SOME PROBLEMS 



as to how the material of the sea floor came to be up- 

 hfted here to a height of twenty to thirty feet or more 

 above sea-level, and as to how the marine sediments 

 came to be resting on an old conical surface of dense ice. 

 We tested the latter to see whether it was of salt- or of 

 fresh- water origin; it was not distinctly saline, though 

 slightly so — ^much as glacier ice would be if it were 

 sprayed by the sea. None of us could account for 

 this curious phenomenon. It seemed as though the 

 marine muds had been subjected to considerable 

 pressure, as numbers of the fossils in it were triturated 

 and shattered. It is of course just possible that in the 

 forward movement of the Mount Nansen Glacier it 

 may have pushed up some of the sea bottom above sea- 

 level, and still there remains the question as to how 

 masses of ice came to find their way under the moraine 

 sediments. It is possible that after an extensive glacia- 

 tion of this region the glacier ice from inland spread 

 over the spot where this moraine is now situated, but 

 on the retreat of the ice inland, while still a small 

 thickness of ice was left in this bay, a submergence 

 ensued, and during that submergence a marine mud 

 was deposited over the ice together with the larger 

 organisms found in association with the mud. Then 

 there was an advance of the ice once more, and moraines 

 of large blocks of rock were laid down over the top 

 of the moraine muds and the relics of the ancient glacier 

 ice. Then once more the ice retreated to its present 

 position leaving the moraine blocks and moraine muds 

 of the old ice in the relative situations mentioned. 



As we skirted the foot of the small branch glacier 

 we noticed several small puff s of snow near the top angle 

 of the snow slope which we proposed to escalade. Just 

 as we were pulling our sledge to the foot of this slope the 

 pufF of wind with drift snow developed suddenly into a 



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