Text: Anonymous, “The Proposed Antarctic Expedition,” Springfield Daily Republican (Springfield, MA), (no volume or issue number specified), October 29, 1890, p. 4, col. 3

[page 4, column 3, continued:]

THE PROPOSED ANTARTIC [[ANTARCTIC]] EXPEDITION may possibly lead to more valuable results and at less cost than the many which have wasted life in Arctic seas for many years. Baron Nordenskiold is an experienced explorer and Baron Dickson has fitted out expeditions before. Very likely therefore the explorers who expect to sail from Australia in about a year may get farther into the southern ice than any of their predecessors; the difficulties that were insurmountable to Ross half a century ago may well yield to a modern ship, equipped by the resources of wealth and science. The Erebus and Terror in which Ross reached the most southern limit yet attained, were the best ships for the purpose that the British navy could furnish but they narrowly escaped destruction in an ice pack such as would hardly disturb the schooner in which Dr Nansen will set out to sail around Greenland next June. Baron Nordenskiold's expedition may find new fisheries for whales and seals, to take the place of the Arctic fisheries now becoming exhausted; and new banks which shall rival those of St George for cod; in this hope the Australian colonies are willing to furnish $25,000 toward its expenses, for naturally Australian ships and sailors would develop such fisheries, as being the nearest. It is to be remembered, nevertheless, that before the Northwest passage was sought for so persistently, the hardy whalers of Nantucket and New Bedford had been up Baffin's bay and through Behring straits; and as far north as the Jeannette got in its tragic expedition, the Pacific whaling captains had been farther. So that if the Australians had minded to develop the Antarctic fisheries they might have gone ahead and done it. As for possible geographic or scientific knowledge, we trust that the ship's library will not lack copies of Coleridge's “Ancient Mariner” (with Shelvocke's Voyages as well), and the veracious “Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” as given the world by Edgar Allan Poe, — since these books would supply a valuable stimulus in those directions.