ion. Formerly it was used to
describe a formation, which is mainly shelf-ice, known as the Great
Ross Barrier. Confusion arose when "Barrier" came to be applied to
the seaward ice-cliff (resting on rock) of an extensive sheet of
land-ice and when it was also employed to designate a line of
consolidated pack-ice. Spelt with a small "b" the term is a
convenient one, so long as it carries its ordinary meaning; it seems
unnecessary to give it a technical connotation.

Blizzard. A high wind at a low temperature, accompanied by drifting,
not necessarily falling snow.

Floe or Floe-ice. The comparatively flat, frozen surface of the sea
intersected by cracks and leads (channels of open water).

Pack or Pack-ice is a field of loose ice originating in the main from
broken floe, to which may be added material from the disintegration
of bergs, and bergs themselves.

Brash or Brash-ice. Small, floating fragments of ice--the debris of
larger pieces--usually observed bordering a tract of pack-ice.

Bergschrund has been "freely rendered" in the description of the
great cleft between the lower part of the Denman Glacier and the
Shackleton Shelf-Ice (Queen Mary Land). In a typical glacier, "the
upper portion is hidden by neve and often by freshly fallen snow
and is smooth and unbroken. During the summer, when little snow
falls, the body of the glacier moves away from the snow-field and a
gaping crevasse of great depth is usually established, called a
'Bergschrund', which is sometimes taken as the upper limit of the
glacier" ("Encyclopaedia Britannica").

Sub-Antarctica. A general term used to denote the area of ocean,
containing islands and encircling the Antarctic continent, between the
vicinity of the 50th parallel of south latitude and the confines of
the ice-covered sea.

Seracs are wedged masses of icy pinnacles which are produced in the
surface of a glacier by dragging strains which operate on crevassed
areas. A field of such pinnacles, jammed together in broken
confusion, is called serac-ice

The following colloquial words or phrases occurring in the narrative
were largely determined by general usage:
To depot = to cache or to place a stock of provisions in a depot;
drift = drift-snow;
fifty-mile wind = a wind of fifty miles an hour;
burberry = "Burberry gabardine" or specially prepared wind-proof
clothing;
whirly (pi. whirlies) = whirlwind carrying drift-s