AN ANTARCTIC NIGHT.
Through the First Antarctic Night, 1898-99. By F. A. Cook. With Illustrations. (W. Heinemann. 20s.)—It is difficult, we should say, to write with a continuous enthusiasm of an Antarctic night, and Mr. Cook proves it. The chapters describing the imprisonment in the ice, the awful depression and languor that overcame the crew of the Belgica,' are related with a technical skill one might expect from the surgeon of the expedition. The Belgica ' was frozen into the ice-pack far from any land, and drifted in this pack the whole winter so far and so long that they ran a chance of spending another winter, till the cutting of a canal and the breaking up of the pack released her. Before getting quite free of the Antarctic, they were frozen for another thirty days, and this last experience Mr. Cook does not describe for us ; he had had quite enough of it. There is a dreadful fascination about the wonderful sunsets and sunrises in the pure air which Mr. Cook has striven not unsuccessfully to realise for us. The cold does not seem to have been extreme ; they were too far from land, and the meteorological conditions are very different from those of the Arctic regions,—storms being frequent. Life was confined to few forms, but astonishingly abundant in thoso limits. The condition and extent of the pack vary, and are generally more uncertain than the Northern pack, so that he is a bold than who would trust and calculate on its drift aiding an attempt to reach the Southern Pole. The reproductions of photographs and the few coloured plates are beautiful examples
of Antarctic scenery and its peculiar tabular icebergs ; but, indeed, photography bas an easy task in such an atmosphere. A portion of the book is devoted to the preliminary experience of coasting down South America, the ports visited, and a few graphic notes on the tall Patagonians, the Onas of Terra del Fuego. They seem, alas ! to be irreconcilables, and quite incompatible with sheep-farming on a large scale.
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