Yesterday afternoon we climbed Observation Hill to see some examples of spheroidal weathering—Wilson knew of them and guided. The geologists state that they indicate a columnar structure, the tops of the columns being weathered out.
The specimens we saw were very perfect. Had some interesting instruction in geology in the evening. I should not regret a stay here with our two geologists if only the weather would allow us to get about.
This morning the wind moderated and went to the S.E.; the sea naturally fell quickly. The temperature this morning was +17°; minimum +11°. But now the wind is increasing from the S.E. and it is momentarily getting colder.
Thursday, March 23, a.m.—No signs of depôt party, which to-night will have been a week absent. On Tuesday afternoon we went up to the Big Boulder above Ski slope. The geologists were interested, and we others learnt something of olivines, green in crystal form or oxidized to bright red, granites or granulites or quartzites, hornblende and felspars, ferrous and ferric oxides of lava acid, basic, plutonic, igneous, eruptive—schists, basalts, &c. All such things I must get clearer in my mind.[1]
Tuesday afternoon a cold S.E. wind commenced and blew all night.
- ↑ As a step towards ‘getting these things clearer’ in his mind two spare pages of the diary are rilled with neat tables, showing the main classes into which rocks are divided, and their natural subdivisions—the sedimentary, according to mode of deposition, chemical, organic, or aqueous; the metamorphic, according to the kind of rock altered by heat; the igneous, according to their chemical composition.
