88 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Jan. 



Early Southern voyagers had doubtless a knowledge of 

 these northern bergs, but in the southern oceans they met 

 with masses of ice incomparably larger than anything known 

 in the North, and to these they gave the name of Ice Islands, 

 or often enough went yet farther and named them as new 

 lands. Even Cook preserves the name of Ice Island in 

 describing the long tabular berg so typical of the Southern 

 Regions. 



Except in cases where they have suffered denudation or 

 have lost their stability and capsized, the shape of Antarctic 

 icebergs is uniform : they have all a flat top and wall sides, 

 and appear to have broken quietly away from some huge 

 sheet of ice of which they formed a part. In 1854 an ice- 

 berg of this description was reported as fifty miles in length 

 and 150 feet in height. Several accounts give thirty or forty 

 miles as the length, and the height has been even stated to be 

 as much as 400 feet. The longest berg reported by Ross was 

 four miles long and 150 feet in height, but he gives a greater 

 height for many others. The ' Challenger ' saw bergs of at 

 least four miles in length and 200 feet in height. The largest 

 berg we saw was aground off King Edward's Land, and we 

 estimated it as about seven miles long and 200 feet high. 

 Doubtless some of the larger dimensions here given are exag- 

 gerated, but in view of the fact that, as I hope to show, ice- 

 bergs can be detached from a fixed but floating mass of ice, 

 I see no reason why their length should be limited. 



The whole subject of Antarctic icebergs is of more than 

 purely polar or scientific interest, since they drift into more 

 northerly latitudes, and become a formidable danger in the 

 navigation of the Southern Seas. In the southern trade routes, 

 voyages would be shortened greatly by taking a high latitude, 

 but the danger of encountering these huge masses of ice has 

 recommended a longer but safer route, and of late, I under- 

 stand, the steamships of the New Zealand Company have 

 been accustomed to take a yet more northerly course for this 

 reason. 



The bergs we now saw were comparatively small, and our 



