TBANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 797 



nobly.' The recent establishment of a Geographical Society of Australasia pro- 

 mises that many adventurous private explorations, little known and soon forgotten, 

 will hereafter contribute to a better knowledge of that vast interior. 



The reported outbreak of a new volcano in the northern part of West Australia, 

 on August 25, 1883, in connection with the great eruption of the Sunda Straits, has 

 not, as far as I know, been verified ; but the graphic description of the natives : ' Big 

 mountain burn up. He big one sick. Throw him up red stuff, it run down side and burn 

 down grass and trees,' ' seems to leave little doubt of the reality of the occurrence. 



15. The International Circumpolar expeditions have added, perhaps, to local 

 knowledge, especially as regards the climate and means of supporting life at various 

 stations; but not much, so far as reported, to geography generally. To this 

 remark, however, a brilliant exception must be made, on the intelligence flashed 

 through the telegraph while these lines are passing through the press. The dis- 

 tinction of the nearest approach to the North Pole yet made by man has been won 

 by the late Lieutenant Lockwood and Sergeant Brainerd, of Lieutenant Greely's 

 expedition. They reached, on May 13, 1882, an island not before known, in lat. 

 83° 24' N., long. 44° 5' W., now named after its discoverer. This is four or five 

 miles beyond Captain Markkam's furthest point (83° 20' N.), and it appears to be 

 by no means the only geographical achievement which in some measure rewards 

 the painful sufferings and losses of the party. Lieutenant P. H. Ray, U.S.A., has 

 also rectified many details of the map about Point Barrow, and discovered a range 

 of hills which he has named the Meade Mountains, running east from Cape Lis- 

 burne, from which at least two streams, unmarked, flow into the Polar Sea. We 

 may expect similar service from the Italian parties at Patagonia, and from the 

 Germans in South Georgia. 



16. There are few particulars in which the best atlases of the present day differ 

 more from those published twenty-five years ago, than in the information they 

 give us respecting the submerged portions of the globe. The British Islands, with 

 the fifty and one hundred-fathom lines of soundings drawn round them, seem to 

 bear a different relation to each olher and to the Continent than they did before. 

 The geography of the bed of the ocean is scarcely less interesting than that of the 

 continents, or less important to a knowledge of terrestrial physics. Since the 

 celebrated voyage of II. M.S. ' Challenger,' no marine researches have been more 

 fruitful of results than those of the 'Talisman' and the 'Dacia.' The first was 

 employed last year by the French Government to examine the Atlantic coasts 

 from llochefort "to Senegal, and to investigate the hydrography and natural history 

 of the Cape Verde, Canary, and Azores archipelagos. The other ship, with her 

 Companion the ' International,' was a private adventure, with the commercial 

 purpose of ascertaining the best line for a submarine telegraph from Spain to the 

 Canaries. These two last made some 550 soundings, and discovered three shoals, 

 one of them with less than 50 fathoms of water over it, between the continent 

 of Africa and the islands. If we draw a circle passing through Cape Mogador, 

 Teneriffe, and Funchal, its centre will mark very nearly this submarine elevation ; 

 the other two lie to the north of it. The ' Talisman ' found in mid-ocean but 

 1,640 fathoms, among soundings previously set down as over 2,000 fathoms. Our 

 knowledge then of the bed of the Atlantic, and of the changes of depth it may 

 be undergoing, is but in its infancy; and we have only to reflect what sort of 

 orographic map of Europe we could hope to draw, by sounding lines dropped 

 a hundred miles apart from the highest clouds, to be conscious of its imperfection. 

 But this knowledge is accumulating, and whether revealing at one moment a pro- 

 found abyss, or at another an unsuspected summit : marvels of life, form, and 

 colour, or new and pregnant facts of distribution ; it promises for a long time 

 to come to furnish inexhaustible interest. 



17. If railways are features of a less purely geographical interest than the great 

 interoceanic canals which dissever continents, they are not less important to the 

 traveller; and whether commercial, political, or strategic motives have most 

 influenced their construction, they not less fulfil the beneficent purpose of binding 

 men in closer ties. It is not necessary that I should speak to you of the Canada 



• Kature, February 21, 1884. 



