332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



demonstration ; indeed, the fact that such a large mass of appar- 

 ently continuous ice exists circumpolarly speaks against the 

 conclusion, and it is probably the one most significant circum- 

 stance which has led to favor the view of continentality. It must 

 be observed, however, that the continuousness of the so-called 

 antarctic continent rests upon somewhat insecure and far from 

 confirmatory evidence. The open sea (with only three ice islands 

 visible from the mast) that confronted Weddell at the seventy- 

 fourth degree of latitude speaks volumes in its, own behalf, and 

 is evidence of a kind which is rather strengthened than other- 

 wise as proving the insularity of the ice by the subsequent 

 findings of Biscoe, D'Urville, Ross, and Grant, who found it im- 

 possible to penetrate to within eight hundred or a thousand miles 

 of the position reached by Weddell. 



In the same year with Weddell, Captain Benjamin Morrell, Jr., 

 sailing from New York, reached in Weddell's track (March 14th), 

 latitude 70 14' south, and he also describes the sea as being " en- 

 tirely free of field ice," and stated that " there were not more than 

 a dozen ice islands in sight. At the same time the temperature 

 both of the air and the water was at least thirteen degrees higher 

 (more mild) than we had ever found it between the parallels of 

 sixty aad sixty-two south. We were now in latitude 70 14' south, 

 and the temperature of the air was 47, and that of the water 

 44."* Morrell significantly adds, " I have several times passed 

 within the Antarctic Circle, on different meridians, and have 

 uniformly found the temperature both of the air and the water 

 to become more and more mild the farther I advanced beyond 

 the sixty-fifth degree of south latitude"; and further: "I regret 

 extremely that circumstances would not permit me to proceed 

 farther south, when I was in latitude 70 14' south, on Friday, 

 the 14th day of March, 1823, as I should then have been able, 

 without the least doubt, to penetrate as far as the eighty-fifth de- 

 gree of south latitude " {op. cit., page 67). 



Not much weight can be attached to the latter part of this 

 statement, as it is well the experience of polar navigators how 

 suddenly the presumably "open seas" close up; yet it would be 

 nothing short of an assumption to place a barrier where it has in 

 fact not been seen to exist. The circumstance that navigators 

 who have followed Morrell found impenetrable barriers north of 

 Weddell's and Morrell's positions is no evidence of what lies 

 southward of them, and so far as anything that we now know of to 

 the contrary. King George IV Sea may extend quite to or even 

 across the pole. Both Weddell and Morrell experienced winds 

 from the south in this water; the former, writing on the 18th of 



* Morrell. A Narrative of Four Vojages to the South Sea, 1832, p. 66, 



