GLACIERS OF NEW ZEALAND. 273 



beina: very lofty." * These mountains appear to be from 4,000 to 7,000 feet 

 in height, and the whole coast, as seen in various photographs examined by 

 the present writer, is exceedingly precipitous. The extraordinary change in 

 the conditions with regard to the occurrence of snow and ice presented along 

 this coast, in passing over not much more than ten degrees of latitude, is 

 evident from what has l^een here stated. On Aconcagua, the elevation of 

 whicli is not far from 22,000 feet, no glaciers exist and the snow sometimes 

 disappears entirely-; Corcovado, on the other hand, rising in an unbroken 

 slope close to the sea to a height of 7,500 feet, appeared to be permanently 

 snow-covered for at least one fifth of its visible perpendicular height. The 

 difference of latitude between the two peaks is about the same as that 

 between the southern end of the Sierra Nevada and Mount Rainier. 



It is not, by any means, all of Tierra del Fuego and the adjacent coast of 

 South America which is covered with snow and ice. Most of the island is a 

 '• broken mass of wild rock, lofty hills, and useless forests." In the Beagle 

 channel it is the lofty mountains on the north side, composing the back- 

 bone of the whole country, over which is spread a wide mantle of perpetual 

 snow, and from which glaciers extend to the water's edge.f 



Africa, with its eleven millions of square miles of surface, has, so far as 

 known, no regular glaciers, and only a few spots covered with eternal snow. 

 Kilimandjaro, a peak nearly 20,000 feet high, situated only three degrees 

 south of the equator, has near its summit a considei'able area of snow. The 

 same is reported of a peak called Namuli, in the Makua country, in about 14° 

 south latitude, t The elevation of the snow line in that region would be 

 about 16,000 feet. 



The only really interesting and important glacier region in the eastern 

 hemisphere, south of the equator, excluding the Antarctic Polar ice fields, is 

 in New Zealand. Here, on the western coast of the southern island, between 

 the parallels of 42° and 45°, rises abruptly from the sea a grand range of 

 mountains, the culminating point of which. Mount Cook, is about 13,000 feet 

 in elevation. Along this chain, for a length of about a hundred miles, are 

 developed numerous groups of glaciers, some of which are not much inferior 

 in size to the largest of those of the Alps. The Tasnian glacier is said by 

 Haast, who first scientifically explored and described these mountains, to be 



* Voyage of the Adventure ami Bengle, Vol. III. p. 280. 



t 1. C; p. 243. 



t See Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, New Series, V..1. IV. ji. 211. 



