SCENERY AND TOPOGRAPHY 



those of temperate regions. Thus visitors to the Alps 

 in New Zealand see the lower mile or two of the glaciers 

 completely covered by surface moraine, so that the ice 

 is invisible. Debris is falling on to the moving glacier 

 and gradually building up lateral and medial moraines. 

 ''Glacier milk" pours out of the ends of the glacier 

 owing to the grinding of the floor by the mobile glacial 

 ''plane." But none of these phenomena is to be seen 

 in Antarctica, The glaciers are practically free from 

 debris. Their glacial streams, as far as I saw them 

 in two summers, were practically clear. Nowhere in 

 two hundred miles of Antarctic coast line did I find a 

 well-defined terminal moraine, though there were half 

 a dozen possible sites. But the ends of the glaciers 

 vv^ere all of clear ice, except for a few silt bands and 

 occasional fragments of larger rock. This condition is 

 not so marked, I believe, in glaciers nearer the Ant- 

 arctic Circle, but in jy'' and 78° S. the climate is much 

 too cold for the maximum effects of glacial erosion to 

 be developing to-day. 



Behind Cape Evans I was unable to find any very 

 clear indication of a terminal moraine. Only in two 

 small areas was there any definite arrangement of heaps 

 a few yards long and a few feet high, which could be 

 dififerentiated from the general tumbled heaps of debris, 

 no doubt partly ground moraine, which littered Cape 

 Evans. At the head of Granite Harbor was a small 

 moraine across Cuff Cape. It was about five hundred 

 yards long and about fifty feet thick perhaps. The 

 most favorable site for a huge moraine would be at 

 the snout of the Taylor Glacier — which lies some 



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