324 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Such land areas perhaps not in all cases positively demonstrated 

 to be distinct from sea ice are Victoria Land (due south of New 

 Zealand), Wilkes Land (not improbably a series of island eleva- 

 tions opposite Australia, and known under the various names of 

 Addlie Land, Clarie Land, Sabrina Land, etc.), and Graham Land 

 (somewhat east of south of the extremity of South America). The 

 most extended piece of coast or land line is that which has been 

 traced southward in Victoria Land by Ross from about the seven- 

 tieth to the seventy-ninth parallel of latitude, or over about six 

 hundred geographical miles. It is only here, and in Graham 

 Land (with the adjoining parts of Palmer Land, Louis Philippe 

 Land, Joinville Island, Alexander Land), that our knowledge 

 becomes at all definite. 



Ross found the whole eastern coast front of Victoria to be 

 paralleled by one or more mountain ridges of very considerable 

 elevation, and bearing upon themselves a large number of clearly 

 defined volcanic cones. Mount Melbourne, seemingly the highest 

 point (with an elevation of nearly fifteen thousand feet), is de- 

 scribed as having a prodigious summit crater. Mount Erebus 

 (12,400 feet), the most southerly of all active volcanoes, was in 

 violent eruption at the time of Ross's visit (January, 1841) ; a 

 little to the east of it (in approximately latitude 78 30' south) is 

 the extinct cone of " Terror," 10,900 feet. Beyond Mount Terror 

 the Parry Mountains, also of very considerable elevation, and 

 which continue to be the most southerly piece of land area that 

 has ever been sighted, follow the generally southern trend to at 

 least the seventy-ninth parallel of latitude, and not impossibly for 

 a long piece beyond. 



Geographers who define the contours of the presumed antarctic 

 continent usually deflect its course eastward beyond Mount Ter- 

 ror so as to make it conform to the east-and-west ice barrier which 

 barred Ross's passage farther southward ; but it is significant that 

 Ross says, " If there be land to the southward [of the barrier], it 

 must be very remote, or of much less elevation than any other 

 part of the coast we have seen, or it would have appeared above 

 the barrier." This statement becomes of special importance, be- 

 cause elsewhere the land was clearly defined by its mountains at 

 distances of ninety, one hundred and thirty, and even one hun- 

 dred and fifty miles. 



The region explored by Ross has only once been visited since 

 by Kristensen and Borchgrevink and their associates of the 

 Antarctic. The Antarctic succeeded in following the route of 

 Ross to about the seventy-fourth parallel of latitude, when, with 

 open water still to the south, a return was made, owing to an ab- 

 sence of whale supply. Few facts of any consequence were added 

 by this journey, the most important being, perhaps, the discovery 



