294 ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION. 



and liovo his h'iid <»<M) fathoins deep where AVilkes had drawn a iiiomi- 

 taiii. lie tells us that the weather was so very clear that had high 

 land been within 70 miles of that position he ninst have seen it ("Koss's 

 Voyage," 1278). More recently Xares, in the Challenger, tested another 

 part of Wilkes's coastline, and with a like result; and these circum- 

 stances throw doubts upon the vahie of his reported discoveries. 

 D'Urville subsequently followed a bold shore for a distance of about 

 300 miles from 130^ E. to 142° E. longitude; whilst in 07° !S. latitude, 

 and between 45° E. and 00° E. longitude, are Enderby's and Kemp's 

 landr,. Again, there is land to the vsouth of the Horn which trends 

 from 45° to 75° S. latitude. These few discontinuous coast lines com- 

 prise all our scanty knowledge of the Antarctic land. It will be seen 

 from these facts that the principal geographical problem awaiting solu- 

 tion in these regions is the interconnection of these scattered shores. 

 The question is, do they constitute parts of a continent, or are they, 

 like the coasts of Greenland, portions of an archii)elag(), smothered under 

 an overload of frozen snow, which conceals their insularity? Koss 

 inclined to the latter view, and he believed that a wide channel leading 

 towards the Pole existed between North Cape and the Balleny Islands 

 ("Ross's Voyage," 1221). This view was also held by the late Sir 

 Wy ville Thomson. A series of careful observations upon the local cur- 

 rents might throw some light upon these questions. Ross notes several 

 such in his log. Off Possession Island a current, running southward, 

 took the ships to windward (ihi(L, 1195). Off Coulman Island another 

 drifted them in the same direction at the rate of 18 miles a day [ibid., 

 1204). A three-quarter knot noitherly current was felt off' the barrier, 

 and may have issued from beneath some part of it. Such isolated 

 observations are of little value, but they were multiplied, and were the 

 currents correlated with the winds experienced the information thus 

 obtained might enable us to detect the existence of straits, even where 

 the channels themselves are masked b^" ice barriers. 



Finally, it is calculated that the center of the polar ice-cap must be ^ 

 miles, and may be 12 miles deep, and that the material of this ice 

 mountain being viscous, its base must spread out under the crushing 

 ]»ressure of the weight of its center. The extrusive movement thus 

 set up is supposed to thrust the ice cliffs off the land at the rate of a 

 quarter of a mile per annum. These are some of the geographical 

 (ptestions whi(;h await settlement. 



In the geology of this region we have another subject replete with 

 interest. Tin; lofty volcanoes of Victoria Land must present jieculiar 

 features. Nowhere else do fire and frost divide the sway so com- 

 pletely. Ross saw Erebus belching out lava and ashes over the snow 

 and ice whi(-h coated its Hanks. This circumstance leads us to specu- 

 late on the strata that would result from the alternate fall of snow and 

 aslies during long ix-riods and nndi'r a low tem]^erature. Volcanoes 

 are built uj), as contradistinguished fi-oni other mountains, which result 



