PBBSIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION E. 239. 



which must be correlated to special physical conditions with- 

 in, speculation is exchanged for a confident belief that an 

 adequate reward must await the skilled explorer. The ex- 

 pected additions to the geography of the region are, of all the 

 knowledge that is to be sought for there, the least valuable. 

 "Where so many of the physical features of the country — the 

 hills, the valleys, and the drainage-lines — have been buried 

 beneath the snow of ages, a naked outline, a bare skeleton of 

 a map, is the utmost that can be delineated. Still, even such 

 knowledge as this has a distinct value ; and, as it can be 

 acquired by the explorers as they proceed about their more 

 important researches, its relatively small value ought not to 

 be admitted as a complete objection to any enterprise which 

 has other objects of importance. Our present acquaintance 

 with the geography of the region is excessively limited. Eoss 

 just viewed the coasts of Victoria Land betw^een 163° B. and 

 160'^ W. long. ; he trod its barren strand twice, but on each 

 occasion for a few minutes only. From the adjacent gulf he 

 measured the heights of its volcanoes ; and from its offing he 

 sketched the walls of its icy barrier. Wilkes traced on our 

 map a shore-line from 97° B. to 167° E. long., and he backed 

 it up with a range of mountains ; but he landed nowhere. Sub- 

 sequently Eoss sailed over the site assigned to part of this 

 land, and hove his lead 600 fathoms deep where Wilkes had 

 drawn a mountain. He tells us that the weather was so very 

 clear that had high land been w^ithin seventy miles of that 

 position he must have seen it (Eoss's Voyage, vol. i., p. 278). 

 More recently, Nares, in the" Challenger," tested another part , 

 of Wilkes's coast-line, and with a like result ; and these circum- 

 stances throw doubts upon the value of his reported dis- 

 coveries. D'Urville subsequently followed a bold shore for a 

 distance of about three hundred miles from 136° B. to 142° B. 

 long.; whilst in 67° S. lat. and between 45° B.and 60° E. long, 

 are Bnderby's and Kemp's lands. Again, there is land to the 

 south of the Horn which trends from 45° to 75° S. lat. These 

 few discontinuous coast-lines comprise all our scanty knowledge 

 of the Antarctic land. It will be seen from these facts that the 

 principal geographical problem awaiting solution 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 . 

 coast of Greenland, portions of an archipelago, smothered under 

 an overload of frozen snow, which conceals their insularity? 

 Eoss inclined to the latter view ; and he believed that a wide 

 channel leading towards the Pole existed between North Cape 

 and the Balleny Islands (Eoss's Voyage, vol. i., p. 221). 

 This view was also held by the late Sir Wyville Thomson. 

 A series of careful observations upon the local currents might 

 throw some light upon these questions. Eoss notes several 



