D. Ferguson — Geology of South Georgia. 55 



Bay, of a former ice-covering, with morainic gravel and beautifully- 

 scored glacier stones, which proved that an immense mass of ice had 

 once filled the entire valley. During a visit he paid in 1902 to 

 Moraine Fiord in Cumberland Bay, he discovered the first fossil found 

 in South Georgia embedded in an enormous block of stone. 



K. Fricker ' in his account of the island adopts the view tbat it is 

 connected with tbe Cordilleras of South America and with the 

 Sandwich Islands. He considers the outline, the narrow extended 

 form, and the deep fiords prove the fact that in South Georgia 

 we have a portion of a broken and submerged mountain chaiu. 

 He quotes the geological features described by Hans Thiirach, the 

 geologist of the German Scientific Expedition of 1882. Near Royal 

 Bay the rocks are clay-slates altei-nating with phyllite-gneiss, upon 

 which follows clay-slate alternating with quartz-slate, and he says 

 that huge banks of shale or diabase-tuff and sandstone occur near the 

 Weddell glacier. 



Dr. Fritz Heim,^ geologist to the German Antarctic Expedition 

 (1911) commanded by Lieutenant Filchner, states that the rocks 

 at Royal Bay are chiefly phyllite, schists^ and tuffs (?) of unknown 

 age ; and that the rocks have a north-west and south-east strike and 

 southerly dip. According to his observations, the entire north coast, 

 with the exception of Royal Bay and part of Cumberland Bay, 

 appears to be built up of interstratified dark-grey to bluish-grey 

 schists and gi'eenish tuffs. The rocks of Royal Bay are of different 

 appearance from all seen on the northern coast, and also from those 

 in the inlets east of Royal Bay. He considers that South Georgia 

 is a folded mountain chain, and that the general strike of the fold 

 probably coincides with the strike of the island. Volcanic rocks 

 were discovered from Novosilski Bay round to Drygalski Fiord on the 

 south-eastern end of the island. In Larsen Harbour pebbles of 

 crystalline rock of dioritic habit were found, and at Glosarczyk Fiord 

 numerous blocks of acid rock of granitic type occurred everywhere 

 in the moraines. He gives a qualified support to the view that 

 South Georgia is allied to the Patagonian Cordilleras. 



Rock Series exposed. — Unlike most small islands in the Atlantic, 

 South Georgia is mainly a mass of sedimentary rocks. Its coastline 

 for the greater part is formed of stratified rocks, generally indurated, 

 and in places somewhat altered by pressure-metamorphism. 



With the exception of two older but attenuated exposures of 

 sedimentary rocks in Cumberland Bay and Cape George Harbour, the 

 stratified rocks belong to one great series, which can be conveniently 

 divided into three divisions, upper, middle, and lower. The largest 

 and most impressive exposures of the series is in Cumberland Bay, 

 but it stretches from Royal Bay to Cape North. Only a patch of 

 the upper division of the series is seen near New Fortune Bay, and 

 west of Cape North it comes in again, but the middle and lower 

 divisions are "well exposed from Royal Bay to Cape North. 



^ K. Fricker, The Antarctic Regions, 1900. 



-p. Heim, " Geologische Beobachtungen iiber Sikl-Georgien. Geologie 

 (ler Deutschen Antarktischen Expedition": Zeit. Ges. Erdk. Berlin, 1912, 

 No. 6. 



