The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1893-03-23
icEBERos IN THE ANTARCTIC.

Fleets of Frozen Monsters Imperiiing
Navigation ON the New Zealand Coast.
The enormous aeet of icebergs which
Is at present numbering the southern
seas BODIES i'll for the Dundee whalers
who are engaged on a 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 UNEMPLOYED continent of
which Mount Erebus, the mysterious
volcano that belches out flame over the
vast polar waste, is the most striking
feature, not frequently float for con-
siderable distance uorthward They
have been seen not far from the Cape of
Good Hope, towering to 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 it the tn ickness of the great
Antarctic sheet may be gagged accord
ingly. Wherever app reached its face
has not. as in the Arctic regions been
ut the head of ford, but as an enor-
nous fiat-topped precipice, stretching
east and west as far as the ships have
traced it. This edge forms the great
southern barrier which rises to a height
of several hundred feet of glacial ice,
the accumulations of enturies. But 1t
Is clear that this sheet must, like the
inland ice of Greenla nd, be gradually
aliding down slo pc, since icebergs
break from it on its reaching the sea
and becoming buoyed up by the water.
Hence, with the eXcep tion that it is not
formed in fjords-and the great ice face
of the Humboldt glacier in the north is
not widely differently and the Arctic
ice sheets which cover Greenland and
nearly all the larger islands are, con-
traryIto the opinions of Dr. Carpenter
and the report of the Challe niger expe-
dition, essentially the same. But we
cannot recall case in VIII ich the bergs
have congregated in such numbers as,
by the latest accounts. have impeded
navigation close to the coasts of New
Zealand In the middle of October
fleets of them, two hundred to three
hundred feet high, SURF ounded a vessel
near the Chatham islam DIS 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 of ice
as 40 degrees and 4S 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 h ave been pure white"
but many are described as of dark
brown color" a circumstance which
can only be explained on the SUPPOSE
ton that they were the bearers of earth
or other terrestrial materials which
had trickled in muddy state down the
sides or that thes G 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-being 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 fotsam
of the Antarctic con tinent are so rare
that it is regretta BILE an opportunity
was not afforded for examining the
"brown color" The presence of such
an unusual fleet of wanderers from I'M
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 Zealand current,
that sets north-northeast all through
the year at the speed of fr ON one to one
and one-half miles an hour. There is
certainly no ground for holding that
the globe has shift ed its axis to any
apprecia BILE degree or that another of
those glacial periods-of which the
most recent geological d discoveries 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
large amount of drift ice and icebergs
seen in the north Atlantic last summer,
and as late as the past autumn, might
lead an uninstructed theorist to sup
pose 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.