Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/178

174 Forbes (Supplementary Papers, Royal Geographical Society, 1893 [sic]) that there existed at one time a land connection between New Zealand and Eastern Australia by way of the Chatham Islands and Antarctica, and also that there had been a connection between Madagascar and South America and Antarctica. The soundings of the Scotia substantially support the latter part of Forbes' theory by showing the existence of a long ridge or "Rise" (a "rise" is a ridge rising up from the bottom of the ocean to within 2,000 fathoms of the surface), about 300 miles in breadth, extending in a curve from Madagascar to Bouvet Island, and from Bouvet Island to the Sandwich Group, where there is a forked connection through the South Orkneys to Graham Land, and through South Georgia to the Falkland Islands and the South American continent. Thus Antarctica, South America and Madagascar, and probably South Africa, become connected with one another in a most direct manner by this "rise." As Dr. Pirie has pointed out, the existence of sedimentary rocks in the South Orkneys, as well as in South Georgia, points to a much greater extension of land to the southeast of South America in former times. The Scottish Expedition made another great discovery, namely, that the "Mid-Atlantic Rise" extended 1,000 miles farther south than was previously