THE GREAT ICE BARRIER 



173 



ward." Neither d'Urville nor Balleny 

 had any notion nor made any suggestion 

 that they were on the edge of a continent. 

 Wilkes, on the contrary, not only sighted 

 at frequent intervals some i,6oo miles of 

 this coast, but he recognized that it must 

 be part of a continent. The name he 

 gave to this land, the Antarctic Conti- 

 nent, must belong to the entire continent 

 the existence of which he revealed. 

 Some geographers have recognized that 



part of Antarctica he discovered needed 

 a special name and therefore gave 

 it the name of Wilkes Land. When it 

 is remembered that Wilkes changed the 

 conception that the Antarctic was an 

 ocean by demonstrating that it was a con- 

 tinent, the least that his discoveries de- 

 mand is that the name of Wilkes Land 

 be retained on all of Antarctica lying 

 between the longitudes of 95° and 158"* 

 east. 



THE GREAT ICE BARRIER 



By Henry Gannett 



IN his notable expedition of 1840 to 

 the Antarctic, James Ross discovered 

 a great ice clifif rising from the sea 

 to an average height of nearly 200 feet 

 and stretching from King Edward VII 

 Land to South Victoria Land, a distance 

 of about 400 nautical miles. Of its ori- 

 gin nothing was known, and, although 

 later expeditions also visited it, they 

 added little to our knowledge. It was 

 not until Scott, in 1902, and Shackleton, 

 in 1907, made their remarkable sledge 

 journeys in the interior of Antarctica 

 that the nature of the Great Ice Barrier 

 became known. 



The barrier is simply the southern 

 limit of a great sheet of ice extending 

 southward up a great bay which pene- 

 trates the land at least 300 miles and 

 possibly double that distance. Indeed, it 

 is possible that it may extend entirely 

 across, joining with Weddell Sea on the 

 opposite side and dividing Antarctica 

 into two continents. From the barrier 

 southward this bay, with a known area 

 of at least 100,000 square miles, is en- 

 tirely occupied by this ice sheet. It is 

 bordered on the west by higli mountains 

 from which stretches westward a still 

 higher plateau, which reaches an altitude 

 of over ii.oooTfeet at Shackleton's far- 

 thest southern point. The land on the 

 east side of the bay is unknown, except 

 at the point of King Edward VII Land, 



where the barrier joins it, but it also is 

 probably mountainous. 



From the high land on the west side 

 numerous glaciers de,scend to this field of 

 ice. Notable among them is that by 

 which Shackleton ascended to the sum- 

 mit of the plateau in his wonderful sledge 

 journey toward the South Pole, a gla- 

 cier 100 miles long and 50 miles wide, 

 with a descent of 8,000 feet. From the 

 east side of the bay, and especially from 

 its south end, probably other great gla- 

 ciers contribute to the great ice field. 



The name "Great Ice Barrier," origi- 

 nally applied only to the ice cliff forming 

 its northern limit, has been extended and 

 applied to the ice field itself, and even 

 to the bay which it covers. It is un- 

 necessary to say that these extensions in 

 the application of the name are inappro- 

 priate, and it is to be hoped that suitable 

 names will be selected for these features. 

 I would suggest for the ice field the name 

 of Shackleton glacier, since Shackleton 

 has made the most extensive explorations 

 of it and its surroundings ; moreover, I 

 hope to show that it is in truth a glacier, 

 although both Scott and Shackleton re- 

 fuse to accept that explanation of the 

 phenomenon. It is their belief that it 

 has been formed from snow falling upon 

 its surface much as the sea-ice of the 

 Arctic is formed. But sea-ice nowhere 

 accumulates to any such thickness as 

 this or presents an ice wall at its borders. 



