TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 619 



there is more open water in the direction of Grinnell's Land and Smith's Sound 

 than in others, and that there are also years comparatively favourable for the 

 northward route following the lead of Franz-Josef Land ; and there seem now to 

 be only two plans, one nearly as hopeless as the other, to chose between in any 

 future attempt — either to establish several permanent Polar stations, as proposed 

 by Lieut. Weyprecht, and already initiated at one point, so far as preliminaries are 

 concerned, by Captain Tyson and Captain Howgate, and to seize the opportunity 

 of running north in early autumn from the station where the sea appears most 

 open ; or to run as far north as possible at enormous expense, with a great force of 

 men and abundance of provisions and paraffin oil, and push northwards during the 

 arctic winter by a chain of communicating stations with ice-built refuge huts. It 

 seems possible' that in a cold season, with the pack in the condition in which 

 Markham found it in 1876, some progress might be made in this way, if it were 

 conceivable that the end to be gained was worth the expenditure of so much 

 labour and treasure. 



The. Antarctic Regions. — But little progress has been made during the last 

 quarter of a century in the actual investigation of the conditions of that vast 

 region which lies within the parallel of 70° S. Some additional knowledge has 

 been acquired, and the light which recent inquiries have thrown upon the general 

 plan of ocean circulation and the physical properties of ice, have given a new 

 direction to what must partake for some time to come of the nature of 

 speculation. 



From information derived from all sources up to the present time, it may be 

 gathered that the impenetrated area of about 4,700,000 square miles surrounding 

 the South Pole is by no means certainly a continuous " Antarctic continent," but 

 that it-consists much more probably partly of comparatively low continental land, 

 and partly of a congeries of continental (not oceanic) islands, bridged between and 

 combined, and covered to the-depth of about 1400 feet, by a continuous ice-cap ; with 

 here and there somewhat elevated continental chains, such as the groups of land 

 between 55° and 95° ~W\, including Peter the Great Island and Alexander Land, 

 discovered by Billingshausen in 1821, Graham Land and Adelaide Island, 

 discovered by Biscol in 1832, and Louis Philippe Land by D'Urville in 1838, and 

 at least one majestic modern volcanie range discovered by Ross in 1841 and 1842, 

 stretching from Balleny Island to a latitude of 78° S., and rising to a height of 

 15,000 feet. It seems, so far as is at present known, that the whole of the 

 antarctic land, low and high, as well as the ice-cap of which a portion of the 

 continuous continent may consist, is bordered to some distance by a fringe of ice, 

 which is bounded to seaward by a perpendicular ice-cliff, averaging 230 feet in 

 height above the sea-level. Outside the cliff njloe, which attains near the barrier 

 a thickness of about 20 feet and in some places, by piling a considerably greater 

 thickness, extends northwards in winter to a distance varying according to its 

 position with reference to the southward-trending branches of the equatorial 

 current ; and this floe is replaced in summer by a heavy drifting pack with 

 scattered ice-bergs. Navigating the Antarctic Sea in the southern summer, the 

 onlv season when such navigation is possible, it has been the opinion of almost all 

 explorers, that after forcing a passage through an outer belt of a heavy pack and 

 ice-bergs, moving as a rule to the north-westward, and thus fanning out from the 

 ice-cliff in obedience to the prevailing south-easterly winds, a band of compara- 

 tively clear water is to be found within. 



Several considerations appear to me to be in favour of the view that the area 

 round the South Pole is broken up and not continuous land. For example, if we 

 look at a general ice-chart we find that the sea is comparatively free from ice- 

 bergs, and that the deepest notches occur in the " Antarctic Continent " at three 

 points, each a little to the eastward of south of one of the great land masses. 

 Opposite each of these notches a branch of the equatorial current is deflected south- 

 wards by the land, and is almost merged in the great drift-current which sweeps 

 round the world in the Southern Sea before the westerly anti-trades. But while the 

 greater portion of the Brazilian current, the East Australian current, and the 

 southern part of the Agulhas current, are thus merged, they are not entirely lost ;. 



