

GRANITE HARBOUR 



PLAN SHOWING THE FOUR OUTLETS 

 OF THE FERRAR GLACIER DURING 

 ICE MAXIMUM. 



)o Ounlop I? 



UNNAKIEO VALiSt 



THE FERRAR GLACIER 87 



their terminations. The mterest of the glaciers lies in the fact that, though they 

 now flow southward, they were formerly forced northward by the Ferrar Glacier 

 into another drainage system." 



The same remark may be made about the Valley of the Blue Glacier. That 

 wonderful spurless valley was probably excavated by a former branch of the Ferrar 

 Glacier escaising over the rock ridge at Descent Pass. If this view is correct, the 

 height of Descent Pass above the present level of the adjacent ice of the Ferrar 

 Glacier is some roughly approximate measure of the recent shrinkage of the ice in 

 that region. The exact height of Descent Pass is not given on the Section 1 of 

 Plate VII. {op. cit.), but to judge from the scale is about 2000 feet above the present 

 level of the glacier. The bold headland of Solitary Rocks, in itself too small to 

 harbour sufllcient ice for self-glaciation, 

 has obviou.sly been intensely glaciated in 

 recent time over its summit. This rises 

 about 2000 feet above the level of the 

 adjacent ice. 



Depot Nunatak, at the head of the 

 glacier, is obviously an ice-flood gauge on 

 a small scale, and its strongly glaciated 

 summit stands 500 feet above the level 

 of the adjacent ice. It follows that 2000 

 feet indicates the very minimum former 

 height of the glacier ice in the Ferrar 

 Valley above its present altitude. In an 

 earlier paper * Ferrar estimated the former 

 height of ice in the Ferrar Glacier Valley 

 as 3000 feet above its present limits. 



The modern Ferrar Glacier system thus 

 resembles the disintegrated drainage at 



the delta of some large river. The Ferrar formerly discharged ice into the sea from 

 four mouths — the Blue Glacier, the East Fork, Dry Valley, and an as yet unnamed 

 valley to the north which took oft' the drainage of the ice near the Inland Forts 

 towards Dunlop Island. f Diagrammatically this drainage is repi'esented on the 

 sketch map Fig. 43. 



An excellent account of this important outlet or spillway glacier has already 

 been furnished by H. T. Ferrar. The additional information now given was obtained 

 by the Western Party on their journeys up the Ferrar Glacier and up Dry Valley. 

 The discovery was made that the Solitary Rocks are not islands, but are connected 

 with the north wall of the glacier by a ridge of granite over a thousand feet high. 



* Roy. Geogr. Jour. 



t This has subsequently been named Wright Ghicier by T. Griffith Taylor of Scott's Expedition. 



Depot ."iCMr/^ . 



Fig. 43 



