BIG ANTARCTIC ICEBERGS.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12905, 17 February 1906, Page 3

BIG ANTARCTIC ICEBERGS.

The icebergs seen in Southern Seas are far larger than any that originate in the Arctic Circle. They are the product <Jf glaciers descending from the high lands which surround the South Pole. Writing in "Chambers' Journal" for January, Mr William Allingham, author of "Marine Meteorology," eays that "during the first four months of 1864, about halfway between Cape Horn and tie Cape of Good Hope, o, never-to-be-forgotten mass of ice was passed by a large number of the splendid sailing-ships then engaged in carrying eager hearts and willing hands td Australia. It was shaped like the letter J, and therefore especially dangerous to vessels entering between the two sides wider the assumption that they were in .the presence of two enormous parallel bergsv The longer side stretched in impenetrable solidity for. 60 miles, while the shorter side was less by only twenty miles. Situated between these perilous promontories of ice was a deceptive bay forty miles wide; and one of the emigrant ships that entered this cul-de-sac was lost with all onboard, while 6everal experienced a grave difficulty in beating back to the open sea. j f ? ln December, 1892, an ice-island thirty miles long *was observed by the Drumcraig r and in November, 1894,- the Antarctic, when five hundred miles south of j Antipodes Island, passed an icy mass which was seventy miles long, although but sixty j feet high. In January. 1893, when seven .hundred miles east of the Falkland Islands, I the crew of the ship Wasdale underwent an experience that they would not desire to ! be repeated. At dawn of day she was i found to have sailed into a bay of horseshoe shape, hollowed out by the force's of nature from the side of a huge ice-island. It was four miles wide at the entrance, ten miles wide at the central portion, and extended into the icy mass for a distance of twenty miles. "In January, 1893, the famous clipper Loch Torridon, when four hundred miles east of tie Falkland Islands, fell in with several bergs which were showing a side ;«f one thousand feet; and, towering high above these lofty ice-islands, there was a still lojftier one of .one thousand five hundred feet from water-line to summit. There were not wanting honest- doubters as re.gards the report of the one thousand feet I berg; although in August, 1840, a berg of the same height was actually sighted only two hundred miles south of the Cape of Good Hope, and another in 1892, in a, higher southern latitude, by the Cromdale—Captain Andrew. Both had been forgotten. Fortunately for those interested, the report of the Loch Torridon h;ts been confirmed by several independent observers. Almost in the same geographical position, but two jaonths later, the Turokina steamed close to a berg which! was one thousand two hundred feet high; and a. considerable numberr- of ships reported bergs of one thousand feet altitude during the .prolific period extending from 1890 to 1894. Still' more recently the United States Hydrographic Office has received » report from the British barque Zifiita—Captaia Macdonald—to tk» effect

that she pass-cd a large iceberg in November, 1904. when five hundred and sixiy miles *as?. of the Falkland*, which was one thousand five hundred feet high, and seven.' miles long." .