L] GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS 33 1 



The land as a whole does not show great relief, though Surgeon 

 MacCormick considered the whole range to be volcanic. The 

 Ross Expedition was less fortunate than the ! Discovery ' : the 

 latter was able to steam in close to the land and so see the peaks 

 from many points of view. Thus, just south of Cape Washington 

 a tabular mountain was observed with apparently horizontal bed- 

 ding planes and almost perpendicular scarps which showed plateau 

 structure, but the earlier explorers were too far from the land to 

 see this. 



The great 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 more snow-covered than is the land further to the 

 south, and near Cape North the cloak of snow is almost uniform. 

 The coast, which is parallel to the mountains, faces north-east, 

 and the peaks, which are generally pyramidal, have their shoulders 

 truncated sharply at the shore. There are very few deep valleys, 

 but the snow often exhibits prominent terraces, one above another 

 and parallel to the coast, and the whole suggests the existence of 

 some horizontal structure in the rock beneath. 



(2) The Admiralty Range occupies the 250 miles of coast 

 between Cape Adare and Cape Washington, and forms the highest 

 and perhaps the largest land mass. Here one sees the possibility 

 of a division of the area into two distinct geological districts, fol- 

 low foothills are almost continuous along the whole length of this 

 part of the coast. Behind the foothills there appears to be a de- 

 pression, and behind this, again, a wall — possibly a fault-face or 

 escarpment — which rises up to heights of 10,000 feet and which 

 has weathered into a series of fine pyramidal peaks. 



(3) The Prince Albert Range, an area 200 miles in length and 

 trending due north and south, is the lowest large land mass seen 

 by the Expedition. This range is important, not only because it is 

 practically a new discovery, but because of its extreme uniformity 

 of character. It is remarkable that here the eastern border is 

 always steep, and gives the impression that it is only the outlying 

 edge of some great plateau from which streams of ice flow down 

 between nunataks. The structure of the Royal Society Range is 

 perhaps the key to the explanation of this uniformity of landscape. 



(4) The Royal Society Range has a length of some fifty miles, 

 and is the only part of South Victoria Land which has been 



