Vol. 54.] GEOLOGY OF PRANZ JOSEF LAND. 621 



land down to sea-level and usually ending abruptly in an ice-face 

 from 10 to 80 feet in height. 



Below the exposed rocks, which stem back the ice-flow and also 

 absorb the sun's rays, the land is bare. An extensive talus-slope, 

 covered in many places with moss, grass, and other plants, and in 

 some places thickly strewn with large blocks of rock, always occurs 

 at the base of the cliffs where there is any shore ; and below this 

 again raised beaches are generally found. Some of the land-areas, 

 as, for example, Bruce Island, are surrounded by a continuous 

 ice-face. 



The country is evidently the remains of an old tableland which 

 has been broken up into an archipelago of large and small islands. 

 Some details of various localities visited by me will now be given. ^ 



Northbrook Island 



is irregularly triangular in shape, measuring about 12 miles from 

 north to south and about the same along its southern shore, which 

 forms one side of the triangle. It is covered with snow and ice 

 over nineteen-twentieth 8 of its area. 



Cape Flora forms the western angle of the triangle. It is an 

 isolated hill of no great extent, separated from the main mass of North- 

 brook Island by a deep, narrow valley known as Windy Gully. 

 Fig. 1 (p. 622) is a section through Cape Flora from south-east to north- 

 west, and from this it will be seen that the top of the south-eastern 

 face is formed of a vertical precipice of ice between 80 and 100 feet in 

 height ; that below this is a nearly vertical face of rock, composed 

 of successive tiers of basalt (about 500 feet) ; and that below this 

 again is the talus. Behind the cliff of ice the surface rises to the 

 summit of the dome, from which it slopes at a more or less gentle, 

 though not regular, angle in a north-westerly direction to the shore 

 of Giinther Bay. Here it ends in an ice-face from 10 to 30 feet 

 high. The special features of this north-western ice-slope are 

 again referred to on p. 623. 



The southern and south-western sides of the promontory are 

 essentially similar to the south-eastern, except that the top of the 

 cliff is not formed of ice. On these sides there is a ledge of rock 

 about 50 or 60 yards wide at the back of the cliff-face. The highest 

 point reached by the basalt is 1,111 feet. 



The basaltic rocks are coarse, and for the most part non-columnar 

 masses, divided horizontally into six or seven tiers. Here and there 

 a rude columnar jointing may be observed. The greatest thickness 

 of basalt is seen on the southern face, where seven distinct beds or 

 sheets may be counted. The different sheets form a succession of 

 steps or terraces which are cut through by a number of small water- 

 courses. 



1 Most, if not all, of these are marked on the map which accompanies 

 Messrs. Newton & Teall's first paper on Franz Josef Land, Quart. Journ. Geol. 

 Soc. vol. liii (1897) fig. 1, p. 478. 



