The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1891-12-23
BIG IcEBERcs.
Some of Them 1000 Feet High and
Seven Miles Thick.

You see stories about big ieebergs
in the Atlantic sometimes" said an old
salt the other day to Washington
Post man, "but do you know they can't
hold a candle to those that are found
in the south Atlantic in the Antarctic
ocean? Why, a berg in the Arctic
three-fourths of mile long and 800
feet high is thought to be enormous,
and so it is, too, if you calculate its
cubic contents and remember that only
one-seventh of the whole mass floats
above water. the balance below. The
weight of berg of this size is about
2000 600. 900 tons.
But in the Antarctic ocean the
bergs are sometimes stupendous. Some
that have been noticed from time to
time were 400 500. 700, and even 1000
feet above the water. and were from
three to five miles long. One can
scarcely realize the immensity of such
masses of ice.
Where do they come from? Why,
from the ice about the south pole, to
be sure. You know a good many ex-
peditions have been sent out to ex-
plore these seas from time to time,
Capt. Cook in 1873 being one of the
early ones. He discovered, as others
did, what he supposed to be land, but
it has generally happened that where
one explorer has set down land on his
charts second one discovers water
!, 900 fathoms deep. Oh, about the
ice. To be sure. Well. these ex-
plorers. when they penetrate to about
Is degrees south latitude, come across
a great wall of ice rising about the
water higher than the masthead. and
extending as far as the eye can see.
Capt. Ross, where he saw it, says that
it stretched along for 450 miles and il
was from $50 to 200 feet above the
water. When such mass of ice is
about, do you wonder there are big
ice-bergs?
What sort of land is there at the
south pole? Well. that's rather hard
to say, since hardly any one has ever
seen any of it and that only at dist
ance. Ross discovered some volcanoes
about 78 degrees south latitude. which
is as far as any one has ever penetrat
ed, but most of the other land discover.
ed has generally turned out to be only
ice.
ut is supposed that the land at the
pole itself is cluster of low islands
maybe with mountains, but these are
all covered with ice. Taking the
smallest slope down which ice will
flow at one foot in 211, it is estimated
that the ice at the pole is seven miles
thick. Yes. it does seem a big yarn
but then, when you know that about
thirty or forty feet of snow falls there
during a single year, YOU can easily see
that it can not all melt in the shorI
summer season and it goes on accumu'
lating year after year.
The expedition from Australia
Yes, there is some talk about that
and the colonies have raised "a. 900 oil
E5, 900 to pay expenses. But it can't
pay in a commercial sense. No one
lives down there. There is no trade
and it is the height of the improbable
that any expedition can reach the pole
overland. Well, if they do, what
then? 1t would solve no problem O.
science and would be of no benefit tC
the human race. The attempt to fine
it is only another one of these fool
hardy things that men will often risk
their lives to do, and all to no purpose,
When you again see an account O.
an Atlantic liner that has run afoul O.
an iceberg and has a close shave from
shipwreck, remember that the ones sh'
is likely to encounter are but pygmie'
compared with the giants of the soutt
Saac