Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/477

Rh the Cape of Good Hope to Melbourne, and from Melbourne to Cape Horn, scarcely ever venture, except while passing Cape Horn, to go on the polar side of 55° S. The fear of icebergs deters them. These may be seen there drifting up towards the equator in large numbers and large masses all the year round. I have encountered them myself as high up as the parallel of 37°—8° S. The belt of ocean that encircles this globe on the polar side of 55° S. is never free from icebergs. They are found in all parts of it the year round. Many of them are miles in extent and hundreds of feet thick. The area on the polar side of the 55th parallel of south latitude comprehends a space of 17,784,600 square miles. The nursery for the bergs, to fill such a field, must be an immense one; such a nursery cannot be on the sea, for icebergs require to be fastened firmly to the shore until they attain full size. They therefore, in their mute way, are loud with evidence in favour of antarctic shore lines of great extent, of deep bays where they may be formed, and of lofty cliffs whence they may be launched.

840. A physical law concerning the distribution of land and water.—There is another physical circumstance which obtains generally with regard to the distribution of land and water over the surface of the earth, and which, as far as it goes, seems to favour the hypothesis of much land about the south pole; and that circumstance is this : It seems to be a physical necessity that land should not be antipodal to land. Except a small portion of South America and Asia, land is always opposite to water. Mr. Gardner has called attention to the fact that only one twenty-seventh part of the land is antipodal to land. The belief is, that on the polar side of 70° north we have mostly water, not land. This law of distribution, so far as it applies, is in favour of land in the opposite zone. Finally, geographers are agreed that, irrespective of the particularized facts and phenomena which we have been considering, the probabilities are in favour of an antarctic continent rather than of an antarctic ocean.

841. Dr. Jilek.—"There is now no doubt," says Dr. Jilek, in his Lehrbuch der Oceanographie, "that around the south pole there is extended a great continent mainly within the polar circle, since, although we do not know it in its whole extent, yet the portions with which we have become acquainted, and the investigations made, furnish sufficient evidences to infer the existence of such with certainty. This southern or antarctic