DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLANDS 337 



wards the crest of the central ridge against which they appear to be heaped, as it were, 

 like great masses of drifted snow. They are more or less dormant ; for unlike many other 

 glaciers they are not fed continuously nor are they continuously being pushed towards 

 the sea by the downward and outward pressure of a heavy inland ice-sheet. No such ice- 

 sheet exists in the South Orkneys : wherever the heights above are crowned with ice 

 the covering is so thin that it fails altogether to mask the irregularities of the underlying 

 rock, and it is spread so evenly and lightly over the high land that it can exercise 

 only the slightest influence on the fringing platforms below. 



Other than in the ice-filled depressions and in such almost completely ice-covered 

 areas as exist in the north and north-west of Coronation Island there is little low-lying 

 land and little of gentle gradient. Here and there an acre or two of almost level ice-free 

 ground may be found at sea-level or as a diminutive plateau or step on the lower coastal 

 slopes, but these are of rare occurrence and confined almost entirely to Laurie and Signy 

 Islands. On Coronation Island there are practically none. 



There is much ice-free rock, not only on the coastal buttresses, slopes, and descending 

 ridges but in the higher interior as well, wherever the mountains rear themselves in 

 sharp pinnacles above the general level of the ice-filled valleys, and in general wherever 

 the land is too steep or windswept to retain snow for any long period. From the sea the 

 bare rock appears very dark, almost black, against the ice. In mid-winter practically 

 all is hidden by snow, even the coastal precipices and high pinnacles in the interior. 



Although nearly all the descriptions of last century, and not a few of later date, are 

 concerned largely with their barren and forbidding aspect, the South Orkneys can in 

 bright sunshine present a spectacle that is both grand and beautiful (Plates XV, XVI). 

 Even Fanning, vague and second-hand as his story is, seems to have grasped this 

 fact, for the impression he conveys of the South Orkneys contrasts strangely 

 with the somewhat unfavourable and gloomy descriptions of his contemporaries, 

 Powell and Weddell. "The valleys and gulleys" he remarks "were mainly filled with 

 those never dissolved icebergs, their square and perpendicular fronts several hundred 

 feet in height, glistening most splendidly in a variety of colors as the sun shone upon 

 them. The mountains on the coast, as well as those to all appearance in the interior, were 

 generally covered with snow, except when their black peaks were seen here and there 

 peeping out."^ 



Owing to the precipitous nature of the rocks and slopes that reach the sea a general 

 traverse of the coasts by sledge, although no doubt fairly simple in parts, would as a 

 whole be a matter of great difficulty if not altogether impossible : for although the sur- 

 faces of the glaciers and easier ice-slopes bordering the sea are on the whole good enough 

 and safe enough, and withal flat enough for travelling, communication between one 

 smooth ice area and another is often completely cut off by some intervening buttress of 

 sheer rock or by an ice-slope too steep to negotiate. The ' Scotia's' surveying parties 

 experienced the greatest difficulty in traversing the coast of Laurie Island by sledge in 

 the winter and spring of 1903- and for the most part were forced to take to the 



1 Fanning, E., loc. cit., supra, p. 440. ^ The Voyage 0/ the 'Scotia', pp. 76 and 145-57. 



