientific voyage to the South in 1699 for the purpose of making magnetic observations, and met with ice in 52deg.  S., from which latitude he returned to the north.

The Frenchman, Bouvet (1738), was the first to follow the southern ice-pack for any considerable distance, and to bring reports of the immense, flat-topped Antarctic icebergs.

In 1756 the Spanish trading-ship Leon came home and reported high, snow-covered land in lat. 55deg.  S. to the east of Cape Horn.  The probability is that this was what we now know by the name of South Georgia.  The Frenchman, Marion-Dufresne, discovered, in 1772, the Marion and Crozet Islands.  In the same year Joseph de Kerguelen-Tremarec —­ another Frenchman —­ reached Kerguelen Land.

This concludes the series of expeditions that I have thought it proper to class in the first group.  “Antarctica,” the sixth continent itself, still lay unseen and untrodden.  But human courage and intelligence were now actively stirred to lift the veil and reveal the many secrets that were concealed within the Antarctic Circle.

Captain James Cook —­ one of the boldest and most capable seamen the world has known —­ opens the series of Antarctic expeditions properly so called.  The British Admiralty sent him out with orders to discover the great southern continent, or prove that it did not exist.  The expedition, consisting of two ships, the Resolution and the Adventure, left Plymouth on July 13, 1772.  After a short stay at Madeira it reached Cape Town on October 30.  Here Cook received news of the discovery of Kerguelen and of the Marion and Crozet Islands.  In the course of his voyage to the south Cook passed 300 miles to the south of the land reported by Bouvet, and thereby established the fact that the land in question —­ if it existed —­ was not continuous with the great southern continent.

On January 17, 1773, the Antarctic Circle was crossed for the first time —­ a memorable day in the annals of Antarctic exploration.  Shortly afterwards a solid pack was encountered, and Cook was forced to return to the north.  A course was laid for the newly discovered islands —­ Kerguelen, Marion, and the Crozets —­ and it was proved that they had nothing to do with the great southern land.  In the course of his further voyages in Antarctic waters Cook completed the most southerly circumnavigation of the globe, and showed that there was no connection between any of the lands or islands that had been discovered and the great mysterious “Antarctica.”  His highest latitude (January 30, 1774) was 71deg. 10’ S.

Cook’s voyages had important commercial results, as his reports of the enormous number of seals round South Georgia brought many sealers, both English and American, to those waters, and these sealers, in turn, increased the field of geographical discovery.

In 1819 the discovery of the South Shetlands by the Englishman, Captain William Smith, is to be recorded.  And this discovery led to that of the Palmer Archipelago to the south of them.