Almost three hundred years ago the existence of islands far to the southward of any continents became known to navigators, who were driven thither by bad weather, and little by little was added to the map of this desolate region; but it was not until 1772 that any one went into that terrible Antarctic sea for the express purpose of a survey. This man was the intrepid Captain Cook, and though he sailed a third of the way around the globe in his efforts to find an entrance through the icy barrier, he could never penetrate beyond 71° south latitude, which is equal to North Cape, or the town of Upernavik, in the Arctic region. Later captains did little better, until 1841, when Sir James Ross, in his ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_,—the same vessels which afterward met their destruction with the ill-fated Franklin expedition,—skirted the edge of the thick ice that everywhere clothed the land, though it was midsummer, and finally reached the base of the southernmost land yet known on the globe—a magnificent mountain-chain stretching away to the south from latitude 78° 10´. The most conspicuous point of all this range of polar mountains, which rises from an unexplored continent or great island called Victoria Land, is the volcano Mt. Erebus. It was in eruption at the time of Ross’s visit, and the explorer tries to tell us of the splendor of its display when the wide glistening waste of snow and the deep blue of the ocean and the starry sky are lit up by the column of fire hurled thousands of feet heavenward from its crater: but who can picture the grandeur of such a scene! This volcano is about 12,400 feet high, and an extinct neighbor, Mt. Terror, is still higher; while a third peak, Mt. Melbourne, exceeds 15,000 feet in altitude, and like all the rest is covered with everlasting snow and glaciers from the tempestuous water’s edge to its lonely crest.