Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/36

32 dangers that I have had to face since in the north and the south, it is this wonderful picture and others like it that call me back again.

I have given this picture as an artistic presentation, and now I am going through the rather ruthless process of analysing the subjects in the picture. In the first place, every one will agree that we were, without doubt, in what might be fairly described as the Antarctic Regions, although, when the Balæna lay anchored to impenetrable ice on Christmas Day, we were outside the Antarctic Circle by two and a half degrees, or 150 miles. The first definition therefore defining the Antarctic Regions as lying within the Antarctic Circle breaks down completely, just as it did ten years later when on board the Scotia we met with impenetrable ice not very far south of latitude 59° S. to the east of the South Orkneys, or when, during the winter of 1903, the Scotia was frozen up for eight months in Scotia Bay, which is situated between 60 and 61 degrees south latitude.

Mention has been made of icebergs, of field ice, of floe ice, and of pack ice. Let me explain what these terms mean. It has been shown that there is a great area of land, probably one great continent, round about the South Pole. This continent is surrounded by the Great Southern Ocean, and, over the region occupied by that ocean, within the average limit of