Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/251

Rh tracks and repeat their voyage year after year over exactly the same narrow belt of sea; those on board know nothing of the ocean outside that belt of 30 miles in breadth. In the old days sailing vessels were driven hundreds and even thousands of miles off direct tracks, and saw actually much more than we do nowadays, especially since the vessels were slower and smaller, and the surface of the sea more readily accessible to those on board. Thus the stories of great sea monsters might not be so fabulous as supposed, though those in small craft and without scientific training might possibly get a somewhat exaggerated idea of their size and shape.

In the Antarctic and subantarctic Regions great opportunities present themselves both for a study of the sea and the land, and to the writer's mind it is a study of the subantarctic and then Antarctic seas that is at present most urgent, including an exploration and definition of the southern borders of those seas.

I say, designedly, the southern borders of those seas, and not the outline of Antarctica or the coast-line of the Antarctic Continent, because it is from the oceanographical stand-point that I believe we should make this attack in the first place and to a much larger extent than heretofore. The early navigators attacked the south in this manner, and, more recently, with modern scientific methods, the Challenger,