ICE-CAPS. 
65 
2. Local Ice-caps. 
The icy covering of Mount Erebus provides, perhaps, the best example of an 
Antarctic local ice-cap, and its features are exactly those of the Greenland ice-caps on 
a small scale. Snow covers the greater part of the area, ice-streams flow down 
between bare nunataks,* e.g. The Turk’s Head and The Skuary, and there is the bare 
coastal fringe between Cape Royds and Gape Barne. 
The streams of ice which radiate from the mountain are too ill-defined to be 
called true glaciers. They have no snow-sheds, neither have they any well-defined 
banks. Still, all the mountains of Ross Island are completely covered with snow, and 
at definite points give off icebergs, which float away to the open ocean. The upper 
parts of Mount Erebus are covered by snow so thin that the outlines of lava-streams 
near the summit can be 
recognised at a very great 
distance. The middle 
slopes have occasional 
patches of bare rock pro- 
truding through the snow, 
and rising up or dipping so 
steeply that snow cannot 
long remain upon them. 
The lower slopes are even 
more broken by bare lava, 
and the ice must always 
average less than 700 feet 
in thickness, for the ice 
sea-cliff is never more than 
100 feet high. 
The surface of Mount 
Erebus shows numerous 
ice-falls in which the crevassed ice-surface stands out above the level of the more 
even normal ice-covering. Mount Terror, Sturge Island of the Balleny Group, 
Coulman Island and Mount Melbourne, all form centres of local ice-shedding (see 
Plate I and Fig. 1 (p. 3), Fig. 3 (p. 5), Fig. 37). 
3. Piedmonts. 
Masses of ice, which have a breadth greater than the length measured along the 
direction of flow, and lie at the foot of all large areas of high land, are conveniently 
referred to as piedmonts. These masses in South Victoria Land differ from such a 
* I. C. Russell, 1 Glaciers of North America,’ 1897, Tacoma, p. 62, Fig. B. 
Fig. 37. — Ice-foot and Pack-ice in Wood Bay at foot of 
Mount Melbourne. 
vol. i. 
K 
