GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN SOUTH GEORGIA. 799 



rocky heights, having ice-fields in every hollow, and eventually culminate in the 

 central or Allardyce range of mountains. The central range, except in steep rock 

 escarpments and splintery crests, is covered with a permanent cap of ice-fields 

 and snow. 



Mount Paget, the highest point of the central range, 8383 feet above sea-level, 

 has almost vertical escarpments of gnarled rusty-brown rocks which reach to its 

 summit ; the escarpments are surrounded by ice-fields and glaciers, which slowly flow 

 down to the edge of the Nordenskjold, Moraine Fiord, and Moraine Flat Glaciers in 

 Cumberland Bay. 



Looking up Cumberland Bay on a fine clear day, rather an event in South 

 Georgia, we have a magnificent view of the steep walls of uniformly bedded and 

 stratified rocks, which run into narrow chasms and gorges, like Moraine Fiord, and 

 rise into frowning reddish-brown ramparts and walls to the crest of Mount Paget, 

 the Sugar Loaf, and the Nordenskjold Peak. The red-brown colour of the rocks is 

 contrasted perfectly with the sparkling white of the ice-fields and glaciers, and presents 

 to the eye a view of lake and mountain scenery at once grand and picturesque. 



There can be little doubt that the north-east coast of South Georgia has that 

 definite arrangement of naked rocky heights and exposures, ice-fields and glaciers, 

 which give it the premier place for picturesque and grand scenery over all the 

 other Antarctic and semi-Antarctic islands with which it is indirectly grouped : the 

 South Orkney, the South Sandwich, and the South Shetland Islands. 



The south-west coast of South Georgia, extending from Cape Nunes past 

 Annenkov Island to the Novosilski Bay, is one vast sheet of ice, through which 

 Mount Paget can only be distinguished by its great height. This coast is probably 

 much indented, as rock escarpments form the coast-line, and inlets open into the 

 interior at various points ; but they are filled up with ice, which terminates in 

 glacier edges at sea-level. 



The mass of South Georgia owes its existence to-day to the character of its 

 rocks, and to crustal movements which date back to a remote geological period. 

 The ice-fields and glaciers may be attributed to the influence of the great land 

 mass of the now well-defined continental area of Antarctica. The existence of 

 that huge continent, wreathed in one vast ice-cap, is sufficient to account for the 

 rigorous climate of South Georgia. The fact that the south-west coast of the 

 island is much more under the influence and presence of the ice-cap and glaciers 

 than the north-east coast, is evidence in support of that view. 



The northern coast of Newfoundland, of which the writer has had experience 

 along Notre Dame Bay, up to the Straits of Belleisle, nearly corresponds in northern 

 latitude to South Georgia in southern latitude. However, it is warmer in summer, 

 and consequently permanent ice-fields and glaciers do not exist. There is no polar 

 continent sending its cold winds over Newfoundland, although to some extent 

 Greenland is a refrigerating influence. Again, South Georgia has no such beneficial 



