THE A^'TARCTIC REGIONS AXD THEIR CLmATOLOGY. 407 



itself that information might be gathered from them concerning 

 antarctic regions which would be highly useful to any future 

 expedition thitherward. 



877. AntarctiG currents. — The conditions required for Gulf- 

 Stream like currents, or a rapid flow and reflow of equatorial 

 and polar waters between the torrid and the frigid zones, as in 

 the northern hemisphere, are not to be found about the antarctic 

 regions. Of all the currents that come from those regions, 

 Humboldt's current is by far the most majestic. It is believed 

 also to be the least sluggish of them all. It certainly conveys the 

 coldest water thence to the torrid zone ; and yet it appears not 

 to come from a nursery of icebergs, for in its line of march fewer 

 icebergs are found than are encountered on the same parallels 

 between other meridians, but where feebler currents flow. From 

 the arctic regions the strongest currents bring down the most 

 icebergs ; not so from the antarctic. Hence the inference that, 

 thouo-h icebergs have been encountered off the shores of the 

 antarctic continent wherever they have been approached, yet it 

 is only those which have been launched from particular points of 

 that frost-bound coast which are stout enough to bear transporta- 

 tion to the parallel of 40^ south. In Humboldt's current it is 

 rare to see an iceberg as far from the pole as the parallel of the 

 fifty-fifth degree of south latitude ; but off the Cape of Good 

 Hope on one side of the Atlantic, and Cape Corrientes on the 

 other, antarctic icebergs are sometimes seen as far as the parallel 

 of 35°, often as far as 40^ Lieutenants AVarley and Young, after 

 having examined the logs of 1843 ships cruising on the polar 

 side of 35° S., report the gTcat antarctic ice-drift to be towards 

 the Falkland Islands on one hand, and the Cape of Good Hope 

 on the other. 



878. Antarctic explorations demanded.— These facts and the 

 stories of the icebergs are very suggestive. In mute eloquence 

 and with great power they plead the cause of antarctic explora- 

 tion. Within the periphery of that circle is included an area 

 equal in extent to one-sixth part of the entire land surface of our 

 planet.* Most of this immense area is as unknown to the in- 

 habitants of the earth as is the interior of one of Jupiter's satel- 

 lites. With the appliances of steam to aid us, with the lights 

 of science to guide us, it would be a reproach to the world to 



The area of the antarctic circle is 8,155,000 square miles. 



2 II 2 



