THE SKUARY 107 



and 7ieve the terraced slopes of Erebus are in this region, and illustrates another 

 small glacier of the Norwegian type descending into McMurdo Sound. 



Very little rock is visible at all excepting close to the shore-line. 



Passing now about 2 miles farther to the north-west, one reaches the spot 

 called by Captain Scott the Skuary.* 



The Skuary. The Skuary is an area of bare land abutting on the southern 

 border of the Cape Barne Glacier, and some 6 or 7 miles south of our winter 

 quarters at Cape E.oyds. The exposed land is about 2J square miles in extent, and 

 is covered, except at the cliif faces along the shore, and some of the more im- 

 portant and steeper of the hills and ridges, with a thick mantle of morainic material 

 which, as far as could be judged in a cursory visit, seems to be mainly of local 

 origin. Some small fragments of tuff were observed belonging to a variety occurring 

 m situ at Turk's Head ; but there seems to be a total absence of the continental 

 type of plutonic, hypabyssal, and sedimentary erratics with which Cape Royds is 

 strewn. The evidence points to recent glaciation by a local Erebus glacier sub- 

 sequent to the maximum extension of the continental ice sheet, and, in fact, the 

 Skuary is still bounded on the side adjacent to Erebus by what is probably the 

 shrunken remnant of this same glacier. The moraines consist almost entirely of a 

 compact brownish kenyte, a type prevalent in the immediate neighbourhood. This 

 kenyte is somewhat lighter in colour than that met with at Cape Royds. It is 

 rendered porphyritic by light coloured and clear felspars, is most beautifully 

 weathered, and the gravel which cover the depressions of the beds of the various 

 little rills which drain the area are full of felspars, mostly cleavage fragments, but 

 some of them were whole felspars with their edges distinctly rounded off as if by 

 the action of running water. It is remarkable that all these felspars were chemi- 

 cally so unaltered that they were almost transparent. They were mostly of a very 

 light yellowish colour. Scattered about the Skuary are a number of small cones, 

 consisting chiefly of angular fragments of brownish kenyte, with here and there 

 a fragment of fairly fine-grained tuff. Along the margin of the glacier, where it 

 bounds the rocky area, there is a somewhat regular row of from ten to twenty 

 similar cones, separated from one another by a distance of only a few paces. 

 Probably most of them are eskers exposed to view through the retreat of the 

 glacier, but the presence of one undoubtedly intrusive parasitic cone makes one 

 cautious in attributing the formation of all these cones to glacial action. 



When the Skuary was visited on November 18, 1908, the thaw had just set 

 in in earnest. This particular day was cloudy, and the streams of thaw-water had 

 consequently been frozen, but the ridged appearance of the snow-ch'ifts, and the 

 presence of ice in stream channels, all testified to the thawing influence of the 

 sun's heat during the past one or two days. On November 18 th there was still 

 a quantity of snow left, but the Western Party, when passing this spot at the 

 * Captain Scott has more recently changed this name and substituted the name Cape Evans. 



