EXPLORATION OF ANTARCTIC LANDS. 483 
Even from the mast-head it was impossible to see far into the interior of 
the land; only the first wall of the mountains was visible. The region 
in which we now were seemed to be much less buried in ice than the 
land at the head of Hughes gulf, and the glaciers appeared to be local, 
coming from no distance in the interior. It is also noteworthy that 
here the peaks rising as nunataks and the walls of rock bordering the 
glaciers are sharp, and only rounded by ice-action for the 500 feet 
nearest the sea. In the neighbourhood of a great glacier coming from 
the south, where the twelfth landing was made by Racovitza and 
Lecointe, there was a very large roche moutonnée in front of the end of 
the glacier, which is evidently 
retreating. A little further to 
the north of that point I saw a 
nunatak, at the base of which 
the ice seemed also to be retreat- 
ing. On the northern side a very 
characteristic curvature (a, Fig.7), 
with a smoothed surface, was 
remarked near the snow, while 
there were large vertical grooves 
above. I saw very few examples 
of this kind; as a rule, the 
nunataks were well buried. 
The tenth landing (X. on 
map, Fig. 2) was on a large 
island. I saw the channel which 
separates it in the south-west 
from another land, and to the 
north-west the sea horizon was 
unbroken —it was the Pacific 
a . FIG. 7.—NUNATAE, AT THE BASE OF WHIOH 
ocean. I saw this confirmation THE ICE WAS RETREATING. * 
of my theories * with much 
pleasure ; there was no doubt that we were on the west coast of the 
continental land symmetrically placed with regard to the Southern 
Andes. There is no passage to the east, and the Biscoe islands form a 
parallel chain belonging to the mountain system of Graham Land. 
We continued to approach the north-west coast, our course being 
west-south-west. I noticed a wall forming a little cirque between two 
promontories, at the foot of which a broad glacier terminated abruptly 
along the shore and stretched upwards towards the mountains in a 
gentle slope. A series of curved lines, more or less parallel, could be 
distinctly seen upon this wall; the last of them followed the outline 
of the field of névé. There were ledges of the rock ranged like steps ; 
* Bull. Soe. Géol. France, 1895, p. 590. 
