Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/681

Rh, which, as the sun's rays were reflected on it, exhibited a scene of such unequaled magnificence and splendor as would baffle all language to portray, or give the faintest conception of. One very remarkable peak, in shape like a huge crystal of quartz, rose to the height of 7,867 feet, another to 9,096, and a third to 8,444 feet above the level of the sea. From these peaks ridges descended to the coast, terminating in bold capes and promontories. . . . On the 28th, in latitude 77° 31' and longitude 167 1', the burning volcano, Mount Erebus, was discovered, covered with ice and snow from its base to its summit, from which a dense column of black smoke towered high above the other numerous lofty cones and crateriferous peaks with which this extraordinary land is studded from the seventy-third to the seventy-eighth degree of latitude. Its height above the sea is 12,367 feet, and Mount Terror, an extinct crater, near to it,. . . attains an altitude little inferior, being 10,884 feet in height, and ending in a cape, from which a vast barrier of ice extended in an easterly direction, checking all further progress south. This continuous perpendicular wall of ice, varying in height from two hundred to one hundred feet, its summit presenting an almost unvarying level outline, we traced for three hundred miles, when the pack-ice obstructed all further progress."

From 1841 up to 1874 when the Challenger visited the Antarctic Circle, no vessel has spent any lengthy period in this region; so, having thus reviewed the discoveries of the various explorers, let us turn to that element which is so much more abundant than land, the water, and examine its form in a solid state. The icy barrier of which we hear so much is thus described by Sir James Ross: "As we approached the land, . . . we perceived a low white line extending from its extreme eastern point as far as the eye could perceive to the eastward. It presented an extraordinary appearance, gradually increasing in height as we got nearer to it, and proving at length to be a perpendicular cliff of ice between 150 and 200 feet above the level of the sea, perfectly flat and level at the top, and without any fissures or promontories on its even seaward face." This barrier extended for a distance of 450 miles, and nowhere was there any opening of consequence by which it could be penetrated.

Where such immense quantities of solid ice exist, there are icebergs in abundance. The ones floating in these seas are of enormous size, and present a vastly different appearance from those seen at the north. There they are commonly jagged and sharp-pointed from their first leaving the parent glacier, afterward assuming all sorts of weird shapes. But at the south they are at first, and for a long while afterward, flat-topped, with square-cut sides, and with a stratified structure. The top stratum is from ten to twelve inches thick. The thickness of the strata gradually decreases toward the bottom, and at the