Excerpt from Travel and Exploration, Vol. 2: A Monthly Illustrated Magazine; July to December 1909

I have tried to show how unlimited enthusiasm, keen imagination, and a remarkable organizing power combined in one man have fitted him to carry out a unique expedition with unprecedented success, without loss of life or serious damage to the health of any member of the party, and with great benefit to science, adding a new triumph of human endurance to the long list of heroic exploits in travel and exploration. But this must not be looked on as the end. The pole can easily be reached if any one who has more money than he needs can be induced to think the achievement worth paying for. Past experience shows that fate has not frequently smiled on second expeditions by the winners of great success in the first. The best results have usually followed the effort of a young subordinate to better the accomplishment of his senior; that seems the normal path of progress. There are exceptions, however, and I should not be surprised if Shackleton were to prove an exception if his mind turns to the idea of not only reaching the pole but also of encompassing the continent of Antarctica.

I cherish the idea that some one will try to circumnavigate Antarctica in the highest possible latitude from Cape North westward. Balleny and Wilkes did well on their attempts in this direction in small and ill found sailing ships; all the others who attempted circumnavigation insisted on going from west to east against the grain of the wind, con trary to experience; and their lot was labour and sorrow. Now that Scott and Shackleton have proved the wide extent and great altitude of Antarctica we want to map its outline, to free it from the smothering enwrapment of ice that confounds island and mainland, to see it from many different points. N o steamer has ever tried to circumnavigate within the belt of pack ice from east to west. All study of the history of Antarctic exploration points to such a circular trip as the most promising piece of South Polar work and the most likely to reveal new points of access from which the interior may be sought, and thus I think it is the next task that should be undertaken in a systematic study of the Far South.

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