SOUTH SHETLAND ISLANDS. 161 



meagre, they are sufficient to confute an opinion that has 

 lately been advanced, according to which the South Shet- 

 lands are supposed to be a volcanic range. The very first 

 discoverers who visited the group brought back specimens 

 to their own countries, and though these have been 

 examined only in regard of the minerals visible to the 

 naked eye, while scarcely anything is communicated 

 concerning their matrix, yet various conclusions can be 

 arrived at from them. Moreover, accounts are not 

 entirely lacking of the most important rocks and stones 

 found there. When Smith landed for the first time on 

 King George's Island, not far from the north-east end, 

 he found the ground consisted of blue-grey slate. The 

 writer of the account of the voyage in the Edinburgh 

 Philosophical Journal was of opinion, according to the 

 testimony of Smith's steersman, that there might be horn- 

 blende slate or chlorite slate ; meantime it is not clear 

 whether this applies also to the landing-place. So much 

 is probably correct, that at least the northern flank of the 

 largest island of the group is built up, not of eruptive but 

 of slate rocks, perhaps the same that are found on the 

 South Orkneys. It may also be concluded that the 

 northern coasts of the other islands are of the same 

 structure, as the outlines are identical, a difference in the 

 geology being invariably associated with a difference 

 in the form of the coast outlines. Another statement, 

 which must, however, not be hastily accepted, though a 

 confirmation of it would be welcome, is that coal has been 

 found in superabundance. Details are not given ; it 

 therefore remains doubtful whether it is driftwood that 

 has become peat, or actual coal, or anthracitic layers in 

 the shale and slate. In the Chilian Cordilleras on the 

 coast carboniferous strata of the upper chalk formation 

 occur above crystalline slate, and tertiary peat in the 

 neighbourhood of the Straits of Magellan ; but it seems 



scarcely reasonable to assume that therefore the South 



11 



