FIRST WESTERN EXPEDITION 



159 



Utah, where the hills around the great basin are fringed by 

 similar deposits indicating a bygone lake. 



Down the fan ran a creek from the glacier, which cut into 

 the silts at the shore to a depth of several feet. Evidently 

 the base-line has been lowered by this amount since the fan 

 was deposited. From the hill above the bay it could be seen 

 that there were two fans, one of a lighter coloured silt being 

 derived from the next valley to the south. We could also 

 see that our camp was really on an island which corresponded 

 to the stranded moraines south of Butter Point. 



February 19, 191 1. — I cut out some sealskin from the 

 carcase near-by to make a pair of " brogans ' : to cover my 

 boots, lashing them over the sole 

 with yarn, and over the sealskin I 

 bound my iron crampons (steig- 

 eisen) on. Then we all started 

 to explore the valley immediately 

 west of Davis Bay and south of 

 the Hobbs Glacier. Leaving the 

 sea-icewe reached a lighter coloured 

 " fan " by a sharp step of five 

 feet. Emerging through this 

 broad gravel fan were u nunataks " 

 of large stones which had evidently 

 been deposited before the fan. 

 They rose twenty or thirty feet 

 above the fan, forming ridges lead- 

 ing towards the valley. We 

 reached a gully about 500 yards from the bay, which was 

 entirely water-cut, and was fifty feet deep. It had steep 

 sides and its bed sloped considerably. The latter was filled 

 with large rounded boulders, one or two feet in diameter, 

 obviously waterworn. The account of the summer streams 

 in 1903, given by Dr. Wilson, explains this striking example 

 of ordinary water erosion, which I was unprepared to meet 

 in icy Antarctica. 



The gully wound about through the morainic foot-hills, 

 and widened considerably about a mile higher. Here it was 

 occupied by an ice-sheet some 300 feet wide. In this sheet 

 narrow little canyons four feet deep had been cut by the 

 water, and very generally these canyons were roofed with ice. 



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