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.
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