DIRK GERRITZ ARCHIPELAGO. 175 



tioned strata. The dark colour of the upper rock, here 

 and there changed to orange, Donald attributes to the 

 presence of oxide of iron ; it is quite as probable that it 

 is caused by a lichen which here, as elsewhere in these 

 regions, covers the rocks. On the farther side of Cape 

 Alexander the inland ice rises steep to the double summit 

 of Mount Percy, and the height of the ice wall here, 

 near Cape Alexander, is doubtless upwards of 200 feet. 

 Towards the east it diminishes, and does not appear to 

 border the whole east coast, for Ross tells of a glacier, 

 several nautical miles broad, which descended to the sea 

 from a height of 985 to 1,300 feet, and ended in a barrier 

 90 to 100 feet high, in front of which Ross observed the 

 largest accumulation of icebergs he had ever seen. 



Similar conditions obtain in Dundee Island, although 

 the absence of such lofty elevations brings with it the 

 absence of the deep and universal ice-covering met with in 

 Joinville Island. The ground nowhere rises above 160 

 feet, and may, therefore, as compared with its extent, be 

 regarded as very flat. The ice covering, broken only by 

 small clefts across the line of fracture, descends very 

 gradually to the sea, forming ice walls of only twenty- 

 seven to forty-eight feet high. In one place on the 

 north-west of the island, Active Sound, Donald found a 

 level beach slightly covered with snow and of a peculiar 

 greenish-brown colour, probably a growth of lichen. The 

 shingle here consisted of red and grey granite, sandstone, 

 conglomerate, and eruptive rock, and further inland bones 

 of whales in a state of decomposition were found. These 

 finds are of the greatest interest, for even if the rocks were 

 found on layers of secondary formation, they nevertheless 

 prove that adjoining sedimentary rocks cannot be far 

 distant, and afford an indication that the tracts south of 

 Drake's Straits are obviously fragments of more extensive 

 country at a previous period. Whether the bones of 

 whales found farther in the interior are to be regarded 



