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ice liad thawed all round it, so as to form a shallow pool of
water. It was a cube of nearly two fe e t; and Mr. Bynoe
with a maul knocked off, and brought away, a piece as large
as a man’s head. The iceberg was still floating, and drifting
outwards: even if it had been stranded in the immediate
neighbourhood, the block of granite would have rested on the
clay-slate of the surrounding mountains. For the parent rock
we must look to the higher parts of the range, near the head
of the sound.
Again, a few miles to the northward I see in the chart
an Iceberg Sound, which no doubt was so called from the
number of floating masses of ice. It may be recollected
that in this latitude, on the opposite side of the Cordillera,
the plains of St. Cruz, at the distance of fifty and sixty miles
from the mountains, were strewed with great fragments of
rock. Of these, one was sixty feet in circumference, and
another, which was angular, measured five yards square ;—
both being partly buried in the gravel, so that their thickness
was unknown. As it is probable that the plains were
covered by the sea within a period geologically recent, and
as we absolutely know, that icebergs at the present day,
both in the same latitude and even further northward, are
transporting angular blocks from the opposite side of the
Cordillera, the explanation of the St. Cruz case through the
same means of transport, is rendered so evidently probable,
that we are not justified in doubting to receive it: more
especially as the unliroken surface of those plains, and the
terrace-formed valley, opposes a very great difficulty to the
admission of any violent debacle. The latitudes which
we have now been talking of, correspond to the southern
extremity of Cornwall, and the northern provinces of
France.
I will add only one other case; namely, the occurrence of
glaciers at the level of the sea, in the gulf of Penas, latitude
46° 40'. A glacier is represented in the charts as in one
part abutting on a fla t swamp often inundated, and in ano;
Î
ther reaching to the head of Kelly Harbour. The accompanying
wood-cut is copied from the published charts.
4 6 ° 4 0 '.
4 7 ° 0 0 '.
Captain King says its length is fifteen miles, and from the
chart one part is seven broad ; it is also described as being
lofty ; so that we here have an enormous mountain, covering
a wide area, composed of ice. If we compare its situation
with countries in the northern hemisphere, the corresponding
parallel crosses the Alps of Switzerland. Or we may state the
case stronger, by saying that glaciers here descend to the sea
within less than nine degrees of latitude, from where palms
grow, less than two and a half from arborescent grasses, and
(looking to the westward in the same hemisphere) less than
two from orchideous parasites, and within a single degree of
tree-ferns ! In Norway, Von Buch found glaciers descending
to the sea at Kunnen in latitude 67° ; that is twenty degrees
nearer the pole, than in this hemisphere;—a difference of
latitude rather greater than that between the snow-lines of
equal altitude in the same two countries.
The survey of the inner coast terminated at the gulf of
Penas, so that I am far from knowing whether glaciers are not