GLACIERS IN OTHER PARTS OF TEE WORLD. 113 



countered in his explorations a precipitous mountain-coast, 

 rising from 7,000 to 10,000 feet above tide. Through the 

 valleys intervening between the mountain-ranges huge gla- 

 ciers descended, and "projected in many places several miles 

 into the sea, and terminated in lofty perpendicular cliffs. 

 In a few places the rocks broke through their icy covering, 

 by which alone we could be assured that land formed the 

 nucleus of this, to appearance, enormous iceberg." * 



Again, speaking of the region in the vicinity of the lofty 

 volcanoes Terror and Erebus, between 10,000 and 12,000 feet 

 high, the same navigator says : 



" We perceived a low white line extending from its extreme 

 eastern point as far as the eye could discern to the eastward. 

 It presented an extraordinary appearance, gradually increasing 

 in height as we got nearer to it, and proving at length to be a 

 perpendicular cliff of ice, between 150 and 200 feet above the 

 level of the sea, perfectly flat and level at the top, and with- 

 out any fissures or promontories on its even seaward face. 

 What was beyond it we could not imagine ; for, being much 

 higher than our mast-head, we could not see anything except 

 the summit of a lofty range of mountains extending to the 

 southward as far as the seventy-ninth degree of latitude. 

 These mountains, being the southernmost land hitherto dis- 

 covered, I felt great satisfaction in naming after Sir Edward 

 Parry. . . . Whether Parry Mountains again take an easterly 

 trending and form the base to which this extraordinary mass 

 of ice is attached, must be left for future navigators to deter- 

 mine. If there be land to the southward, it must be very 

 remote, or of much less elevation than any other part of the 

 coast we have seen, or it would have appeared above the bar- 

 rier. " 



This ice-cliff or barrier was followed by Captain Ross as far 

 as 198° west longitude, and found to ]:>reserve very much the 

 same character during the whole of that distance. On the 

 lithographic view of this great ice-sheet given in Ross's work 

 it is described as "part of the South Polar Barrier, to 180 



* Quoted by Whitney in "Climatic Changes,' 1 p. 314. 



