float much
further into the warm sea on this side of the equator before they
dissolve. The South Pole is evidently a more thorough refrigerator than
the North. Why is this? We shall soon see. We push through pack-ice,
and through floes and fields, by lofty bergs, by an island or two covered
with penguins, until there lies before us a long range of mountains, nine
or ten thousand feet in height, and all clad in eternal snow. That is a
portion of the Southern Continent. Lieutenant Wilkes, in the American
exploring expedition, first discovered this, and mapped out some part of
the coast, putting a few clouds in likewise--a mistake easily made by
those who omit to verify every foot of land. Sir James Ross, in his most
successful South Pole Expedition, during the years 1839-43, sailed over
some of this land, and confirmed the rest. The Antarctic, as well as the
Arctic honours he secured for England, by turning a corner of the land,
and sailing far southward, along an impenetrable icy barrier, to the
latitude of seventy-eight degrees, nine minutes. It is an elevated
continent, with many lofty ranges. On the extreme southern point reached
by the ships, a magnificent volcano was seen spouting fire and smoke out
of the everlasting snow. This volcano, twelve thousand four hundred feet
high, was named Mount Erebus; for the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ long sought
anxiously among the bays, and sounds, and creeks of the North Pole, then
coasted by the solid ice walls of the south.

H. M.

A DISCOURSE WRITTEN BY SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, KNIGHT.

_To prove a Passage by the North-West to Cathay and the East Indies_.

CHAPTER I.
TO PROVE BY AUTHORITY A PASSAGE TO BE ON THE NORTH SIDE OF AMERICA, TO GO
TO CATHAY AND THE EAST INDIES.

When I gave myself to the study of geography, after I had perused and
diligently scanned the descriptions of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and
conferred them with the maps and globes both antique and modern, I came
in fine to the fourth part of the world, commonly called America, which
by all descriptions I found to be an island environed round about with
the sea, having on the south side of it the Strait of Magellan, on the
west side the Mare de Sur, which sea runneth towards the north,
separating it from the east parts of Asia, where the dominions of the
Cathaians are. On the east part our west ocean, and on the north side