Vol. 54.] 



THE GEOLOGY OF FRAlfZ JOSEF LAND, 



629 



ice-slopes. We visited one of the bare plateau-surfaces, and found 

 it to be about g mile long and from 100 to 250 yards broad. It 

 was covered with soil, and strewn with fragments of basalt, flint, 

 ferruginous mudstone, and quartz. We also found a few small, 

 well-rounded quartz-pebbles. The rock at the edge of the pltaeau 

 was composed of two, thin, almost horizontal sheets of basalt. 



At one spot on this island, where the rock is not exposed, we 

 found a hollow in the ice-slope which appeared to have originated 



Fig. 7. — Diagram to explain ice-hollow on Bruce Island. 



Sea-level 



[The dotted portion represents a section on the ice-slope on each side, as we 



found it.] 



in the breaking away of an enormous mass of ice from the lower 

 side of a crevasse, which runs from 80 to 100 yards back from the 

 coast-line or general ice-face. Contrary to our expectation, we 

 found no rock or beach-material below the ice-crust forming the 

 floor of this hollow, but probably the true rock-face is not far behind 

 the vertical ice-wall at the back of the hollow. Fig. 7 may help the 

 reader to understand ray necessarily imperfect description. 



Windward Island 



is a rocky mass rising to a height of 320 feet, and more or less 

 surrounded by raised beaches from 80 to 100 feet above sea-level. 

 The southern face of the rocks is much broken, but the northern 

 and eastern faces show continuous cliff's of roughly columnar basalt 

 (see fig. 6). The northern portion of the high ground is a plateau ; 

 but the southern portion, as will be seen from the figure, is broken 

 up into more or less peaked irregular masses, separated from each 

 other by snow-filled depressions. 



