light
materials and even gravel are carried away by the winds. The bare rock
rises up into miniature ridges, separated by valleys largely occupied
by ice-slabs and lakelets. Snow fills all the crevices and tails away
in sloping ramps on the lee side of every obstacle. In midsummer a good
deal thaws, and, re-freezing, is converted into ice. The highest point
of the rock is one hundred and forty feet. The seaward margin is deeply
indented, and the islets off shore tell of a continuation of the rugged,
rocky surface below the sea. On the northern faces of the ridges,
fronting the ice-foot, large, yellowish patches mark the sites of
penguin rookeries. These are formed by a superficial deposit of guano
which never becomes thick, for it blows away as fast as it accumulates.
Standing on the shore, one can see kelp growing amongst the rocks even
in the shallowest spots, below low-water level.

To the south, the rocks are overridden by the inland ice which bears
down upon and overwhelms them. The ice-sheet shows a definite basal
moraine, which means that the lowest stratum, about forty feet in
thickness, is charged with stones and earthy matter. Above this stratum
the ice is free from foreign matter and rises steeply to several hundred
feet, after which the ascending gradient is reduced.

The continental glacier moves down to the sea, regularly but slowly; the
rate of movement of some portions of the adjacent coastal ice cliffs was
found to be one hundred feet per annum. The rocky promontory at Winter
Quarters, acting as an obstacle, reduces the motion of the ice to
an annual rate measured in inches only. Perhaps the conditions now
prevailing are those of a comparative "drought," for there is clear
evidence that our small promontory was at one time completely enveloped.
In a broad way this is illustrated by the topography, but the final
proof came when Stillwell and others discovered rock-faces polished and
grooved by the ice.

Whatever "ice-floods" there may have been in the past, the position of
the margin of the glacier must have remained for a long period in its
present situation. The evidence for this is found in the presence of
a continuous, terminal moraine, at or just in advance of the present
ice-front. This moraine, an accumulation of stones of all kinds brought
to their present resting-place by the ice-sheet, was in itself a
veritable museum. Rocks, showing every variety in colour and form, were
assembled, transpo