But the experience will still be unique, for these mountains have no fellows on the globe. There is a certain kinship between the tale of the first ascent of Mount McKinley in Alaska,* and that of the Duke of the Abruzzi. That gaunt icy peak is as unlike the ordinary snow mountain as Ruwenzori. The climb began from the glacier at a height of 1,000 feet, and 19,000 feet of snow and ice had to be surmounted. The Alaskan giant and the Mountains of the Moon stand at the opposite poles of climate, but both are alike in being outside the brotherhood of mountains. They are extravagances of Nature, moulded without regard to human needs. For mountains, when all has been said, belong to the habitable world. They are barriers between the settlements of man, and from their isolation the climber looks to the vineyards and cornlands and cities of the plains. An ice-peak near the Pole and a range veiled in the steaming mists of the Line are solitudes more retired and sanctuaries more inviolate. The common mountain-top lifts a man above the tumult of the lowlands, but these seem to carry him beyond the tumult of the world. * See Chapter VI. V THE SOUTH POLE THE SOUTH POLE (_Map_, p. 144.) I The imaginations of bold men were captured by the idea of Arctic exploration for centuries before the Antarctic was even thought of as a field for discovery. The Arctic regions have a history dating back to the days of King Alfred; the Antarctic can make no such boast as this, and it is true to say that attention was first drawn to the Far South by the map-makers. Much praise is due to the early map-makers; but as regards the Far South it must be admitted that they indulged in considerable guesswork. Ortelius, for instance, in his map of the world which was published in Antwerp in 1570, had the temerity to draw the coast of "Terra Australia nondum cognita" round the world as far north, in two places, as the Tropic of Capricorn. Hakluyt did, in 1599, omit the Southern continent from his celebrated map of the world, an abstinence on his part that deserves to be mentioned. But fictions, in spite of Hakluyt, continued to appear in later maps; and if they did nothing else, they were at least useful in directing the thoughts of navigators towards the Antarctic.