286 SCOTS EAST EXPEDITION 
of Eastern Australia now rise on the present coast (the old 
divide) and flow inland to the central lowlands. The features 
characteristic of this portion of the crust are therefore: an el-- 
vated coastal region sloping gradually to the west and sharply 
truncated by ‘ faults’ on the east. 
Let us now journey southward to Antarctica and take a 
bird’s-eye view of the coast of the Ross Sea and of the great 
mountain range which leads from the Ross Sea and McMurdo 
Sound almost to the Pole. We notice at once that this range 
extends almost due north and south, as was the case in Australia, 
that it practically constitutes the shore line, that it has a steep 
eastern slope—often dropping ten thousand feet in a few miles 
—and that it descends gradually on the west to a uniform land 
mass of a plateau type. 
It seems evident that these points of resemblance are not 
accidental. The great earth movements which affected Australia 
in middle and late Tertiary times also affected Antarctica. A re- 
adjustment of equilibrium raised the west and depressed the east 
in both continents. The central portion of Australia, consisting 
of ancient rocks which have been planed down to a uniform level 
by the normal agents of erosion—by rivers, wind, &c.—is an 
example of a peneplain. It was formed in middle Tertiary times, 
and bears all the evidence of ‘old age’ in a land surface. As 
we have seen, it has been elevated and now the rivers are cutting 
it down again, forming canyons all round its coastal edges, and 
the ‘cycle of erosion es commenced anew. In Antarctica the 
land below the central ice plateau would appear to be a similar 
peneplain. The comparatively slight depth of the outlet gla- 
ciers seems to indicate that the ice cap is not very thick, probably 
one or two thousand feet only. The peneplain is however ele- 
vated to eight thousand feet instead of one to three thousand as 
in Australia. 
It is, however, with the margin of the ice cap that these few 
pages are concerned. Just as in Australia beautiful canyons and 
falls have resulted from the attack of the weather on the margins 
of the plateau, so in Antarctica the ice rivers and agents of frost 
erosion have carved out their own characteristic topography. 
We know from the fossils that warmer conditions existed in 
Mesozoic times in Antarctica, probably in early Tertiary times. 
Moreover, the elevation of the land so many thousand feet has 
