460 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1908. 



represented in the " pampas " of the latter ; but Arctowski explains 

 this by the sinking of Graham Land, which would, in fact, account 

 for the direction of the coast line in recent times, so deeply pene- 

 trated by the sea.° 



POLAR LANDS SOUTH OF THE INDIAN OCEAN. 



South of the Indian Ocean and as far as the Tasmanian meridian 

 the charts of the latter part of the last century show a series of lands 

 parallel to the Polar Circle and protected by a thick barrier of ice. 

 Cook, Bellingshausen, Biscoe, Dumont d'Urville, and especially 

 Wilkes (1839-40) have described this littoral which bars access 

 to the antarctic continent, concealed, as it is, under its continental 

 glacier and almost constantly hidden by the fogs, as a ledge low 

 formed, regular, and blunt, and consequently of ancient origin. 

 Until further observations have been made, it is best to be very 

 cautious in determining the exact outline of the lands referred to, 

 but their existence seems no longer to be doubted. That land is 

 there is evidenced by the alignments of the ice banks ; by the gradual 

 shallowing of the sea as the barrier is approached, verified by the 

 Challenger^ by the Gauss ^ expedition, and by the soundings of the 

 Discovery off Wilkes Land; and finally by land debris found in the 

 icebergs and the samples of rocks dragged from the bottom. No 

 doubt Von Drygalski found no traces of Termination Land, but the 

 relocation of former marks in this region is very difficult, chiefly on 

 account of change in position of the ice banks. 



The position of Adelie Land, reached by Dumont d'Urville and 

 later by Wilkes, under the very Polar Circle, longitude 140° E. of 

 Paris, was generally acknowledged as fixed. The polar continent 

 has since been reached, photographed, surveyed on one side, and its 

 rocks classified. During their wintering in 1903 on the ice fields 

 southeast of Kerguelen, the Gauss explorers were twice able to reach, 

 in latitude 67° 20' S., a rocky summit partly free from ice and 

 marked with moraines of various ages. IMount Gauss, according 

 to Doctor Philippi, rising to nearly 350 meters, is situated near 

 the very border of the continental glacier which forms steep 

 banks above the ice fields of the coast. At a distance the profile of 

 Mount Gauss resembles a flat cone, recalling certain granitic sum- 

 mits of central France. Geological study made on the spot has 

 shown that it is composed of recent volcanic rocks ; on the summit are 



"Arctowski : Geogr. Journ., 1901, pp. 150, 353 ; 1902, p. 405. Ibid., Bull. Soc. 

 roy. beige de Geogr., 1900, p. 132. O. Nordenskjold : La Geogr., 1904, Vol. II, 

 pp. 354, 359. 



^ Vou Drygalski : Zum Koutiuent des eisigen SUdeus, p. 238. 



