The surface zones of the globe : a handbook to accompany a physical chart / by Keith Johnston.

Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The surface zones of the globe : a handbook to accompany a physical chart / by Keith Johnston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    tion of King Charles Southland, in Tierra del Fuego, every valley, and almost every channel which penetrates far inland, has a glacier of greater or less size, descending into the sea.* Glaciers also appear on the western slope of the Patagonian Andes. Those of Eyre Sound, near the 49th parallel, are de- scribed as enormous, although the neighbouring mountains do not rise above 6200 feet, and they throw off great numbers of icebergs ; one glacier in lat. 47° S. is 15 miles in length and 7 miles wide, reaching down to the sea level. On the volcano of Chilian, in Southern Chile, a gJacier de- scends to 7500 feet; and nearer the equator, in the Andes of the province of Colchagua, glaciers are known at the sources of some of the rivers, lying generally upon the southern slopes of the mountains. The most remarkable of these gives rise to the Rio de los Cipreses, and has its lowest point at a level of 5800 feet,t or considerably more than 1000 feet beneath the snow line. Among the mountains which rise above the snow limit on the plateau of Bolivia, Mount Illimani is believed to have a glacier at a height of 16,500 feet on its southern slope.J The chain of mountains which form the backbone of the South Island of New Zealand, rises in many parts high above the line of perpetual congelation (here at an elevation of 8000 feet), and great glaciers descend from the snow fields which lie between and around the summits. Large ice fields and glaciers are congregated round Mount Aspiring, on the borders of Otago, but the range attains its greatest general altitude in Canterbury Province; there the glacier system of New Zealand has its greatest development, and, on the inner or eastern slope, forms a continuous series of ice fields. The most important among tliese glaciers, and the one which reaches * Damin. t Pi^^is (Philippi). t SomerviUe.