The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-08-14
ANTARCTIC ICEBERGs.

Different From Those in Arctic Waters
The Antarctic Continent Surround
| ed by Very Wide Pack-Perilous
| Experience of Explorers.
The icebergs of the south differ from
those of the north as the Antarctic
summer from that of the Arctic. In a
| 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 vast
| ly different from those of the northern
| hemisphere where at a corresponding
latitude summer clothes the land with
flowers and fills the air with innumera-
bic bees. These widely different condl-
tons are easily seen by passing COM
parison of the northern berg with the
southern the former speedily becomes
pinnacled and grotesque as 1t journeys
south, while the latter retains its origi-
nal tabular form in very low ATTITUDES.
1t is only when the southern berg reach
es 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 frequently 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 a comparatively small tract
of land in a tremendous expanse of
water, which parts with it's heat very
quickly.
The home and origin of the southern
berg are a 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 a great ice barrier in lati-
tude seveuty-one degrees south. where
the mountains of ice, rising one above
the other, tier upon tier, into the dis
lance, were lost in the clouds Of the
polar sky. The desolate grandeur of
that icy coast appalled, the great navi-
gator, and, seeing no possibility of
pushing to the pole over those impas
sable 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 glaciers descending from the in
terror, 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 mountainsides Of this ice
bound, continental coast, produced the
tabular icebergs 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 evil |
IDENTIFY an outstanding coastline of the |
continent, for, more than half |
a century later Sir James Ross, in the |
Erebus and the Terror, found a similar
barrier, probably contiguous with that |
Of Cook, at far higher latitude of sew
enty-eight 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
coastline. 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 twelve thousand feet high. And
down the grooves of these mountains
came the slow moving glaciers to peo-
pie the southern seas with the floating
dangers which render explorations
there a thing of intense risk to the
boldest and most skilful navigator,
Ross says this ice barrier is perhaps
more than one thousand feet thick
a mighty and wonderful object"
AS the ice barrier, so the bergs
When they are SGT free thev are solid
rag 1nelllS OF the parent SldHIel' WIN
tops like billiard tables and sides like
cliffs, often measuring as much as two
hundred feet in height and several miles |,
In extent. They maintain their tabular
character generally, and their vast size
until they either collide and break up
or suffer a thaw in low ATTITUDES. In
the former alternative they supply the
for the floating icepacks, 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
ng bergs with which he made ac-
luaintance One was fifty feet high
and half a mile in circumference. He
says 1T was hat at the top, and its