254 Ancient Glaciers of New Zealand. 



Another glacier well worthy of notice, is the Great Clyde 

 glacier, which flows from the snow-fields of Mt. Tyndall. 

 The extremity of this glacier is about 4,000 feet above the 

 sea, and forms a wall of ice across the valley 1,300 feet long 

 and 120 feet high. The river Clyde, which has here its 

 source, springs from the glacial cave at the foot of the ice- 

 wall. 



Perhaps the most remarkable of the glaciers that flow in 

 various directions from the Southern Alps, is the Francis 

 Joseph glacier, which affords an escape for the snow and ice 

 that accumulate around Mt. Tasman. Situated in latitude 

 43° S, it corresponds in position, as Hochstetter remarks, 

 in the northern hemisphere, with Marseilles in the south of 

 Trance, and Leghorn in Italy, where the vine, the orange, 

 and the fig tree flourish. This glacier, descending westward, 

 reaches to within 70,") feet of the sea-level, where it ends 

 abruptly amid a dense growth of arborescent ferns, fuschias, 

 and beeches. 



At some points in the course of the ice-streams that de- 

 scend towards the West Coast, ice-cascades are formed — 

 like the falls of the Glacier dn Geant — where, owing to the 

 steepness of the mountains, the ice is carried over the per- 

 pendicular cliffs, and "falling with a tremendous crash, is 

 again cemented together and forms a new glacier below." 



These are but a few examples of the many glaciers that 

 have been discovered by the intrepid explorers of New Zea- 

 land. Others probably exist, which have never been seen; 

 as there are large areas amid the mountains that have not yet 

 been penetrated by the white man, and were totally unin- 

 habited by the aborigines. 



But interesting as the existing glaciers are, and vast and 

 ■wonderful as they may seem to us, they yet sink into insig- 

 nificance when compared with the mighty rivers of ice that in 

 past lime flowed from the same mountains, and carved out 

 those grand valleys of the Southern Alps to a depth of many 

 thousand feet in the solid rock. 



