The Forrest City times., 1893-03-31
iCEBERGS IN THE ANTARCTIC.


 Navigation on the New Zealand Coast. The enormous fleet of icebcrgs which Is at present cumbering the southern seas bodes i'll for the Dundee whalers who are engaged on pioneer whaling expedition on the borders of the Ant arctic ice. These detached portions of the vast ice she ct, which is believed to cover the still unexplored continent of which Mount Erebus, the mysterious volcano that belches out flame over the vast polar waste, is the most striking feature, not infre quently float for con siderable distance uorthward. They have been seen not far from the Cape of Good Hope, towering to a height of from two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet above the surface, and as every foot above the water means eight feet below 1t the tn ickness of the great Antarctic sheet may be gauged accord ingly. Wherever app reached its face has not as in the Arctic regions, been at the head of fjord, but as an enor- nous flat-topped precipice, stretc2ing east and west as far as the ships ha> 9 traced it. This edge forms the great southern barrier which rises to height of several hundred feet of glacial ice, the accumula tions of enturies But it is clear that this sheet must, like the inland ice of Greenla nd, be gradually sliding down slo pc, since icebergs break from it on it's reaching the sea and becoming buoyed up by the water. Hence, with the excep tio n that it is not formed in fjords-and the great ice face of the Humboldt glacier in the north is not widely different-it and the Arctic ice sheets which cover Greenland and nearly all the larger islands are, con- trary to the opinions of Dr. Carpenter and the report of the Challe nger expe- dition. essentially the same. But we cannot recall case in wh ich the bergs by the latest accounts. have impeded navigation close to the coasts of New Zealand. Tn the middle of October fleets of them. two hundred to three hundred feet high, surr ounded vessel near the Chatham islam ds in such hosts that at times she was in great peril from the floating mounta ins about her. Similar news comes from the south At lantic Perfect ''archipe lagoes Cf ice bergs'' have been sighted as far north as 49 degrees and AS degrees south, some of the detached masses being three hundred feet high and three thou sand feet long
 Early in October as many as four hundred were passed, and at times be- tween twenty and thirty could be counted from the deck. Most of them are reported to Il ave been pure white. ," but many are described as of dark brown color" circumstance which can only be explained on the supposi- ton that they were the bearers of earth or other terrestrial materials, which had triclled in a muddy state down the sides, or that thes materials had been inclosed in the original mass of ice. As the Antarctic ice bergs, like the Arctic ones, must necessarily come from a land mass-bein fresh water and not sea ice, as are the foes or floating fields this theory is not improbable though the instances in which they have been the bearers of the jetsam and fiotsam of the Antarctic con tinent are so rare that it is regretta ble an opportunity was not afforded for examining the s'brown color" T he presence of such an unusual fleet of wanderers from un- known lands in the track of vessels can only be explai ned by the prevalence of southeast gales, which may have driven them into the New 7 ealand current, that sets north-northeast all through the year at the speed of fir om one to one and one-half miles an hour There is certainly no ground for holding that the globe has shift ed it's axis to any appreciable degree, or that another of those glacial periods-of which the most recent geological d iscoveries show there have been many in the worlds history, and there may be many more before all is over--is upon us, either in the north or in the south. Yet the larpe amount of drift ice and icebergs seen in the north Atlantic last summer, and as late as the past autumn, might lead an un instructed theorist to sup nose that the Arctic regions also had been more than usually full of ice. The contrary will probably be found to be the case. London Telegraph.
 Legibie Writing.
 There is one affectation of late years am >lg yo ung ladies that ought to be severely con demn ed, and that is 'culti-
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