An Antarctic Mystery

An Antarctic Mystery
or
The Sphinx of the Ice Fields
by Jules Verne
English translation by Mrs. Cashel Hoey
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1899
A Sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym..
Chapter I
The Kerguelen Islands
No doubt the following narrative will be received: with entire
incredulity, but I think it well that the public should be put in
possession of the facts narrated in "An Antarctic Mystery." The public
is free to believe them or not, at its good pleasure.
No more appropriate scene for the wonderful and terrible adventures
which I am about to relate could be imagined than the Desolation
Islands, so called, in 1779, by Captain Cook. I lived there for several
weeks, and I can affirm, on the evidence of my own eyes and my own
experience, that the famous English explorer and navigator was happily
inspired when he gave the islands that significant name.
Geographical nomenclature, however, insists on the name of Kerguelen,
which is generally adopted for the group which lies in 49° 45′
south latitude, and 69° 6′ east longitude. This is just, because in
1772, Baron Kerguelen, a Frenchman, was the first to discover those
islands in the southern part of the Indian Ocean. Indeed, the

commander of the squadron on that voyage believed that he had found
a new continent on the limit of the Antarctic seas, but in the course of a
second expedition he recognized his error. There was only an
archipelago. I may be believed when I assert that Desolation Islands is
the only suitable name for this group of three hundred isles or islets in
the midst of the vast expanse of ocean, which is constantly disturbed by
austral storms.
Nevertheless, the group is inhabited, and the number of Europeans and
Americans who formed the nucleus of the Kerguelen population at the
date of the 2nd of August, 1839, had been augmented for two months
past by a unit in my person. Just then I was waiting for an opportunity
of leaving the place, having completed the geological and
mineralogical studies which had brought me to the group in general and
to Christmas Harbour in particular.
Christmas Harbour belongs to the most important islet of the
archipelago, one that is about half as large as Corsica. It is safe, and
easy, and free of access. Your ship may ride securely at single anchor
in its waters, while the bay remains free from ice.
The Kerguelens possess hundreds of other fjords. Their coasts are
notched and ragged, especially in the parts between the north and the
south-east, where little islets abound. The soil, of volcanic origin, is
composed of quartz, mixed with a bluish stone. In summer it is covered
with green mosses, grey lichens, various hardy plants, especially wild
saxifrage. Only one edible plant grows there, a kind of cabbage, not
found anywhere else, and very bitter of flavour. Great flocks of royal
and other penguins people these islets, finding good lodging on their
rocky and mossy surface. These stupid birds, in their yellow and white
feathers, with their heads thrown back and their wings like the sleeves
of a monastic habit, look, at a distance, like monks in single file
walking in procession along the beach.
The islands afford refuge to numbers of sea-calves, seals, and
sea-elephants. The taking of those amphibious animals either on land or
from the sea is profitable, and may lead to a trade which will bring a
large number of vessels into these waters.

On the day already mentioned, I was accosted while strolling on the
port by mine host of mine inn.
"Unless I am much mistaken, time is beginning to seem very long to
you, Mr. Jeorling?"
The speaker was a big tall American who kept the only inn on the port.
"If you will not be offended, Mr. Atkins, I will acknowledge that I do
find it long."
"Of course I won't be offended. Am I not as well used to answers of
that kind as the rocks of the Cape to the rollers?"
"And you resist them equally well."
"Of course. From the day of your arrival at Christmas Harbour, when
you came to the Green Cormorant, I said to myself that in a fortnight, if
not in a week, you would have enough of it, and would be sorry you
had landed in the Kerguelens."
"No, indeed, Mr. Atkins; I never regret anything I have done."
"That's a good habit, sir."
"Besides, I have gained knowledge by observing curious things here. I
have crossed the rolling plains, covered with hard stringy mosses, and I
shall take away curious mineralogical and geological specimens with
me. I have gone sealing, and taken sea-calves with your people. I have
visited the rookeries where the penguin