160 WITH SCOTT : THE SILVER LINING 



In other places the whole ice-shell had been undercut for 

 thirty or forty feet by the relatively warm water. 



Gradually the valley — which I named after Professor 

 W. M. Davis — became wider, and a tributary joined it from 

 the north. (See folding map at the end of the volume ; and 

 also p. 175, section No. II.) It drained the lowest slopes 

 of the foothills, which extended to the scarp of the Western 

 Mountains. These lowest slopes are largely covered by a 

 gigantic deposit of moraine matter. This deposit extends 

 many miles along the foothills, and can only be due to the 

 great Koettlitz glacier. 



Four or five miles from the coast the steep hill-sides 

 formed of solid rock rise somewhat abruptly from the 

 moraine slopes to a fairly uniform height of 3000 feet. 



The sides of the valley along which we were walking 

 were marked by lateral ridges in several tiers. These 

 were about thirty feet high, and in some cases certainly 

 contained much ice. At one spot the silty covering of 

 the side of one of these lateral ridges was marked by 

 vertical stripes of darker silt, as if the whole ridge had moved 

 slightly and cracked along these lines. These ridges followed 

 the contour of the hill between the tributary and the main 

 valley, and reminded me of the parallel roads of Glenroy 

 (though on a very small scale, of course). They are, I think, 

 like terraces or beach deposits due to a bygone ice dam across 

 the mouth of the main valley, such as one sees in the Marjelen 

 See above Fiesch in Switzerland. Later we saw " pocket 

 editions " on Cape Evans. 



Continuing up the valley we found it bounded between 

 solid cliffs of limestone, which were altered in places to a 

 marble. We called these the marble cliffs, and they culmi- 

 nated in a double peak of a fawn tint, which we called Salmon 

 Peak from its colour. I kept along the base of these cliffs 

 while the others walked up the thal-weg 200 feet lower. 

 We soon saw that the upper portion of this " dry ' valley 

 was occupied by a glacier whose snout was forty feet 

 high. 



Some light snow had fallen lately and occupied the 

 furrows of the " tesselations " which ornamented the floor of the 

 valley. For some reason (probably the direction of the wind 

 and sun's rays) only the north-south furrows were now filled, 



