The fascination of the polar regions for the people of southern climes has always rested on the aura of mystery created by inaccessibility and the sense of prospective freedom offered by lands that were supposedly not claimed or utilized. Later, the intensive use of Arctic lands by their aboriginal inhabitants became clearer to those southerners who took the time to live for long periods in the Arctic, especially those whose opinions were open to the reality of what they observed around them. The Antarctic did not, of course, have a resident population to influence perceptions and has thus created a very different range of interests.