GLACIOLOGY OF THE SOUTH ORKNEYS. 859 



The ridge running in from Point Davis bounding this ice- sheet on the east rises 

 very abruptly from the ice, there being practically no high slope of the ice against it. 

 Round the base of several of the peaks there is a well-developed moat, partly due to 

 the action of the wind, partly to melting by reflection of the sun's heat rays. 



Mill Cove. 



The glacier in the eastern half of this cove, hemmed in between high steep rock 

 walls, becomes continuous at a fairly low level with the ice-sheet at the head of Brown's 

 Bay. The central dividing ridge has been completely cut across (? by cutting back of 

 the head wall of a cirque on either side through the sapping action going on at the 

 bottom of the Bergschrund (22) ). It would not take very much depression of the land 

 to result in a shallow strait at this point. Eock is visible below the terminal ice -cliff. 



Aitken Cove, West of Cape Wliitson. 



The glacier ending in an ice-cliif at the head of Aitken Cove occupies a large cirque, 

 which is entirely closed by a high vertical wall. 



Meihuen Cove, East of Cape Whitson. 



Here again, as in Mill Cove, the head wall of the cirque, part of the central main 

 ridge of the island, has been worn down, so that the ice-sheet becomes continuous with 

 that on the north coast, although not at quite such a low level as in the case of 

 Mill Cove. 



Head of Fitchie Bay. 



At the south-west corner of this bay is a small glacier which is the nearest approach 

 seen in the South Orkneys to an alpine glacier draining a snow-field. Occupying a 

 small and fairly steeply sloping narrow depression between two spurs of rock is a snow- 

 or neve-field, with a narrow glacier tongue coming out and ending in a cliff at sea-level. 

 This cliff, unlike most others of the islands, is greatly crevassed, and has all the appear- 

 ances of coming down a steep rock slope. Actually at the head of the bay is an ice- 

 sheet, cut off in part by rock ridges from the eastern ice-sheet. Its commencement 

 is on the steep high slopes of Mount Rottenburg, which it completely encases in an icy 

 covering. 



Eastern Ice-sheet. 



This ice-sheet, extending from the base of Ferrier Peninsula to the head of Brown's 

 Bay, is a good example of the Spitsbergen type of glacier, covering practically all the 

 land, but so thin as to reveal the contours of the underlying terrain. In several places 

 it extends up and completely covers over hills of 800 feet or more in height. On the 

 south side its slope to the sea is rather steeper than on the north, and it ends in an 

 almost continuous ice-cliff extending along the north side of Fitchie Bay to opposite 

 Graptolite Island. At several of the inlets on the north coast it also ends in an ice- 



