40 BALCH— WHY AMERICA SHOULD [April 22, 



disposed of Wilkes Land and that it must be expurgated from the 

 charts. But as Captain Scott did not go to Wilkes Land, his ukase 

 about it, which is really nothing but a reflex of Sir Clements R. 

 Markham's anti- American prejudices, will be politely pigeonholed 

 by the douma of world geographers. Captain Scott is also quite 

 unconscious of the fact that Hudson Land may easily be fifty or 

 one hundred miles further south than Wilkes supposed, and that 

 even if this is so, it would not in the least invalidate Wilkes's 

 discovery. 



Captain Scott's chart shows his track towards Wilkes Land and 

 his turn away from it. Scott admits that he was on the continental 

 shelf, because he took soundings four times in shallow waters. But 

 there is a curious fact connected with these four soundings. In 

 Scott's book they are given as 250 fathoms, 254 fathoms, 245 fath- 

 oms, and 260 fathoms ; but on Scott's chart they are given as 256, 

 354 y. m., 248 m., 264 m. Not only does Scott disagree with him- 

 self about these soundings, but he disagrees with Lieutenant Armi- 

 tage, his second in command, who in his book^- puts down these 

 soundings as 256 fathoms, 354 fathoms, 284 fathoms, and 264 fath- 

 oms, and says : " Although we did not see land, our soundings 

 indicated that it was not very far off." Moreover Scott and Armi- 

 tage also disagree about the weather. Scott says : " The sky has 

 been dull, but the horizon quite clear; we could have seen land 

 at a great distance ; " but Armitage says : " The weather was not 

 the kind in which one could see any great distance." It is to be 

 hoped that Captain Scott's other observations are less contradictory 

 than those he made near Wilkes Land, whose proximity apparently 

 affected his observing powers. 



Probably, however, the most curious fact in regard to Sir J. C. 

 Ross's and Captain Scott's decision to expurgate Wilkes Land out 

 of the world, is that the expeditions which they respectively com- 

 manded proved absolutely the existence of Wilkes Land. For they 

 discovered and explored Victoria Land. And Victoria Land, a long 

 range of high mountains, fronting to the east on Ross Sea and the 

 Great Ice Barrier, is backed on the west by an ice cap some 9,000 

 feet in thickness. Now this ice cap, the main plateau of East Ant- 



" " Two Years in the Antarctic." 



