258 



GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS. 



iifty days, the longest period that any ship, with 

 the* exception of the Belgica, had been imprisoned 

 in that pack. At noon on Jan. 12, 1899, a faint 

 gray light sighted on the port bow proved to be 

 land. The captain at first considered it to be some 

 undiscovered island, but when a dull volume of 

 smoke was perceived rising from the east end it 

 was decided to be one of the Balleny Islands, on 

 which Ross mentioned the presence of an active 

 volcano. On Jan. 28 the rugged outline of a 

 mountainous land was made out to the south, 

 and this was with little doubt one of the Russell 

 Islands discovered by Sir James Ross in 1841. 

 These, it had been suggested, were identical with 

 the Balleny Islands, but the two groups were now 

 proved to be quite distinct. On Feb. 17 Cape 

 Adare (latitude 71 18' south) was reached. It 

 was of a very dark basaltic appearance, and had 

 scarcely any "snow upon it, probably owing to the 

 steepness and smoothness of its sides and its ex- 

 posure to the northeast winds. The ' Dunraven 

 Rocks ' noted by Ross as lying off this cape, over 

 which seas were breaking when he observed them-, 

 apparently had no existence. Possibly he mis- 

 took a large, rotten, submerged mass of ice for 

 rocks. A party landed on a platform of detritus, 

 20 feet above water-level and 180 acres in area, 

 formed of boulders, pebbles, and angular masses 

 of debris from the mountains. Alternate expan- 

 sions and contractions, caused by seasonal and 

 rapid daily changes in temperature which in the 

 middle of winter they had known to alter by 80 

 F. in a few hours were the principal cause of 

 the disintegration of the rocks. All over this 

 platform were the bleached remains of thousands 

 of penguins, mostly young birds, that had suc- 

 cumbed to the severity of the climate; thousands 

 of years hence these remains might be available 

 as a proof of what once existed in those regions, 

 now just habitable, then, perhaps, not at all. 

 The statement to the effect that at Cape Adare 

 the intercalation of ice and lava had been ob- 

 served, and that at one place the lava flow ap- 

 peared quite fresh, had been widely accepted as 

 authentic, but it was absolutely without founda- 

 tion, for there was no sign of such intercalation 

 in the old eruptive formation at Cape Adare or 

 anywhere else along the coasts of South Victoria 

 Land, unless it were in the vicinity of Mount Ere- 

 bus. Next year, on Feb. 2, the ship steamed 

 southward along the coast, and next morning a 

 landing was effected on the western side of Pos- 

 session Island, about 3 miles in diameter,, the 

 largest of a small group. On Feb. 6 Mount Mel- 

 bourne was sighted to the west-southwest, ris- 

 ing gradually out of the sea to a height of nearly 

 8,000 feet. All the afternoon they steamed down 

 Wood Bay, which ran much farther inland than 

 indicated in Ross's chart. At the bottom was a 

 long inlet which afforded a capital harbor. A 

 better spot for winter quarters than a pebbly 

 bank there, larger than that at Cape Adare, and 

 occupied by penguins and skuagulls, it would 

 be difficult to find in those latitudes. This part of 

 the coast was actually the closest approach to 

 the south magnetic pole, which lay almost due 

 west of Wood Bay, 200 or 300 miles distant. On 

 Feb. 9 they landed without difficulty on Franklin 

 island, and then steered straight for Mount Ter- 

 ror ; Cape Crozier and Cape Bird with the foot of 

 Mounts Erebus and Terror were sighted on the 

 10th. Mount Terror was very lofty, but scarcely 

 looked the 10,884 feet assigned to it by Ross. Its 

 eastern side was almost free from snow, and at 

 its foot was a rookery occupied by millions of 

 penguins, and far larger than any they had pre- 

 viously seen. The foot of the mountain was low, 



and there was a kind of miniature plateau, at 

 which a party could possibly spend a winter. 

 After passing Cape Crozier, Ross's great ice-bar- 

 rier came into view, stretching away out of sight 

 to the east. Its most surprising characteristics 

 were its unbroken uniformity, vast extent, and 

 the entire absence of visible land from its edge; it 

 was a perpendicular wall of ice 100 feet to 200 feet 

 high, rising suddenly out of an ocean whose depth 

 was measured by hundreds of fathoms. In con- 

 clusion, M. Bernacchi dismissed as absurd the 

 theory that this barrier was the front of a huge 

 polar ice-cap, and suggested that it was rather a 

 huge tongue of ice flowing eastward perhaps 500 

 miles, and possibly not more than 50 miles in 

 width, so that if the party that landed from the 

 Southern Cross on the barrier in latitude 78 34' 

 south and longitude 164 32' west on Feb. 17, 

 1900, had continued their journey south, they 

 might have come to an open sea on the other 

 side." 



America. For the purpose of determining the 

 boundaries of the territorial acquisitions of the 

 United States and settling disputed points, so as 

 to bring about uniformity of statement by the de- 

 partments of the Government in their publica- 

 tions, the director of the census appointed a 

 commission consisting of Walter F. Willcox, chief 

 statistician for methods and results, Census Bu- 

 reau; Andrew H. Allen, librarian of the State De- 

 partment; O. H. Tittman, superintendent of the 

 Coast Survey; Henry Gannett, chief geographer of 

 the geological service; and M. T. Lee Phillips, 

 chief of the division of maps and charts of the 

 Library of Congress. Except on one point, they 

 were unanimous in their conclusions. By a ma- 

 jority vote the territory west of the Florida pur- 

 chase, south of the States of Mississippi and Ala- 

 bama, and east of the Louisiana purchase was 

 declared to have been in dispute with Spain from 

 1803 to 1819, in which latter year Florida was 

 bought from Spain. The main conclusions of the 

 commission are summarized as follows: 



1. The region between the Mississippi river and 

 Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the west, 

 and the Perdido river to the east, should not be 

 assigned either to the Louisiana purchase or to 

 the Florida purchase, but marked with a legend 

 indicating that title to it between 1803 and 1819 

 was in dispute. 



2. The line between the Mississippi river and 

 the Lake of the Woods, separating the territory 

 of the United States prior to 1803 from the Louisi- 

 ana purchase, should be drawn from the most 

 northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods to 

 the nearest point on the Mississippi river/in Lake 

 Bemidji. 



3. The western boundary of the Louisiana pur- 

 chase between 49 and 42 north followed the 

 watershed of the Rocky Mountains; thence it ran 

 east along the parallel of 42 north to a point 

 due north of the source of the Arkansas river, and 

 thence south to that source. 



4. The northwestern boundary of Texas as an- 

 nexed extended up the principal stream of the 

 Rio Grande to its source, and thence due north to 

 the parallel of 42 north. 



5. The southern boundary of the Mexican ces- 

 sion of 1848 should be drawn from a point on the 

 Rio Grande 8 miles north of Paso, instead of from 

 one about 30 miles farther north, as is the usual 

 practise,, west 3 degrees, and thence north to the 

 first branch of Gila river. 



An interesting account is given of the explora- 

 tion of the Black Caiion of Gunnison river in 

 Colorado. A party consisting of John H. Pelton, 

 J. A. Curtis, M. F. Hovey, W. W. Torrence, and 



