Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/493

Rh itself that information might be gathered from them concerning antarctic regions which would be highly useful to any future expedition thitherward.

877. Antarctic currents.—The conditions required for Gulf-Stream like currents, or a rapid flow and reflow of equatorial and polar waters between the torrid and the frigid zones, as in the northern hemisphere, are not to be found about the antarctic regions. Of all the currents that come from those regions, Humboldt's current is by far the most majestic. It is believed also to be the least sluggish of them all. It certainly conveys the coldest water thence to the torrid zone; and yet it appears not to come from a nursery of icebergs, for in its line of march fewer icebergs are found than are encountered on the same parallels between other meridians, but where feebler currents flow. From the arctic regions the strongest currents bring down the most icebergs; not so from the antarctic. Hence the inference that, though icebergs have been encountered off the shores of the antarctic continent wherever they have been approached, yet it is only those which have been launched from particular points of that frost-bound coast which are stout enough to bear transportation to the parallel of 40° south. In Humboldt's current it is rare to see an iceberg as far from the pole as the parallel of the fifty-fifth degree of south latitude; but off the Cape of Good Hope on one side of the Atlantic, and Cape Corrientes on the other, antarctic icebergs are sometimes seen as far as the parallel of 35°, often as far as 40° Lieutenants Warley and Young, after having examined the logs of 1843 ships cruising on the polar side of 35° S., report the great antarctic ice-drift to be towards the Falkland Islands on one hand, and the Cape of Good Hope on the other.

878. Antarctic explorations demanded.—These facts and the stories of the icebergs are very suggestive. In mute eloquence and with great power they plead the cause of antarctic exploration. Within the periphery of that circle is included an area equal in extent to one-sixth part of the entire land surface of our planet. Most of this immense area is as unknown to the inhabitants of the earth as is the interior of one of Jupiter's satellites. With the appliances of steam to aid us, with the lights of science to guide us, it would be a reproach to the world to