Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1893-05-04
loEBERos IN THE ANTARCTIC.
Fleets of Frozen Monsters ImperilinR
Navigation ON the New Zealand COAT.

| 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 unexplored continent of
which Mount Erebus, the mysterious
volcano that belches out fame over the
vast polar waste, is the most striking
feature, not infrequently 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
at the head of ford, but as an enor-
nous fat-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 it
is clear that this sheet must, like the
inland ice of Greenla nd, be gradually
sliding down a slo pc, since icebergs
break from it on it's reaching the sea
and becoming buoyed up by the water.
Hence, with the excep ton 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 niger eXpe-
dition, essentially the same. But we
cannot recall a case in VIII ich the bergs
have congregated in such mum bers 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 nigh, SURF ounded vessel
near the Chatham islam DIS in such hosts
that at times she was in great peril
from the floating mounta ms about her.
Similar news comes from the south At
lantic. Perfect ''archipe lagoes of ice
bergs" have been sig as far north
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 have been pure white, :"
but many are described as of a dark
brown color" circumstance which
can only be explained on the SUPPOSE
ton that they were the bearers of earth
or other terrestrial materials, which
had tricl1led in 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 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 z ealand current,
that sets nocth-northeast all through
the year at the speed of fir ON 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 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 probab' be found to be
the case. London Telegraph.