THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS. 325 



of shreds of lichen on Possession Island and on the mainland of 

 Cape Adare opposite, this being the first landing on what may 

 properly be designated mainland. Borchgrevink confirms in al- 

 most every particular the observations of Ross, and from the two 

 accounts we learn that Victoria Land is a region of lofty moun- 

 tains, largely and perhaps almost entirely of a volcanic nature, 

 and almost entirely buried within a mantle of snow and ice. The 

 covering of snow and ice is not sufficiently massive to obliterate 

 the relief of the land differing in this respect from the interior 

 of Greenland and the contours of valley and mountain are well 

 and clearly retained. Giant glaciers descend toward and into the 

 sea, terminating in vertical cliffs of ice of one hundred, one hun- 

 dred and fifty, and two hundred feet in height. A vast ice barrier 

 of vertical cliffs, whether of glacial formation or otherwise, and 

 retaining a nearly uniform elevation of one hundred and fifty to 

 two hundred and fifty feet with a reduction at one point to nearly 

 eighty feet (or less) defines a considerable part of the north and 

 south coast line ; beyond the seventy-eighth parallel of latitude 

 this ice barrier trends eastward for at least three hundred miles, 

 but it is not known that any approximate coast line lies back 

 of it with a similar trend. 



Westward of the one hundred and seventieth parallel of east 

 longitude, and situated close upon the Antarctic Circle now to the 

 south of it, then to the north and forming, as it were, a continu- 

 ation of Victoria Land through some seventy degrees of longitude, 

 are a number of designated land patches (such as Clarie Land, 

 Ad^lie Land, Sabrina Land), which, with the uniting ice-cliff bar- 

 riers, constitute the coast line of the antarctic continent of 

 Wilkes sometimes also known as Wilkes Land. How much of 

 this continuous frontage of some two thousand miles is really 

 land no one knows. The mountain undulations mark some parts 

 as being indisputably such ; yet a reasonable doubt may be enter- 

 tained regarding some of the presumed land masses of Wilkes, 

 and it is known that one of his mountain chains was sailed over 

 by Ross in the region of the Bellany Islands. ' A reference like- 

 wise to the admirable illustration of Clarie Land in D'Urville's 

 monumental work on The South Polar Regions makes one suspi- 

 cious as to the true nature of this cote, and forces one to inquire 

 if it is not merely a portion of the great Antarctic Barrier. 



Still farther west lie Kemp Land (probably island) and Enderby 

 Land or Island, and finally, almost due south of the South Amer- 

 ican continent, the complex of Graham and Palmer Lands, with 

 Terre Louis Philippe, Isle Joinville, and the more recently dis- 

 covered or named King Oscar II Land, which was traced in 1893 

 by Larsen to nearly the sixty-ninth parallel of latitude, he him- 

 self attaining G8 10'. This series of lands, which are closely con- 



