BYKD ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION GOULD 245 



setting forth the fact that in the name of Commander Byrd we 

 claimed the land as a part of Marie Byrd Land. 



From this mountain we could see 35 to 40 miles farther eastward. 

 The mountains appeared to be progressively lower. To the southeast 

 of us the tabular mountains — the structural equivalents of Mount 

 Fridtjof Nansen — were not more than 8,000 feet high. They define 

 the southern boundary of the great glacier that flows down from 

 the southeast. The whole fault structure seems to flatten out east- 

 wards. The very large glaciers near the end of our trek coalesce to 

 form a vast ice apron, which made travel both difficult and hazard- 

 ous. The east-west-trending glacier in Marie Byrd Land pours 

 forth such a volume of ice that it dominates the direction of flow 

 along the whole mountain front with the result already noted in 

 connection with Liv Glacier, namely that the flow of ice from the 

 plateau instead of being directly northward as one might expect is 

 toward the northwest. 



Viewed as a whole the ice flow along the foot of the mountains gave 

 the unmistakable impression that the ice is much less active now than 

 formerly, probably when it was thicker. Most of the larger crevasses 

 seem to have long been stagnant and to have become completely filled 

 with snow and iced over. Throughout our journey from Axel Hei- 

 berg Glacier to Marie Byrd Land and return we heard no cracking 

 as of ice under great strain and saw no unmistakable fresh crevasses. 

 Ten miles beyond the mouth of one of the larger glaciers we found 

 a great granite erratic (pi. 7, fig. 1), which seemed disproportion- 

 ately large to have been carried so far by the present stream of ice. 

 On December 20 we left Marie Byrd Land and started westward 

 toward our base camp. On Christmas Day we quite accidentall}^ 

 stumbled onto what we had formerly looked for in vain — the cairn 

 left on Mount Betty by Amundsen 18 years earlier when he was 

 northward bound for Framheim from the pole. The next day found 

 us at Strom Camp making preparations for the return journey to 

 Little America, 



SUMMAST OF GEOGRAPHIC RELATIONSHIPS 



In summary, certain geographic relationships stood out as we 

 completed our work at the mountains : 



The fault-block mountain structure of South Victoria Land is 

 extended more tlian 300 miles farther across the continent than it 

 had previously been known to exist. 



Carmen Land of Amundsen, together of course with its possible 

 connection with nonexistent lands between latitudes 81° and 82°, 

 is removed from the map. 



