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Near the edge it has so thinned that mountain peaks are laid bare, these islands in the sea of ice being known as NUNATAKS. Down the valleys of the coastal belt it drains in separate streams of ice, or GLACIERS. The largest of these reach the sea at the head of inlets, and are therefore called TIDE GLACIERS. Their fronts stand so deep in sea water that there is visible seldom more than three hundred feet of the wall of ice, which in many glaciers must be two thousand and more feet high.
Types of moraines, distance of blocks. Weathering of glaciers. Types of surface. Amount of water silt bands, stratified, or irregular folded or broken. Cross section, of valleys 35° slopes? Weather slopes debris covered, height to which. Nunataks, height of rounded, height of any angle in profile, erratics. Evidence of order in glacier delta.
Cloud-banks look like land, icebergs masquerade as islands or nunataks, and the distant barrier to the south is thrown into view, although it really is outside our range of vision. Worst of all is the deceptive appearance of open water, caused by the refraction of distant water, or by the sun shining at an angle on a field of smooth snow or the face of ice-cliffs below the horizon."
We could have had no better guide. If in bright daylight we had made that march we would have followed the course that was traced for us that night. Midnight found us approaching the edge of a great snowfield, pierced by isolated nunataks which cast long shadows like black rivers across the white expanse. A gentle slope to the north-east lured our all-too- willing feet in that direction.
The range dipped opposite the bay into a well- defined pass from east to west. An ice-sheet covered most of the interior, filling the valleys and disguising the configurations of the land, which, indeed, showed only in big rocky ridges, peaks, and nunataks.
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