rte GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF SOUTH VICTORIA 
LAND 
By F. DEBENHAM, B.A., B.Sc., Assistant Geologist to the 
Expedition 
IT is now nearly fifteen years since the first landing was made on 
the mainland of South Victoria Land, since which time four sci- 
entific expeditions have visited it and returned with geological 
information. This has been, or is being, published in the form 
of reports of a more or less technical character. Therefore it 
seems advisable that an attempt should be made to condense this 
information into a popular narrative of what actual changes that 
area has undergone in past time, so far as they are known. 
The tale must necessarily be incomplete, for the difficulties 
confronting geological investigation in those regions are natu- 
rally considerable, but enough has been done to warrant a pre- 
liminary interpretation of the known facts. 
South Victoria Land at the present day is marked on the map 
as a strip of coast running in a southerly direction from Cape 
Adare (Lat. 71°) and merging into King Edward VII Plateau 
in the region of the Beardmore Glacier (Lat. 83°-85°). As ap- 
pears in the physiographic account, it consists for the most part 
of a high level plateau terminated along the coast by steep escarp- 
ments, more or less indented by the action of huge overflow gla- 
ciers. It includes several groups of volcanic islands, the chief 
of which is the Ross Archipelago (Lat. 77°-79°). But in this 
narrative we shall include the Ross Sea and the Great Ice Barrier 
in the region, as inseparably bound up with Victoria Land in its 
history. 
The oldest rocks met with in South Victoria Land, forming 
its foundation, or ‘ shield,’ consist of gneisses, schists, quartzites, 
and crystalline limestones, much altered and folded by later earth- 
movements. On account of this alteration, much of their story 
is hidden from us, but we may compare them in age with the 
