Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-12-05

--~~ tion, which is now on it's way to Gra- ham Land, south of Cape Horn, begins its work of polar research in the austral seas, it will usher in new epoch in the history of tine quest for the great antarctic continent. Fortunately for America we can take hearty satisfac- tion in following the work of the Bel gians, since not only was the first ant arctic land discovered by an American In 1s2l--she land the expedition first touches at-but the revival of belief in all immeAse ice clad continent at the south pole was due to another Ameri- can, who was the first to see its extend. ed coast line, masked by giant ice cliffs and guarded by stupendous ioebergs that never fail to amaze and awe those who gaze upon them. Tn fact. it may be said the glory of rehabilitating the mysteri- ous continent of the south pole is due absolutely to American explorers. since the English under Cook, In 1774. ex- ploded tho old belief in Magellanio continent which had engrossed the at tention of explorers for two centuries, and Ross i'll the forties gave it as his be- iief that the lands seen by the Ameri- can explorers ssdid not unite to form q polar continent.
 The psogress of science. however, has proved the Americans right and the English wrong, Though very little has been addeG to our knowledge of antarctic lands si' the American sealer Palmer d5H what is now called Graham
 or since the more famous z in 1889-40 sighted land
 xs5zees to t60 degrees east ' ggt within the antarctic cir i ~ we know from other austral condi-
 k@S1 bat there must be huge ciroum- askesa zmass. The argument is based on Ii. ,e and character of the icebergs that frequent at certain periods the southern ocean. Cautiously enough. the attack on the north polar regions has given us the means of predicating the state of affairs at the south pole. What VIC know now is this: lcebergs are not the result of the heaping up of ice foes i'll polar seas. On the contrary, they are not oceanic in origin, but are produced by glaciers that protrude from the great inland ice caps of the polar land masses. and they are large or small in propor- tion to the size of the glaciers that dis charge them. And, moreover, the size of the glaciers depends on the extent of the continental ice cap and the configura- tion of the coast nne where they debouch into the sea.
 Naturally neither Wilkes-afterwar the hero of the Trent affair-nor Ross knew this fact of iceberg formation in 1840. Wilkes based his belief in an ant arctic continent on his observed land masses. while Ross pooh-poohed the continental theory largely because Wilkes was for it. The icebergs now have their say. and in unmistakabie terms they indicate vast iceciad area, for in nothing is the antarctic region so extraordinary as in the size of it's bergs. The Greenland bergs, "calving." as the phrase goes. from the mother glaciers that reach to the famous ice cap some 10000 feet thick that covers Greenland like iceing on cake, are mere toys compared with the antarctic bergs. One reported recently to the Photographic office of the United States was shaped like hook, the ahort arm 40 miles, the long arm 60 miles long, with a bay 40 miles wide between the arms.
 As this floating island, judging from the height of the ice above the water, was about s.700 feet high, we have here 8 mass twice as high and vastly greater In bulk than section of the Blue noun tsina from above Harrisburg to beyond the Delaware Water Gap. In fact, if VIC set such section of our mountains afioat it would have appeared as surface ice foe compared with this giant berg. Other stupendous bergs of Over ten cubic miles in mass have been seen and all with the characteristic straight sides and flat tops peculiar to Rntarctica.
 What these giant bergs call for is an enormous leo covered continent which in certain regions slopes gradually to the sea. The central ice mass must Do og great depth. AS this great mass moves over the edge of the continent 1t breaks of its borders, which become the huge bergs, terror to the navigators since the time of Cook to the present. Thus science establishes the antarctic contt- nent and to modern explorers is left the task of declaring it's area and tho char acter of the frozen interior. From the time of Wilkes and Ross little was dona 10 read the secret until the agile Nor wegian Rorchgrevink. in January 1895, leaped ashore on Victoria Land the first man to set his foot upon the antarctic continent. Since then the leo. tures of. Borchgrevink, his controversies with the master of the Antarctic, in which vessel he sailed from Melbourne, and his desperate efforts to get up south polar expedition have aroused new in- scfest in antarctic explorations rns world over The British have been par EicuIariy solicitous. Australia has been nreed to spend Inoucy to explore Victo- ria Land as sort of jubilee offering. and the Royal Geographical society sAs promised to contribute any sum ID ho s25 coo tn shs colonial subscription eD