In Tierra del Fuego, where the mountains are only from three thousand to four thousand feet in height and in latitude less than 55°, Darwin reports that "every valley is filled with streams of ice descending to the sea-coast," and that the inlets penetrated by his party presented miniature likenesses of the polar sea. [Illustration: Fig. 9.--Floating berg, showing the proportions above and under the water. About seven feet under water to one above.] _Antarctic Continent._--Of the so-called Antarctic Continent little is known; but icebergs of great size are frequently encountered up to 58° south latitude, in the direction of Cape Horn, and as far as latitude 33° in the direction of Cape of Good Hope. Nearly all that is known about this continent was discovered by Sir J. C. Ross during the period extending from 1839 to 1843, when, between the parallels of 70° and 78° south latitude, he encountered in his explorations a precipitous mountain coast, rising from seven thousand to ten thousand feet above tide. Through the valleys intervening between the mountain-ranges huge glaciers descended, and "projected in many places several miles into the sea and terminated in lofty, perpendicular cliffs. In a few places the rocks broke through their icy covering, by which alone we could be assured that land formed the nucleus of this, to appearance, enormous iceberg."[AG] [Footnote AG: Quoted by Whitney in Climatic Changes, p. 314.] Again, speaking of the region in the vicinity of the lofty volcanoes Terror and Erebus, between ten thousand and twelve thousand feet high, the same navigator says: "We perceived a low, white line extending from its extreme eastern point, as far as the eye could discern, to the eastward. It presented an extraordinary appearance, gradually increasing in height as we got nearer to it, and proving at length to be a perpendicular cliff of ice, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred feet above the level of the sea, perfectly flat and level at the top, and without any fissures or promontories on its even, seaward face. What was beyond it we could not imagine; for, being much higher than our mast-head, we could not see anything except the summit of a lofty range of mountains extending to the southward as far as the seventy-ninth degree of latitude. These mountains, being the southernmost land hitherto discovered, I felt great satisfaction in naming after Sir Edward Parry.... Whether Parry Mountains again take an easterly trending and form the base to which this extraordinary mass of ice is attached, must be left for future navigators to determine. If there be land to the southward it must be very remote, or of much less elevation than any other part of the coast we have seen, or it would have appeared above the barrier."