president’s ADDRESS — SECTION C. 
85 
thick; we could hear the sea roaring through and on them, and hear 
the ice grinding one against the other. Sometimes you would hear 
loud reports like an 80-ton gun being fired, but we groped along, as it 
were, in the dark, hard up and hard down to clear one after the other. 
By this time the water was quite smooth, like being in a dock, and 
then we discovered one large one ahead. We sailed eight miles alongside 
of this, but did not see the end, and then another appeared ahead, so I 
had to go between them after a while with ice on both sides. As we 
sailed slowly along, all eyes watching for a passage, soon the fog lifted, 
and we saw a narrow passage about 1,000 feet wide, with ice on either 
side 400 feet high. As we cleared the passage it was quite clear, and 
from cross bearings and from distance run I found one side to be 19 J 
miles long, quite flat.” 
The iceberg considered to be 1,000 feet high must surely have 
been of irregular shape, it its height was not over-estimated, as, if 
rectangular, it would have needed about 1,500 fathoms of sea water to 
float it, and its total thickness would have been 10,000 feet. Captain 
Woodget presumably could not have been much mistaken in his 
calculations as to the height of the huge tabular berg 19£ miles long 
being 400 feet, as be passed within a few hundred feet of the ice- 
cliffs which bounded it. He does not, however, state that he took 
any angular measurements of its height. If his estimate was correct, 
this iceberg must have been about 4,000 feet thick. 
A strong current carries the bergs to the east-north-east after 
they leave Cape Horn, the current being due partly to the strong 
west winds known as the ‘‘Boaring Forties, ” or “Brave West Winds,” 
to the south of the anti-cyclone belt, partly to the circulation set up 
by the differential heating by the sun of the water at the equator as 
compared with that near the poles. Between Cape Horn aud the 
Cape of Good Hope this easterly current is pulled northwards until it 
divides at the Cape, where part of it flows northwards along the west 
coast of Africa as the Benguela current, while part continues easterly 
from the Cape of Good Hope towards Australia. It will be noticed, 
however, that the line limiting the drift of icebergs northwards is (east 
of the Cape) pushed down somewhat to the south by the warm water 
of the Agulhas current. 
That large icebergs are still met with for a considerable distance 
to the E.S.E. of the Cape of Good Hope is shown by the narrative 
supplied by the captain of the steel barque “ Lodore.”* The first ice 
was seen by those in the “ Lodore ” in lat. 45° S., long. 20° E., and 
the bergs are stated to have been from 500 to 800 feet high, and to 
have been met with at intervals for a distance of 1,500 miles from the 
spot mentioned towards Australia, the last being seen in long 40° E. 
It cannot, of course, be proved that any of these icebergs have come 
from a longitude west of Cape Horn, as some of them may have been 
derived from the’ ice harrier anywhere between Graham Land and the 
so-called Termination Land of Wilkes. 
As the south-w r est extremity of Australia is approached, part of 
the great easterly ocean current turns northwards along the west 
coast of Australia, just as the Benguela current does on the west coast 
of Africa. 
* The Daily Telegraph , Sydney, 19th February, 1894, p. 7. 
