PRINCIPAL GEOGRAPHIC FEATURES. 213 



century, it has ceased to be even part of a political unit, the western 

 mountainous portion having fallen to Chili, while the Argentine Republic 

 holds the eastern plains region. The name Patagonia, therefore, does 

 not carry with it any political significance. 



Not only does Patagonia include the southernmost part of South 

 America, but it is also the southernmost of any of the grand divisions of 

 land on the earth's surface. It is perhaps not generally realized that the 

 southernmost extremity of the Brunswick Peninsula is in latitude nearly 

 fifty-four degrees south, or about eleven hundred and fifty miles south of 

 the Cape of Good Hope, and about nine hundred miles farther south 

 than Melbourne. Indeed, the only land of any considerable size that 

 reaches a latitude at all comparable with that of the Brunswick Peninsula 

 is New Zealand, and the southernmost of these islands does not extend 

 to within four hundred miles of as far south as South America. In this 

 connection we, of course, do not consider the supposed Antarctic Conti- 

 nent and its adjoining islands. 



Including the Fuegian Archipelago and the islands of the west coast, 

 which exhibit all the topographic features and are but detached portions 

 of the mainland, Patagonia may be described as a greatly elongated strip 

 of land, constituting the southernmost extremity of South America, and 

 lying between the thirty-ninth and fifty-sixth parallels of south latitude. 

 With a maximum breadth along the thirty-ninth parallel of a little more 

 than four hundred miles, it is almost exactly bisected by the seventieth 

 meridian of west longitude. Throughout its entire extent it is divided 

 into an extremely rugged and mountainous western region, and a com- 

 paratively level eastern plain. So pronounced are these physical divisions 

 that it may almost be said that of themselves they have imposed a nearly 

 identical political division of the territory. Thus it is that Argentine 

 Patagonia coincides with the eastern plains region, and the Chilian ter- 

 ritory of Magellanes embraces almost all of the western mountainous 

 district. 



The western region is extremely mountainous and its coast is fringed 

 with numerous islands and deeply indented by an intricate series of 

 inland water-ways, which occupy depressions between the three longitudi- 

 nal ranges, of which, in this region, the Andes are constituted. On the 

 west coast, and throughout the mountains generally, there is an abun- 

 dant precipitation, which over the lower slopes takes the form of almost 



