^^y-l Taylor, A Scientist in the Antarctic. 7 



1919 J ' / 



We fixed our headquarters on a low promontory in MacMurdo 

 Sound, now called Cape Evans ; and after three weeks of hut- 

 building several parties set out for depot work or exploration. 

 The two western parties — of which I had charge — surveyed in 

 considerable detail the western shores of MacMurdo Sound and 

 the adjacent Ross Sea for a distance of a hundred miles. Here 

 the Great Ice Plateau, of 7,000 feet elevation, reaches within 

 twenty miles of the sea ; but it is fringed by a range (rising to 

 13,300 feet in Mount Lister) which can only be traversed via 

 the great outlet glaciers. Although some of these had been 

 roughly charted, none except the Ferrar had been topo- 

 graphically surveyed. 



Our chief studies, naturally, were concerned with geology, 

 and especially with the evolution of the land surface. Only 

 in two places did we come across any land flora. On a sunny 

 debris slope at the snout of the Ferrar glacier we found a carpet 

 of green moss, about sixty feet long, and in a similar situation 

 in Granite Harbour there were thick clumps of peaty moss 

 between the granite boulders. Save for a few lichens and for 

 some algae in the small lakes, this is all the vegetation in 78° 

 south latitude. 



The animal life along the coast has often been described. 

 Weddel Seals were common, especially at the entrance to the 

 Taylor Glacier. Here was a flock of some thirty individuals, 

 and hereabouts also we found a troop of Emperor Penguins 

 awaiting their moulting time. In the moss I was lucky enough 

 to discover the first living insects — some small aptera, about 

 a millimetre long, which I brushed on to seccotined paper, and 

 so embalmed many thousands ! These insects must hold the 

 record for hibernation, for they were frozen in an ice film even 

 in midsummer, until I turned them toward the sun, when they 

 moved slowly among the moss hyphae. 



The stratigraphy of Antarctica in this region is very like that 

 of southern Australia. At the base are contorted schists and 

 gneisses like those of Port Lincoln. Above these come red and 

 grey granites of great thickness, forming cUffs two or three 

 thousand feet high. Highest of all is a sedimentary series of 

 yellow sandstones, called the Beacon sandstones. These are 

 of Palaeozoic age. The chief feature, however, is a series of 

 colossal dolerite sills (like those of Tasmania), which penetrate 

 the granite in horizontal layers, often a thousand feet thick. 

 One grand section in the Ferrar valley must be almost unique. 

 Above the gleaming glacier is a thousand feet of talus of a brown 

 tint. This reaches up to the red-grey granite. A little higher 

 comes the lower black dolerite sill ; then more red granite ; 

 then another black sill, and high above this the yellow pinnacles 

 of the Beacon sandstone some 4,000 feet above the glacier. 



