Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/22

18 very much as I have described them on that first day when, on board the Balæna, we fell in with the ice.

But besides defining the limits of Antarctic ice, this boundary is useful in other respects, for it includes the whole of the continental land mass of the Antarctic Regions, which at several points protrudes beyond the Antarctic Circle, notably at Graham Land and Wilkes Land. It also includes most of the really typical Antarctic islands, such as South Georgia, the Sandwich Group, South Orkney, or Powell Islands, South Shetlands, Bouvet Island, Balleny Islands, etc. It also excludes continental terminations of South America and South Africa as well as Australia. The Antarctic Regions are of exactly opposite character to the Arctic Regions; whereas in the Arctic Regions there exists a polar basin of considerable depth, surrounded by an almost complete ring of continental land, composed of the northern parts of Europe, Asia and America, in the Antarctic Regions we have an extensive continental land mass surrounded by a continuous ocean. So far we know little of this vast continent, which is probably as large as Europe and Australia combined. What coast-line has been discovered was nearly all discovered before any of the more recent expeditions sailed to the south. It is interesting to note