224 LAMPLUGH : SHELLY MORAINE OF THE SEFSTROM GLACIER. 
By last August (1910) there had been further recession, and 
the waterway west of Cora Island had grown broader ; but the 
detached remnant of the glacier, tliough greatly diminished by 
meltmg and undermining, still clung to the island, as shown in 
PL XXVII. 
As the result of this glacial invasion, a huge mass of morainic 
material has been heaped up along the Avestern side of the island, 
exhibiting remarkable features now to be described. 
CORA ISLAND. 
In its original condition, the island was a low smooth spit, 
about 2 miles long by half a mile wide, composed of Carboniferous 
rocks (chiefly limestone) partly covered with raised beach. There 
is no evidence that, until the recent invasion, it had ever been 
covered by ice since its emergence from the sea after the period 
of the raised beaches. AU the charts dating before 1890 show it 
as surrounded by water ; therefore its state in 1896 — the year 
of Prof. De Geer's observations — excited the surprise and interest 
of another explorer, Mr. A. Trevor- Bat tj^e, who had accompanied 
the expedition of Sir W. M. Conway to Spitsbergen and made 
an independent journey up Ekman Bay. His account of the 
island in that year is as follows^: — 
" Upon our Admiral t}^ chart a large island is marked to the 
north of Ekman Bay, but for this I looked in vain, for reasons 
which shall presently appear. . . . 
'* . . . Early in this exploration I was able to solve the 
mystery of the undiscoverable island. The Splendid 
Sefstrom] Glacier is advancing at a rapid rate. It now 
presents three fronts to the sea, a south-western, a south 
eastern, and an eastern front. From these two latter faces the 
glacier rises in a jagged area of seracs. Between the south- 
western and the south-eastern faces an apex juts boldly out 
into the sea, and at the time of our visit [July, 1896] two 
immense pinnacles reared themselves from the water, all but 
separated to their bases from the main mass. This double 
face of seracs, pushed from behind and undermined by the 
waves, is constantly falling, so that approach in a boat would 
be a dangerous experiment. The whole of the sea west of the 
I " The First Crossing of Spitsbergen," bv Sir W. M. Conwav {Dent & Co., LoMdon),1897, pp. 243, 
249-50. 
