Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

12 AUSTEALASIA.as a god, but soon after murdered under circumstances that have never beensatisfactorily explained.Cook's researches had the effect of once for all exploding the theoretic fancythat on the surface of the globe the dry land should occupy exactly the same spaceas the oceanic basins. Since the time of Hipparchus the most eminent geographersaccepted as an established dogma the perfect equilibrium between landand water ; and it was under the influence of this idea that Ptolemy had tracedacross the southern part of the Indian Ocean a continental coastline connectingAfrica with India. This shadowy seaboard, continually receding from the eagereve of navio-ators, was successively identified by them with New Guinea, NewHolland, and New Zealand; and later, every island sighted in more southernlatitudes was supposed to be some headland of the long-sought-for continent.Cook, who himself firmly believed in the existence of this Austral world, jjlacedits shores far to the south of the waters reached by his predecessors ; but in anycase we now know that the Antarctic continent, or insular group, must be ofslight extent compared with the boundless waste of circumpolar waters.When atlast convinced of the absence of continental lauds in the regions traversed byCook, his companion Forster advanced the hypothesis that nature had readjusted theetiuilibrium between the two hemispheres of the planetory orb by depositing onthe bed of the Antarctic Ocean rocky masses of greater density than elsewhere.EXPLOKATION OF THE ANTARCTIC WaTERS.Although in the pride of his immense triumphs, Cook placed limits to thegenius of man, declaring that no future navigator would penetrate farther southwards,his record has already been beaten, and since his time the known siirfaceof the ocean has been enlarged in the direction of the South Pole. The landsdiscovered in some places are sufficiently contiguous to each other to be regardedas very probably forming a continuous seaboard. They would thus collectivelyconstitute one of the largest islands on the surface of the globe.The most extensive mass of dry land in the Antarctic Zone occurs to the southof Australia.In 1839, Ballenyhad already discovered an archipelago of volcanoesin the immediate neighbourhood of the polar circle. According to his estimatethe insular cone of Young Island, which is completely snowclad, would appear toattain an elevation of at least 12,000 feet. Another much lower island was seento eject two columns of vapour. But the valleys and ravines between the peaksare everywhere filled with ice or glaciers, so that the bare rock is visible onlywhere the action of the waves has revealed the black lavas of the cliffs andheadlands surmounted by a covering of white snow. No creeks occur, nor evenany strand, except here and there a narrow beach strewn with ashes and shinglyscoriae.Sailing to the west of this archipelago, mainly about the sixty-fifth degreesouth latitude, Balleny thought he sighted land in two places, and even gave thename of Sabrina Land to some high ground dimly seen from a distance.The following year the French navigator, Dumout d'Urville, and the Americun