169 
AMONG- GLACIEES EECENT AND EXTINCT. 
By the Key. W. S. SYMONDS, F.G.S. 
I F we would see King Frost on his throne, we must travel to 
the Arctic or Antarctic regions. Of the latter little is 
known, save that there are mountains rising to the height of 
15,000 feet, ‘that the Antarctic continent is at present ice-bound 
and going through a glacial epoch, and that ships are stopped 
by pack-ice before reaching the 70th degree of latitude. Victoria. 
Land, which extends from 71° to 79° south latitude, was ascer- 
tained by the exploring expedition of Sir James Eoss (1841) 
to be fringed by an enormous barrier of ice ; while the inland 
country rises from 4,000 to 15,000 feet above the sea, as in 
Mount Melbourne, and the crater of Mount Erebus is elevated 
to the height of 12,000 feet. Graham’s and Enderby’s Lands, 
in the Antarctic regions (lat. 64° and 68° S.), are situated 
in the same parallels of latitude as are those regions of the 
northern hemisphere which are inhabited by man and herds of 
wild animals ; but the Antarctic lands are not known to possess 
a single land animal, and are wild, wintry, and desolate in the 
extreme. Frost reigns everywhere ! In the Arctic regions of 
the distant North voyagers have explored much the seas and 
border lands — the home of Arctic men, and the abode of the 
musk ox, the polar bear, the walrus, and the reindeer. 
The accounts of Greenland are remarkable. Some travellers 
who have penetrated a few miles into the interior of southern 
Greenland describe it as occupied by one vast glacier, and state 
that in 70° N. the land of the interior is covered by one vast 
ice-sheet of unknown depth, which conceals and obliterates all 
indications of hill and valley. This vast mass of inland ice is 
in constant motion, creeping and advancing slowly, but with 
different velocity, in different places towards the sea. Near 
the sea it presents “ ice-walls ” rising sometimes to the height 
of 3,000 feet, and from these break off the iceberg and icefloe, 
with a crashing and then a roar like the discharge of a park 
of artillery. Some of the bergs ground in the fiords and break 
up slowly, others sail off to the ocean, sometimes rising to the. 
