THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



Party, the Nimrod lay in a snug natural dock, formed 

 by one of the bays on the north side of this glacier tongue, 

 at about a mile from its seaward end. We carefully 

 watched for any evidence of rise and fall of the tide in 

 relation to the shore-line of the glacier, but were unable 

 to observe any. We concluded from this circumstance 

 that the glacier must be rising and falling in unison with 

 the tide. The sounding-tube of our Lucas sounding-ma- 

 chine brought up a quantity of serpulce and sponge 

 spicules from the sea bottom beneath the edge of the 

 glacier where our ship was moored. 



The second piedmont-afloat is the Nordenskjold Ice 

 Barrier Tongue. This Ice Barrier Tongue is about 20 

 miles in length, and 5 to 6 miles in width. Its southern 

 edge is formed of ice and polished neve. Fierce blizzards 

 have swept any loose snow off this southern edge of the 

 Barrier. The northern edge was formed largely of 

 snow, being chiefly of the nature of snow-drift, from 40 

 to 50 ft. in thickness. The latter terminates in a vertical 

 cliff with overhanging snow cornices. Obviously this 

 cliff was the combined result of the blizzard winds driving 

 snow northwards to the lee side of this piedmont-afloat, 

 and to the breaking away in summer time of the sea ice 

 supporting the northernmost portions of this snow-drift. 

 Slices are thus removed from time to time from the 

 northern edges of the drifts, and so the clifi' of the portion 

 left behind becomes higher in proportion as the thicker 

 ends of the wedges of snow-drift become broken away. 

 Certainly no true tide-crack was visible on the south side 

 of this Barrier, and only a small crack was seen on its 

 north side. Strange to say, this big mass of ice and 

 consolidated snow, which rises at its centre a little over 

 100 ft. above sea-level, does not appear to communicate 

 directly with a neve field at its inland end. Apparently 

 then the Nordenskjold Ice Barrier is not now being 



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