THE CONTINENTAL RANGE. 
21 
very steep and almost parallel, and their wall-like appearance is unbroken by glacier 
or ice-cascade. No structural features are very evident, but specimens of basaltic 
and phonolitic rocks (619 and 622) obtained from two spots near its south-east 
end prove its volcanic origin. On the north-eastern extremity there are lava-flows 
quite like those of the east side of Black Island and of the Harbour Heights, Winter 
Quarters. The outline is unbroken and therefore it is impossible to say whether 
this peninsula is composed of lava-sheets, or is a series of scoria-cones like those 
which make up the Harbour Heights. 
The Continental Range. 
South Victoria Land, as previously mentioned, consists of a great range of 
mountains stretching in a nortli-and-south direction for 800 miles at least, and is appar- 
ently the eastern edge of a 
vast plateau, for between 
latitudes 77° and 78° S. 
Captain Scott travelled 
200 miles westward over 
a level region having a 
uniform height of about 
7600 feet above the sea. 
The range maintains 
a uniform high level. Any 
peaks, such as Mount 
Sabine, that rise to heights 
of over 10,000 feet do so 
from correspondingly high surroundings, so that there are practically no peaks rising 
to great altitudes from low levels and towering above the surrounding land. In fact, 
the land does not show great relief. 
Surgeon McCormick, of H.M.S. ‘Erebus,’ considered the whole ran ac to be 
volcanic ; but this is obviously not the case, for all the higher peaks are pyramidal in 
outline, and exhibit a house-roof shape which could not have resulted from the 
eruption of rocks from local centres. The Ross Expedition was less fortunate than 
the ‘ Discovery,’ for the latter was able to steam in close to the land and see the peaks 
from nearer points of view. Thus, just south of Cape Washington, a tabular mountain, 
Mount Nansen (Fig. 8), was observed from the ‘ Discovery ’ to have apparently horizontal 
bedding planes and almost perpendicular scarps showing plateau-structure. The earlier 
explorers were too far from the land to perceive these characters. 
The range, or chain of mountain-ranges, naturally divides itself into sections or 
links, and these may be conveniently considered separately. 
(1) The area between Cape Adare and Cape North, a distance of 100 miles, is 
Fig. 8. — Mount Nansen, the tabular mountain south of 
Cape Washington. 
