The stars are changed; the southern cross, the Magellanic clouds, the "coal-sack" in the milky way, attract our notice.
Now we are in the southern latitude that corresponds to England in the north; nay, at a greater distance from the Pole, we find Kerguelen's Land, emphatically called "The Isle of Desolation." Icebergs float much further into the warm sea on this side of the equator before they dissolve.

The South Pole is evidently a more thorough refrigerator than the North.

Why is this?
We shall soon see.

We push through pack-ice, and through floes and fields, by lofty bergs, by an island or two covered with penguins, until there lies before us a long range of mountains, nine or ten thousand feet in height, and all clad in eternal snow.

That is a portion of the Southern Continent.