Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/41

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LAND ICE
37

by him during two successive seasons. It has been now visited by several expeditions during recent years, especially by those under the leadership of Scott and Shackleton. This ice cliff, varying in height from almost sea-level to about 100 feet above the sea, stretches in an east and west direction between Mounts Erebus and Terror and Edward Land for a distance of nearly 300 miles. It is quite easy to imagine that pieces many miles in length and breadth might break off and float out to sea, as well as almost innumerable smaller pieces from a mile or two in length and breadth to only a few feet. This is exactly what does happen, and it certainly must occur in other parts of the Antarctic Regions besides the Ross Sea. Those countless bergs seen by us on board the Balæna in 1892–93, and again those seen by all on board the Scotia during her two cruises in the Weddell Sea, as well as those that drifted past the South Orkneys for eight months during the winter of 1903, and those seen by Charcot between 70° W. and 124° W., certainly did not come from the Ross Barrier, but from similar barriers, perhaps even more extensive than the Ross Barrier. Other barriers must occur elsewhere in the Antarctic Regions to account for the host of table-topped bergs that are scattered all over the Great Southern Ocean, and indeed Nor-