It is probable that the southern hemisphere
hides within its bosom still more startling facts
than this. The meteorological evidence which
Captain Maury has collected shows that the
idea of land in the Antartic regions—of much
land, and high land—is at least plausible.
Southern explorers, as far as they have
penetrated, tell us of high lands and mountains of
ice; and Ross, who went the furthest of all,
saw volcanoes burning in the distance. Now,
the unexplored area around the south pole is
about twice as large as Europe. This untravelled
region is circular in shape, with a  circumference
of not less than seven thousand miles.
Its edges have been touched upon here and
there, and land, whenever seen, has been high
and rugged. The unexplored area is quite
equal to that of our entire frigid zone.
Navigators scarcely ever venture, except when
passing Cape Horn, to go to the polar side of
fifty-five degrees of south latitude. The fear of
icebergs deters them. These may be seen there
drifting up towards the equator in large
numbers and huge masses all the year round. Many
of them are miles in extent and hundreds of
feet thick. The nursery for the bergs must be
an immense one; such a nursery cannot be on
the sea, for icebergs require to be fastened
firmly to the shore until they attain full size.
They therefore, in their mute way, are loud
with evidence in favour of Antarctic shore lines
of great extent, of deep bays where they may
be formed, and of lofty cliffs whence they may
be launched.

Another circumstance favours the hypothesis
of much land about the south pole. It seems
to be a physical necessity that land should not
be antipodal to land. Except a small portion
of South America and Asia, land is always opposite
to water; only one twenty-seventh part of
the land is antipodal to land. Now the belief
is, that on the polar side of seventy degrees
north we have mostly water, not land. Finally,
geographers are agreed that, irrespective of the
above-mentioned facts, the probabilities are in
favour of an Antarctic continent rather than of
an Antarctic ocean. " There is now no doubt,"
says Dr. Jilck, in his Lehrbuck der Oceanographic,
" that around the south pole there is
extended a great continent, mainly within the
polar circle. Outwardly, these lands exhibit a
naked, rocky, partly volcanic desert, with high
rocks destitute of vegetation, always covered
with ice and snow." But what is the meteorological
condition of the interior?

The winds were the first to whisper of an
unexpected state of things, and to intimate the
existence of a mild climate mild by comparison,
and very unlike the Arctic for severity within
the Antarctic circle. The low barometer, the
high degree of aërial rarefaction, and the strong
winds from the north prevailing there, tell a
tale full of meaning. The polar winds (those
blowing towards the pole) are much stronger,
and extend over many more degrees of latitude,
in the southern than in the northern hemisphere.
But why should these polar-bound winds of the
two hemispheres differ so much in strength and
prevalence, unless there be a much more abundant
supply of heat, and, consequently, a higher
degree of rarefaction, at one pole than at the
other? Captains Wilkes and Ross, during their
expeditions to the South Seas, had both occasion
to remark the apparent deficiency of
atmosphere over the extra-tropical regions of the
southern hemisphere; and the low barometer
off Cape Horn had attracted the attention of
navigators at an early day. Whence this
unequal distribution of the atmosphere between the
two hemispheres? and why should the mean
height of the barometer be so much less in southern
circumpolar regions, than in northern? No
one will attempt to account for the difference by
reason of any displacement of the geometrical
centre of the earth with regard to its centre of
attraction, in consequence of the great continental
masses of the northern hemisphere.
The whole of the phenomena are doubtless
due to the excess, in Antarctic regions, of
aqueous vapour and its latent heat. The Arctic
circle lies chiefly on the land; the Antarctic on
the water. As the winds enter the latter, they
are loaded with vapour; but on their way to
the other, they are desiccated. Northern mountains
and hills wring from them water for the
great rivers of Siberia and Arctic America.
These winds, then, sweep comparatively dry air
across the Arctic circle; and when they arrive
at the calm disc—the place of ascent there—
the vapour which is condensed in the act of
ascending does not liberate heat enough to
produce a rarefaction sufficient to call forth a
decided indraught from a greater distance in the
surrounding regions than forty degrees, or two
thousand four hundred miles; and the rarefaction
being not so great, the barometer is not so
low there as in Antarctic regions.

Within the Antarctic circle, on the contrary,
the winds bring air which has come over the
water for the distance of hundreds of leagues all
round; consequently a large portion of
atmospheric air is driven away from the southern
regions by the force of vapour, which fills the
atmosphere there. Now there must be an
immense calm central disc where these polar winds
cease to go forward, rise up, and commence
flowing back as an upper current. If the
topographical features of this calm region be such
as to produce rapid condensation and heavy
precipitation, then we shall have, in the latent heat
liberated from all this vapour, an agent sufficient
not only to produce a low barometer and a
powerful indraught, but quite adequate also to the
mitigation of climate there. Black's law should
ever be borne in mind by those who are considering
the connexion of meteorology with climate:
"During the conversion of solids into liquids, or
of liquids into vapours, heat is absorbed, which
is again given out on their recondensation."

But mere altitude, with its consequent
refrigeration, does not seem so favourable as
mountain peaks and solid surfaces to the
condensation and precipitation of vapour in the air.
In the trade wind regions out at sea it seldom