BYED ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION GOULD 237 



from the mountains. Curious circular patches of darker ice from 

 a few inches to 2 or 3 feet across, caused by rocks burying them- 

 selves through absorbed heat during the summer months, give 

 to these fields a freckled appearance. A real lake, about 3 miles in 

 diameter, which at the time of our visit was frozen into solid blue 

 ice, had been formed on the southern side of the mountains, evidently 

 by the accumulation of melt water from the higher slopes. 



We found no crevasses indicating any glacier-like movement 

 around the mountains ; probably their tops were formerly overridden 

 by ice, but only a mildly erosive effect resulted or else weathering 

 has been amazingly rapid here. We looked in vain for such evi- 

 dences as scratches, striations, and erratics. The terrain about the 

 mountains averages not more than 300 feet above sea level; and one 

 gets the impression that, were the snow to disappear, what we now 

 call a mountain group would become an archipelago. 



So far as the origin of these mountains is concerned, their relief 

 is not due primarily to tectonic disturbance. They appear, rather, 

 to have been left by the erosion of materials around them — peaks 

 and ridges of circumvallation. I believe the Alexandra Mountains 

 to the northward, to which the Rockefellers appear to be at least 

 petrographically related, belong to the same integral land mass and 

 likewise owe their relief primarily to the forces of erosion. 



No analysis or petrographic studies of the rocks brought back 

 from the Rockefeller Mountains are yet available. These may 

 establish some positive relationships with the rocks across the Ross 

 Sea. I think this is doubtful. At any rate these mountains show no 

 definite structural affinities with other known lands in the Antarctic. 



THE QUEEN MAUD MOUNTAINS 



The plans ^ for our geological reconnaissance of the Queen Maud 

 Mountains were made in the light of what was believed to be the 

 geographic outlines of this sector of the Antarctic as revealed by 

 Amundsen. He had reported appearance of land between latitudes 

 81° and 82% roughly in longitude 159° W. He had further believed 

 that the Queen Maud Mountains trended southeast from Axel Hei- 

 herg Glacier, crossing the continent only some 140 miles from the pole 

 itself. Finally, he indicated a great highland beginning in the 

 Queen Maud Mountains in about latitude 85° 45' S., longitude 

 160° W., extending thence northeast at least to 84°, and possibly con- 

 necting somewhere with the appearance of land between latitudes 81° 

 and 82°. This highland he called Carmen Land.^ 



^Details of the preparations and the incidents of the trip itself are described in chs. 

 11 and 17, the latter < ontributod by the writer of Admiral Byrd's narrative, Little 

 America, New York, 1930. 



* See Joerg, Work of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition 192S-1930, p. 56, footnote. 



