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ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 2 



More intimate views of the mountains demonstrated that their 

 topographic expression was a fairly safe guide to the character of 

 the rocks that composed them. The foothills with their ragged out- 

 lines are composed essentially of a great mass of dark-colored 

 micaceous gneisses and schists with smaller amounts of granites. 

 In some places this older mass was shot through with younger 

 lighter-colored granites giving to the whole a fairly bizarre striped 

 effect (pi. 4, fig. 1). Pegmatitic dikes and veins are not un- 

 common, and in places barren quartz veins stand out sharply against 

 the darker background. But taken as a whole the aspect is that of 

 a dark-colored series of old metamorphics. Doubtless these rocks 

 are pre-Cambrian, and wherever they constitute the mountain masses 

 they have been eroded into ragged and angular peaks. In contrast 

 the tabular mountains owe the regularity and evenness of their out- 

 lines to the fact that they are capped with a great series of practically 



HORIZONTAL SCALE 



VERTICAL SC6LE 

 GREATLV EXAGGERATED 



Morainic Cover 

 Ross Shelf Ice 



Antarctic Horst 



p^ Beacon Sandstone ».th Coal Seams ['/j Dolente Sills ['-^Jjl Younger Granites Py//] Precambnan Metamorphics 



Figure 1. — Generalized cross section of tlie Queen Maud Mountains 



horizontal sandstones and shaly sandstones reinforced with dolerite 

 sills. When we came near enough we could see that the tabular 

 mountains were tilted upward toward the north, or the outer edge, 

 so that the plateau behind is generally lower than the scarp front 



(% 1). 



A further persistent impression was that there were almost more 

 glaciers than mountains. Every little pocket and depression along 

 the scarp front has its individual glacier, but it is the great valley or 

 outlet glaciers like Liv, Axel Heiberg, and the even larger ones 

 farther east that break up the range. 



MOUNT FRIDTJOF NANSEN j 



We had hoped to ascend Liv Glacier far enough to reach the flat- ] 

 lying rocks tliat top the tabular mountains. We had even hoped 



that we could reach Mount Fridtjof Nansen this way. It was hope- j 



less. We broke camp on the 3d of December and made our way to I 



the foot of the glacier that takes its rise on the northwest slope of j 



Mount Fridtjof Nansen. Here in latitude 85° 7' S. and longitude j 



163° 45' W. we established our base camp, our depot No, 8, called j 



I 



1 



