GREAT MOVEMENT OF THE SOUTHERN ICE. 349 



whole antarctic ocean at short intervals all through 

 the summer, so that in every way the dangers of 

 navigation and the severity of the weather, were far 

 greater in the antarctic seas than anything that has 

 been met with in a corresponding latitude in the 

 northern hemisphere. Captain Sir James Clark Ross 

 however, succeeded in penetrating as far as Lat. 

 78 4 X S., Long. 161 E. in 1841, * and since then, very 

 little has been done in the way of antarctic 

 exploration. A new South Polar expedition was 

 however proposed by an Exploration Committee at 

 Melbourne in 1890; and public subscriptions were 

 invited to make up a sum of 15,000 which was re- 

 quired for this purpose, f but the idea had to be 

 abandoned for want of funds. 



Since then the antarctic regions have been brought 

 prominently into notice by a most remarkable movement 

 of the southern ice, which appears to be of so gigantic 

 a nature that it exceeds everything of the kind that 

 has ever been recorded during historic times. It would 

 appear to be caused, almost certainly, by some vast 

 volcanic convulsion occurring in the unknown solitudes 

 beyond the great antarctic ice barrier, where it is 

 known that at least one or more active volcanoes 

 exist. It would be difficult to account in any other 

 way for the tremendous movement which has taken 

 place there amongst the ice. Bergs, or rather islands, 

 of a size which enormously exceeds anything ever 

 before heard of, have been hurled into the sea in 

 great numbers, and these masses have gradually 



* Raper's Navigation, igth Edition, 1891, p. 628. 

 f See Hayd^s Dictionary of Dates, 2Oth Edition, 1892. The matter 

 was again keenly debated in the Australian press in the spring of 1895. 



