that very profusion. The exhaustive collections and encyclopedic tomes of these explorers exemplified a facet of the Romantic syndrome, the Promethean desire to encompass everything. Writing from South America, Humboldt told how he and his companion, Aimé Bonpland, dashed about like madmen picking up one new object after another, how they would go mad “if the wonders don’t cease soon.”17 No more than its classification schemas could the sensibilities of the Enlightenment survive such an onslaught of information without profound disruptions.
Within this expanding realm of experience, however, Antarctica was an anomaly, a universe unto itself. It was impenetrable to maritime exploration, except as its inconstant pack ice allowed, and it was even more hostile to overland, cross-continental traverses. Its only rivers were glaciers. But the problem was not solely the formidable physical geography of the ice terranes: The Ice also challenged the philosophical precepts, artistic genres, and scientific systems by which the era had understood the metaphysics (and metahistory) of nature. The abundance of the observed world was stripped away. The novelty, the revelatory message, the inspiration of Nature were all erased. The process became progressive as one advanced to the interior, to the informing source of The Ice. The Promethean desire to embrace everything lost its meaning in a landscape of nothingness. In place of increasing information, there was less. In place of abundant objects, there was only ice; and in place of tangible landmarks, such as mountains or lakes, there were only abstract concepts, such as the poles of rotation, magnetism, or inaccessibility, all invisible to the senses. The only civilization explorers discovered in Antarctica was the one they had brought there. Inquisitiveness, knowledge, sensibility were simply reflected back and turned inward. The challenge for the Humboldtean explorer had been to cope with an overabundance of information, but the Antarctic explorer confronted an under-abundance of information. Finding technological means by which to penetrate the pack or to proceed inland did not by itself resolve the question of perception and assimilation.
The Antarctic would not—could not—be ignored. There were several causes for the revival of interest in Antarctica. The simple fact that the region was unexplored and geographically unknown was a compelling argument for at least some scientific reconnaissance. Steam power made travel into the pack possible, and decades of successful Arctic exploration had developed ship designs and materials (and customized ships) that could withstand the crushing pressures of the pack ice. A desire to resuscitate the whaling industry brought commercial ships back to the Southern Ocean, and in 1892 Scottish and Norwegian whalers visited Antarctica. The Antarctica, under Capt. Carl Larsen, investigated new coastline along the eastern side of the peninsula. Eventually, the Larsen firm became for twentieth-century Antarctic exploration what the Enderby Brothers had been for the nineteenth century. Its modest success led to another private expedition under Henrik Bull which, at Cape Adare in January 1895, made the first landing on the Antarctic mainland.
Perhaps the most compelling cause for renewed attention was the dangerous expansion of European colonial rivalry and the growing realization that Antarctica was the last of the world’s continents not yet explored. In 1893 John Murray, the Canadian biologist and oceanographer who had collated the fifty volumes published by the Challenger expedition, read a paper to the Royal Geographic Society in which he argued for the existence of an Antarctic continent and proposed an outline of its coast. The idea stirred his rival, Clements Markham, then head of the society. At the Sixth International Geographical Congress (1895), held in London and presided over by Markham, it was resolved that “the exploration of the Antarctic regions is the greatest piece of geographical exploration still to be undertaken.”18 Although the North Pole had not yet been reached, the Arctic was generally known with an accuracy acceptable to the state of geographic knowledge; a race to the pole was a coup, a monument to ambition and Arctic survival skills. But Antarctica, not simply the South Pole, was as much a terra incognita as it had been during the Renaissance. What Rudyard Kipling wrote in “The Explorer” (1898) seemed especially applicable to the Antarctic:
Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated—so:
“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges—
“Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you.
Go!”
Now that conscience could be answered. Adequate technology, an international consensus on the continent’s scientific significance, national competition, and nearly a century of experience with this mode of exploration—everything was present to make Antarctica a centerpiece for Western discovery. The next International Geographical Congress (Berlin, 1899) proclaimed 1901 as “Antarctica Year.” Quickly, a score of major expeditions attempted to achieve for the alien Antarctic what Pallas had done for central Asia, Lewis and Clark for North America, and Humboldt for South America. The heroic age of Antarctic exploration was underway.
It began modestly with a Belgian expedition (1897–1899) led by Lt. Adrien de Gerlache. The Belgica explored the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula and wintered, inadvertently, in the Bellingshausen Sea. Among the members of the expedition were Frederick A. Cook, soon to be embroiled in an infamous controversy with Robert Peary over the discovery of the North Pole, and Roald Amundsen, who, frustrated in his desire to reach the North Pole, redirected his efforts to the South Pole instead. Already the genealogical—almost tribal—character of polar exploration was evident. So was the practice of naming expeditions after their ships. And so also were the special challenges of Antarctic discovery. During the Belgica’s long winter imprisonment, nearly everyone suffered anemia, lethargy, acute depression, or paranoia; there was one death from a heart attack, and two men went mad. Meanwhile, a member of the Norwegian whaling expedition to Cape Adare, Carsten Borchgrevink, returned with the Southern Cross expedition (1898–1900), which was sponsored by a British newspaper magnate. Borchgrevink sailed to Cape Adare, established the first land base on the continent, made a sledging journey to the Ross Ice Shelf, wintered over, conducted meteorological and magnetic investigations, and collected specimens of rocks and marine fauna.
Borchgrevink was only the point man for the great national expeditions to follow. At the New York meeting of the International Geographical Congress (1904), Henryk Arctowski of the Belgica expedition revived Maury’s plea for an internationally sponsored exploration of the Antarctic. But national rivalry was a greater motivator than international cooperation. Even new nations, such as Norway, found in polar exploration a suitable international arena to display their nationalist energies. Still, there was some attempt at coordinating independent national expeditions. Markham, for example, orchestrated the earliest wave so that the Germans went to East Antarctica, the Swedes to the peninsula, and the British to the Ross Sea. But in its intensity no less than its scale, this was truly the heroic age of Antarctic discovery.
Its range of participants would not be matched until the 1950s: the National Antarctic Expedition (Discovery) under Capt. Robert Scott (1901–1904), the German Antarctic Expedition (Gauss) under Prof. Erich von Drygalski (1901–1903), the Swedish Antarctic Expedition (Antarctica) under Dr. Otto Nordenskjöld (1901–1903), the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (Scotia) Jed by Dr. William S. Bruce (1902–1904), the French Antarctic Expedition (Le Français) headed by Dr. J.-B. Charcot (1903–1904), the British Antarctic Expedition (Nimrod) under Lt. Ernest Shackleton (1907–1909), the Second French Antarctic Expedition (Pourquoi Pas?), also under Charcot (1908–1910), the Amundsen (Fram) expedition led by Roald Amundsen (1910–1912), the second Scott (Terra Nova) expedition (1910–1913), the Japanese (Kainan Maru) expedition under Lt. Choku Shirase (1911–1912), a second German expedition (Deutschland) led by Dr. Wilhelm Filchner (1911–1912), the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Aurora) led by a veteran of the first Shackleton expedition, Douglas Mawson (1911–1914), and the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Endurance), under Ernest Shackleton (1914–1916).
Nearly all of these expeditions had some assistance from their national governments, although contributions from scientific societies and wealthy industrialists were important. Most tended to include substantial scientific staffs, filled with specialists in various fields. All exhibited at least some transfer