Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/43

Rh Great Barrier ice-sheet." (The Voyage of the Discovery, Captain R. F. Scott, vol. ii, p. 300: London, 1905.)

Doubtless, the Ross Barrier is fed considerably from the southern glaciers that run into it. Speaking of the discharges of the glaciers from the névé of the inland ice plateau, Scott says, "From observations which I have mentioned one must gather that the movement of this most northerly of these discharges is very slow, but judging by the movement of the Barrier, the southern ones are more active."

Now the only good channels by which glaciers run into this Barrier, and that are of importance and that come down from the Inland Ice-sheet or Inland névé over which Scott, Shackleton, Armitage, and David have led expeditions, probably come into it at half-a-dozen so-called inlets, such as Skelton, Mulock, Barne, and Shackleton Inlets, and the largest and most definite feeder known is the great glacier that Shackleton discovered and travelled up from the Barrier to the Inland Ice, namely, the Beardmore Glacier.

But the ice that pours out of this evidently rapid-flowing and huge glacier is about 360 nautical miles from the face of the cliff of the Ross Barrier. Now, according to Scott's estimated rate of flow of the Barrier at 606 feet in thirteen and a half months, it would