The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-09-24
They Are Different From Those
Seen in Arctic Waters.
EXPERIENCE OF EXPLORERS
The Antarctic Continent Surrounded by
avery Wide Pack-The Home
of the Southern
Berg.

region where the summer temperature
rarely reaches above freezing point,
where the attenuated nature of the
southern continent allows free play to
the polar currents, and where the sun
fails to bring out anything that might
be called a spring or summer flower,
it follows that the ice conditions are
vastly different from those of the
northern hemisphere, where at cor
responding latitude summer clothes the
land with flowers and fills the air with
innumerable bees. These widely diff
ferent conditions are easily seen by a
passing comparison of the northern
berg with the southern; the former
speedily becomes pinnacled and gro
tesque as it journeys south, while the
latter retains it's original tabular form
in very low ATTITUDES. 1t is only when
the southern berg reaches a distance
north, where the sun at last begins
to make his heat felt, that it thaws and
presents the great needle points and
guttering cascades observed so fire.
quently within the arctic circle.
This difference of temperature be-
tween the summer of the antarctic and
that of the arctic is due to the fact
that, while the latter region is a polar
basin, surrounded by vast tracts of
land which retain the summer heat, the
former is comparatively small tract
of land in tremendous expanse of
water, which parts with it's heat very
quickly.
The home and origin of the southern
bergs are matter full of romantic in
terest. In 1774 Captain Cook sailed
down into the unknown antarctic re-
gions, and after terrible hardships
reached a spot where he saw a snow
white brightness in the clouds to the
south, and he knew he was near the
ice fields. Four hours later he was
stopped by great ice barrier in lati-
tude II degrees south, where the
mountains of ice, rising one above the
other, tier upon tier, into the distance,
were lost in the clouds of the polar
sky. The desolate grandeur of that icy
coast appalled, the great navigator, and.
seeing no possibility of pushing to the
pole over those impossible mountains,
he contented himself with having gone
further than any one had ever been
before, and, he thought, as far as any
man could go. He speaks of vast g1a-
ciers descending from the interior, and
of ice islands and floats near the coast;
and from his remarks it is easily seen
that he had found the home of the
southern bergs
The glaciers, coming slowly down
from the interior, being launched be-
tween the mountain sides of the ice
bound, continental coast, produced the
tabular 5ieebergs by swapping off from
time to- time at their extremities, and
these, once set free, sailed northward in
due time on the ocean currents. This
barrier discovered by Cook was evident
ly an outstanding coast line of the ant
arctic continent, for more than half a
century later Sir James Ross, in the
Erebus and the Terror found similar
barrier probably continuous with that
of Cook, at far higher latitude of rs
degrees south. Here at the feet of
the great volcanoes Erebus and Terror,
so named after his ships, Ross found a
further home of the berg.
This coast of Victoria Land was a
grand scene of glaciers launching their
gigantic ends into the sea. From the
coast line, where the walls of ice stood
as sheer cliffs hundreds of feet high,
the mountains inland ranged one over
the other, eliminating in the volcanic
peaks $4,000 feet high And down the
grooves of these mountains came the
slow-moving glaciers to people the
southern seas with the floating dangers
which render exploration there thing
of intense risk to the boldest and most
skilful navigator. Ross says this ice
barrier is perhaps more than 1000 feet
thick a mighty and wonderful
object"
AS the ice barrier, so the bergs.
When they are set free they are solid
fragments of the parent glacier, with
tops like billiard tables and sides like
cliffs, often measuring as much as 200
feet in height and several miles in ex-
tent. They maintain their tabular
character generally, and their vast size,
until they either collide and break up,
or suffer a thaw in the low ATTITUDES.
In the former alternative they supply
the material for the floating ice packs,
and in the latter they assume strange
shapes, turreted, pinnacled and under
mined, as, like glistening fairy palaces,
they slowly dissolve beneath the sun
light. Cook mentions several interest
ing bergs with which he made &C.
quaintanee. One was so feet high and
half mile in circumference. He says:
TT was fiat at the top, and it's sides
rose in a perpendicular direction,
against which the sea broke exceeding
ly high" This berg must have been
from barrier not very far south, for
the further such a barrier is from the
pole the thinner the ice becomes.
In regard to this point it may be men
toned that in 1898 Larsen found in
Graham's Land a barrier which, be-
ing in a comparatively low latitude,
was only from 20 to so feet high, while
that discovered by Ross in latitude rs
degrees south was very much higher
D'Urville the gallant French explorer,
met with bergs in latitude SO degrees
south. 1t would appear from this that
their place of origin was an ice barrier
even further south than that found by
Sir James Ross. The Dundee whalers
in 1928 also saw bergs over 200 feet
high; these, too, in all probability, came
from barrier which DR.. Murray is of
the opinion faces an open sea for some
distance south of Ross Ultima Thule.
And, if there be an ice coast still further
south. it is vaguely limited at by Mr..
Bulls measurements in 1896 of berg
600 feet high, which at first he mistook
for an island.
A thaw among antarctic bergs is not
often met with, even in the height of
summer; but to show that such thing
does occur occasionally the experience
of Ross may be mentioned, On one
occasion when he was considerably
within the antarctic circle the Their
mometer stood at IL degrees, but in the
bergs all around there were evidences
that they had suffered a partial thaW
some time previously, for great icicles
hung from their sides. On another oc-