GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS 



are merely out-lying sugar-loaf hills, relics of a dissected 

 plateau. 



It was clear from the sight which we obtained of the 

 part of the coast, beyond Cape North on March 8, 1909, 

 that the hills were high, having an altitude of from 6000 

 to 7000 ft., as measured by sextant, and that they formed 

 the abrupt termination seawards of a deeply denuded high 

 plateau. This plateau is undoubtedly a northern pro- 

 longation of the one travelled over by the Northern Party 

 of our expedition on their journey to the South Magnetic 

 Pole. It is also certainly continuous with the plateau 

 traversed by Captain R. F. Scott in his western journey, 

 in 1903, and it is proved now that it is part of the same 

 plateau to which Lieutenant Shackleton led the Southern 

 Party, and over which they travelled to an altitude of 

 10,000 ft. when they reached their furthest point 88° 23' 

 South. 



Throughout the whole of this magnificent coastal range 

 the evidence of past ice action is extremely clear. Most 

 of the valleys are wide, but a few, hke the Ferrar Glacier 

 Valley, are narrow. But whether wide or narrow, their 

 rocky sides show most impressively the abrasive work of 

 the great ice plough, indeed the rocky slopes bounding 

 these glaciers are almost as even as the banks of a deep 

 railway cutting. One is at once struck with the entire 

 absence of those re-entering spurs and angles so character- 

 istic of river-worn valleys. 



A curious feature, already mentioned by Ferrar, is 

 the development of an extensive coastal shelf, for at any 

 rate about 150 miles northwards of the latitude of Cape 

 Royds. This coastal shelf may be possibly ascribed to 

 step faulting, but it is also possible that it may be due 

 to an over-riding of the foothills of the coast range, and 

 a ploughing of them out by the former great ice sheet 

 of the Ice Barrier, at a time when its surface was fully 



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