Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/176

172 Atlantic Ocean, and Weddell and Biscoe Seas, besides nearly five hundred soundings in the neighbourhood of the South Orkneys in water of less than 100 fathoms. Twenty-six of the seventy-five deep-sea soundings were taken south of the Antarctic Circle, and fifty were taken whilst navigating actually in the pack ice; forty-three were taken in water exceeding 2,000 fathoms, twenty-three in water exceeding 2,500—ten of the last being south of the Antarctic Circle. The deepest sounding was 2,900 fathoms, or a depth of three miles and a quarter, in 39° 27′ S., 5° 17′ E., between Gough Island and Cape Town.

The Valdivia carried out an important bathymetrical survey to the south-east of South Africa and the Challenger and the Gauss farther to the eastward. The Belgica and Pourquoi-pas? took a number of soundings from Graham Land to 124° W. between 69° and 71° S., which are of great importance, most of them being between 200 and 300 fathoms and indicative of the presence of continental land not very far to the south in these longitudes. The great interest of the Scotia soundings, along with the discovery of Coats Land, was to give an entirely new idea of the southward extension of the Weddell Sea, and to alter previous ideas of the depths of that sea which were all based on a very deep sounding taken by Ross in 68°