140 THE ANTARCTIC. 



latterly taken up another theory, holding that South 

 Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands misrht be 

 links in a chain extending to the Dirk Gerritz Archi- 

 pelago from the South American Cordilleras. The con- 

 ception is so interesting that it is worthy some attention, 

 more especially as many circumstances seem to point to 

 an intimate connection between the two regions. 



It is well known that the west coast of South America 

 is formed by a gigantic chain of mountains, the Andes or 

 Cordilleras. These are two parallel chains of corrugated, 

 rocky strata, extending from north to south, of which 

 the westernmost, consisting of rock belonging to a later 

 geological period, forms a chain of rocky islets off the 

 Chili coast from Puerto Montt, while the eastern, con- 

 siderably older and more elevated, forms the true crest 

 or dorsum of the double chain. In the region of the 

 western outlet of the Straits of Magellan, however, the 

 outer chain diverges from its previous direction of north 

 to south, towards the south-east, and terminates, after 

 running due east and E.N.E., in the rocky Cape of 

 St. John at the eastern end of Staaten Island. According 

 to E. Suess the whole range enclosing Tierra del Fuego 

 and forming the belt of islands off its coast, is a continua- 

 tion of the western mountain range, and not a continuation 

 of the main range of the Cordilleras. It has just been stated 

 that this ends in Staaten Island, but if we examine a more 

 detailed map — best of all, a sea-chart — we find in the 

 extension of the island east and north-east, and at a 

 comparatively small distance from it, a widely extended 

 submarine bank, Burdwood Bank, over which the waters 

 are less than 600 feet deep and diminish to only 140 

 feet, while half way between Staaten Island and the bank, 

 a depth of 1,250 feet has been sounded. The principal 

 direction of Burdwood Bank is from west to east, and 

 extends perhaps 250 miles, while its breadth at its widest 

 is approximately only forty-five miles. It seems more 



