Appendix 4 - Glossary
The Home of the Blizzard By Douglas Mawson

 

Oceanography. The study of the ocean, including the shape and character of its bed, the temperature and salinity of the water at various depths, the force and set of its currents, and the nature of the creatures and plants which haunt its successive zones.

Neve. [n,e acute, v, e acute] The compacted snow of a snow-field; a stage in the transition between soft, loose snow and glacier-ice.

Sastrugi. The waves caused by continuous winds blowing across the surface of an expanse of snow. These waves vary in size according to the force and continuity of the wind and the compactness of the snow. The word is of Russian derivation (from zastruga [sing.], zastrugi [pl.] ), denoting snow-waves or the irregularities on the surface of roughly-planed wood.

Ice-foot. A sheath of ice adhering along the shores of polar lands. The formation may be composed of attached remnants of floe-ice, frozen sea-spray and drift-snow.

Nunatak. An island-like outcrop of rock projecting through a sheet of enveloping land-ice.

Shelf-ice. A thick, floating, fresh water ice-formation pushing out from the land and continuous with an extensive glacier. Narrow prolongations or peninsulas of the shelf-ice may be referred to as ice-tongues or glacier-tongues.

Barrier is a term which has been rather loosely applied in the literature of Antarctic Exploration. 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-snow and pursuing a devious track;

night-watchman = night-watch;

glaxo = ``Glaxo'' (a powder of dried milk);

primus = primus stove used during sledging;

hoosh = pemmican and plasmon biscuit ``porridge'';

tanks = canvas bags for holding sledging provisions;

boil-up = sledging meal;

ramp = bank of snow slanting away obliquely on the leeward side of an obstacle;

radiant = an appearance noted in clouds (especially cirro-stratus) which seem to radiate from a point on the horizon

The following appended list may be of biological interest:

Birds Aves

Emperor penguin Aptenodytes forsteri
King penguin Aptenodytes patagonica
Adelie penguin Pygoscelis adeliae
Royal penguin Catarrhactes schlegeli
Victoria penguin Catarrhactes pachyrynchus
Gentoo or Rockhopper penguin Pygoscelis papua

Wandering albatross Diomedea exulans
Mollymawk or Black-browed albatross Diomedea melanophrys
Sooty albatross Phoebetria fuliginosa
Giant petrel or nelly Ossifraga gigantea
MacCormick's skua gull Megalestris maccormicki
Southern skua gull Megalestris antarctica
Antarctic petrel Thalassoeca antarctica
Silver-grey petrel or southern fulmar Priocella glacialoides
Cape pigeon Daption capensis
Snow petrel Pagodroma nivea
Lesson's petrel Oestrelata lessoni
Wilson petrel Oceanites oceanicus
Storm petrel Fregetta melanogaster
Cape hen Majaqueus oequinoctialis
Small prion or whale bird Prion banksii
Crested tern Sterna sp.
Southern black-backed or Dominican gull Larus dominicanus
Macquarie Island shag Phalacrocorax traversi
Mutton bird Puffinus griseus
Maori hen or ``weka'' Ocydromus scotti


Seals Pinnipedia

Sea elephant Macrorhinus leoninus
Sea-leopard Stenorhynchus leptonyax
Weddell seal Leptonychotes weddelli
Crab-eater seal Lobodon carcinophagus
Ross seal Ommatophoca rossi

Whales and Dolphins Cetacea

Rorqual, finner, or blue whale Balaenoptera sibbaldi
Killer whale Orca gladiator
 

APPENDIX V - MEDICAL REPORTS