CHAPTER II
THE POLAR REGIONS
I have defined the Antarctic Regions as lying within the Antarctic Circle, that is, south of 66½° S. latitude, but in 1892, on board the Scottish whaler Balæna, I found that this definition broke down, for we fell in with polar conditions before we reached latitude 60° S., some 500 miles south-eastward of Cape Horn, in the neighbourhood of the South Shetland Islands. My impressions of the circumstances are as vivid to-day as then, and more vivid, perhaps, than many other even more striking incidents during that and subsequent voyages.
Sailing south-eastward from the Falkland Islands across the breezy southern ocean, we came into weather, although it was mid-summer, having temperatures about freezing-point. This cold weather was accompanied by fairly frequent fogs which occasionally were very dense, till one day, when we were about 80 miles north-east of the South Shetland Islands, the fog divided, opening up a vista at the far
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