Around the 182os intensive fur seal hunting took place in the archipelago around the Antarctic Peninsula, leading to the discovery of a number of islands and the tip of the Peninsula. [...] Towards the end of the century there was again a growing interest in the South Polar regions, resulting in the foundation of Antarctic Committees in the United Kingdom and Australasia inter alia. [...] The latter in particular aroused the interest of the scientific community since it had earlier been thought that the rigour of the Antarctic winter was fatal to all vegetable life. [...] Undoubtedly his Antarctic report to the 6th International Geographical Congress in London in 1895 was one of the highlights of the meeting, which adopted a resolution that the exploration of the Antarctic regions should be given top priority. [...] Dogs were used for the first time in the Antarctic, and his expedition was the first to explore the Ross Ice Shelf and to describe the Bay of Whales (Hvalbukta) by which Amundsen, Byrd and others made their later entries into the continent.