328 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



position (in a north- and-soutli displacement) by hundreds of miles. 

 Thus, in approximately the meridian in which, in 1823, Weddell 

 reached the surprisingly high latitude of 74 15' south, the famous 

 navigator Cook, nearly half a century earlier, was stopped in lati- 

 tude 60 ; and in 1855 Captain Grant found himself confronted by 

 the impenetrable flat-topped barrier, three hundred to five hun- 

 dred ( ?) feet in height, in latitude 56 50' 40 west longitude. Both 

 of the arguments here stated have their force, but in how far they 

 prove their case future exploration or penetration alone can show. 

 lee movements similar to those of the south take place in the 

 arctic regions, and they are largely determined by the winds and 

 currents which sweep over or govern a virtually open sea ; but it 

 should be noted that the ice pack of the north is very different 

 from what is commonly designated the " barrier " of the south, 

 with its stupendous wall precipices of one hundred and fifty to 

 three hundred (or five hundred ?) feet elevation ; such fronts in 

 the arctic regions belong exclusively to isolated icebergs or to 

 the terminal faces of ice sheets (glaciers) which debouch into the 

 sea and terminate at no great distance from the mainland. The 

 bounding ice walls of the northern face of Melville Bay are ex- 

 amples of this kind. The main pack, or that which blocks navi- 

 gation in the north, is a surface, regular or irregular, which rises 

 but little above the level of the sea, except where it is tossed up 

 into shingles and hummocks, or into those irregular eminences 

 which have been by some identified with the so-called " palseo- 

 crystic " ice. On the other hand, a counterpart of the southern 

 barriers is to be found in the land terminations of some of the 

 giant glaciers of the interior, whose " Chinese walls " have been 

 so graphically described in the explorations of Grinnell and Grant 

 Lands (Greely). 



It is unfortunate that the term "Antarctic Barrier" should 

 ever have come into use, as it has been made to cover a variety of 

 structures, and has led to confusion in the interpretation of the 

 special features which it designates. There is no question, as 

 Murray has pointed out, that much of the so-called "barrier" of 

 Wilkes is merely ordinary pack ice some of it, indeed, in the 

 brash or broken condition ; therefore, considerable allowance 

 must be made in the acceptance of that assumed girdle which is 

 supposed to define a continent. A point that probably favors the 

 (Petermannian) view of partially oceanic conditions within the 

 ice is the presence of strong northwardly trending currents, which 

 have been observed by both earlier and later explorers. Thus, at 

 his farthest southing, in 1894-95, in latitude 74 10', Captain Kris- 

 tensen, of the Antarctic, met with such currents trending al- 

 most due northward opposite Victoria Land, and the question 

 naturally suggests itself. Is this a direct current, or one that is 



