The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1891-10-24
lcEsERes ON THE ATLANTIC.
Some OF Them Ono Thousand FeeS High
and Sovcn Miles Thick

Some OF Them Ono Thousand Feet High
and Sovcn Miles Thick.
"You SEQ stories about big iccbegrs
in the Atlantic sometimes" said an old
salt the othcr day to q Washington Post
reporter, but do You knew they can't
hold candle to those that are found in
the South Atlantic, in the Antarctic
ocean? Why, berg in the Arctics
thrcc-fourths of a milo long and three
hundred fec thigh isthought to be cnor-
nous, and so it is, too, If you calculate its
'cnbic contents and remember that only
'one-sevcnth of tic whole mass floats
above water, the balance of it being be-
low. The weight of Il berg this size is
about two billion tons.
but i'll the Antarctic oceans the bergs
arc something stupendous. Some that
have been noticed from time to time
were four hundred to one thousand feet
above the water, and were from three
to five miles long. One can scarcely
realize the immensity of such masses of
ice.
''Whcre do they come from? Why,
from the ice above the south pole, to be
sure. You know u good many eXpcdi-
tions have been sent out to explore
ehNoS 'oSuo IL Jill OlulC w tlulC, SdPt%SOOk
in 1913 being one of the early ones. He
discovered, as others did, what he sup
possible be land, but it has generally
happened that when one explorer has
set down land on his charts second
one finds water one Thousand fathoms
deep.
+'Oh, about the ice. To be sure. Well,
these explorers, when they penetrate to
about scvcnty-6vc degrees south lati-
Jude, come across a great wall of ice
rising above the water higher than the
masthead and extending as far as the
eye can sec. Capt. Ross, where hc saw
it, says it stretched along for four hun
dred and fifty miles and it was from
one hundred and fifty to two hun dred
feet above the water. When such
mass of ice is about, do you wonder
there are hig iccbcrgs?
"WhSt sort of land is there at the
south pole? Well, that's rather hard to
say, since hardly anyone has ever seen
any of it, and that only at distance.
Ross discovered some volcanoes about
rs degrees south latitude, which is rs
far US anyone has ever penetrated, but
most of the other land discovered has
generally turned out to be only ice.
at is supposed that the land at the
pole itself is n cluster of low islands,
maybe with mountains, but these are
all covered with ice. Taking the small
est slope down which ice will flow ut
one foot in two hundred and eleven, it
is estimated that the ice ut the pole is
seven miles thick. Yes, it does seem n
very big yarn, but then when you
know that about thirty or forty feet of
snow falls there during single year
You can easily see that it cannot all
melt in the short summer season, and it
goes on accommodating year after year.
''Thc expedition from Australia?
Yes, there is some talk about that, and
the colonies have raised four or five
thousand pounds sterling to pay ex-
penses. But it can't pay in any COM
mercial 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 of science and would he of no
benefit to the human race The at
tempt to find it is only another one of
those foolhardy things that men often
risk their lives to do. and all ito no pur.-
pose.
"Whcn you again see All account of
an Atlantic liner that has run afoul of
an iceberg and had close shave from
shipwrccl1, remember that the ones She
is likely to encounter are but pigmics
compared with the giants of the sohth
seas"