The morning call., 1891-09-20
Big ICEBERGS.
Some Of Them 1000 Feet High and Seven Miles
Thick.

"You see stories about big icebergs in the
Atlantic sometimes" said an old salt the
other day, "but do you know they can't
hold a candle to those that are found in the
South Atlantic, in the Antarctic Ocean?
Why, berg in tie Arctics three fourths Of a
mile long and 800 feet high is thought to be
enormous, and so it ia, too, If you calculate
its cubic contents aud remember that only
one-seveDth of the whole mass floats above
water, the balance below. The weight of
berg this size is about 1000, 600, 900 tons.
"But in the Antarctic Ocean the bergs
are something stupendoGs. 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 immensely of such
masses of ice.
Where do they come from? Why, from
the ice about the south role, to be sure.
You know a good many expeditions have
been sent out to explore these seas from
time to time, Captain Cook, In 1713 helng
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 a
second one discovers water 1000 faihoms
deep.
''Oh, about the Ice, to be sure. Well,
these explorers when they penetrate TO
about 75o south latitude, come across great
wall of ice rising above the water higher
than the masthead, aud extending as lar as
the eye can see. Captain Ross. where lie
saw it, says that it stretched along for 40
miles and it was from 100 to 200 feet above
the water. When such a mass of ice is
about, DO you wonder there are big ice
What sort of land il there at the south
pole? Well, that's rather hard to say, since
hardly any one has ever seen any OF 1t. and
that only at distance. Ross discovered
some volcanoes about 7S0 south latitude,
which is as far as any one has ever pene-
trated, but most of the other. lard dis
covered has generally turned out to be only
ice.
at Is supposed that the land at the pole
itself is cluster of low Islands, may be
with mountains. but these are all covered
with ice. Taking the smallest SLOPE down
which ice Will flow at foot in 2ll, 1t is esti-
mated that the ice at the pole Is seven miles
thick. Yes, it does seem big yarn, but,
then, when you know that about thirty or
forty feet of snow falls there during q single
year, you Can easily see that 1t cannot all
melt in the short summer season, and it
goes on accumula lug year after year.
The expedition from Australia? Yes,
there is some talk about that, and the colo
MES have raised 44C00 or e5Q00 to pay ex-
pensei But it can't pay i'll commercial
sense No one lives down there. There is
no trade and it is the height Of the improb-
able that any expedition can reach the pole
overland. Well, if they do, what then? 1t
would solve no problem of science. and
would be of no benefit to the human race
The attempt to find it is only another one of
those foolhardy things that men will often
risk their lives to do, and all to no purpose
"When you again see an account of an
Atlantic liner that has run afoul of an ice
berg and has had close shave from ship
wreck remember that the ones she is likely
to encounter are but pgmies compared with
the giants of the south seas. w arlington
Post,