1 88 HEARD ISLAND. 



the group. It is bounded on all sides by cliffs, which are high 

 towards the eastward, but lower towards the westward. There 

 was no snow on the island ; on one stretch of sloping flat land 

 a covering of vegetation could be made out, no doubt similar 

 to that of Heard Island. One of the outlfers is in the form of 

 a pinnacle, projecting straight up from the sea. 



We anchored in the afternoon at Heard Island, in Corin- 

 thian or Whisky Bay, as it is named by the sealers ; I landed 

 at once with Captain Nares and Mr. Buchanan. Heard Island 

 is in about lat. 53° 10' S., long. 73° 30' E. It is thus in about 

 the same latitude as the eastern entrance of the Straits of 

 Magellan, and in a corresponding latitude in the southern 

 hemisphere to our city of Lincoln in the northern; it is in nearly 

 the same longitude as Bombay. It is about twenty-five miles 

 in extreme length, and six in extreme breadth, and has an area 

 of about 80 square miles. The island is elongate in form, 

 stretching in a direction about N.W. by W., and S.E. by E. 

 The southernmost extremity turns eastward, and runs out into 

 a long narrow promontory. 



Whisky Bay is near the northernmost extremity of the 

 island. To the south- east of the ship, as she lay in the small 

 bay, were seen a succession of glaciers descending right down 

 to the beach, and separated by lateral moraines from one 

 another ; six of these glaciers were visible from the anchorage, 

 forming by their terminations the coast-line eastwards. They 

 rose with a gentle slope, with the usual rounded undulating 

 surface upwards towards the interior of the island, but their 

 origin was hid in the mist and cloud ; and Big Ben, the great 

 mountain of the island, said to be 7,000 feet in height, was not 

 seen by us at all. 



One of the glaciers, that nearest to the ship, instead of 

 abutting on the sea-shore directly with its end, as did the 

 others, presented towards its lower extremity its side to the 

 action of the waves, and ending somewhat inland, formed a 

 well-marked but scanty terminal moraine. 



To the sea-shore this glacier presented a vertical wall of ice, 

 resting directly upon the black volcanic sand composing the 

 beach. In this wall was exposed a very instructive longitudinal 

 section of the glacier mass, in which the series of curved bands 

 produced by differential motion were most plainly marked, 

 and visible from the distance of the anchorage. 



The ice composing the wall or cliff was evidently being 

 constantly bulged outwards by internal pressure, and masses 

 were thus being split off to fall on the beach, and be melted, 

 or floated off by the tide. The ice splits off along the lines 

 of the longitudinal crevasses, and falls in slabs of the whole 



