ps. The
temperature was very low; the thermometer exposed to the air marked 2
deg. or 3 deg. below zero, but we were warmly clad with fur, at the
expense of the sea-bear and seal. The interior of the Nautilus, warmed
regularly by its electric apparatus, defied the most intense cold.
Besides, it would only have been necessary to go some yards beneath the
waves to find a more bearable temperature. Two months earlier we
should have had perpetual daylight in these latitudes; but already we
had had three or four hours of night, and by and by there would be six
months of darkness in these circumpolar regions. On the 15th of March
we were in the latitude of New Shetland and South Orkney. The Captain
told me that formerly numerous tribes of seals inhabited them; but that
English and American whalers, in their rage for destruction, massacred
both old and young; thus, where there was once life and animation, they
had left silence and death.

About eight o'clock on the morning of the 16th of March the Nautilus,
following the fifty-fifth meridian, cut the Antarctic polar circle.
Ice surrounded us on all sides, and closed the horizon. But Captain
Nemo went from one opening to another, still going higher. I cannot
express my astonishment at the beauties of these new regions. The ice
took most surprising forms. Here the grouping formed an oriental town,
with innumerable mosques and minarets; there a fallen city thrown to
the earth, as it were, by some convulsion of nature. The whole aspect
was constantly changed by the oblique rays of the sun, or lost in the
greyish fog amidst hurricanes of snow. Detonations and falls were
heard on all sides, great overthrows of icebergs, which altered the
whole landscape like a diorama. Often seeing no exit, I thought we
were definitely prisoners; but, instinct guiding him at the slightest
indication, Captain Nemo would discover a new pass. He was never
mistaken when he saw the thin threads of bluish water trickling along
the ice-fields; and I had no doubt that he had already ventured into
the midst of these Antarctic seas before. On the 16th of March,
however, the ice-fields absolutely blocked our road. It was not the
iceberg itself, as yet, but vast fields cemented by the cold. But this
obstacle could not stop Captain Nemo: he hurled himself against it with
frightful violence. The Nautilus entered the brittle mass like a
wedge, and split it with frightful crackings. It was the bat