176 WHAT MR. DARWIN SAW. 



TIERRA DEL FUEGO, 



cessive ridges; and it was curious to observe, in the latter 

 case, as each fresh ridge afforded fresh means of judging of 

 the distance, how the mountain rose in height. 



Mount Sarmiento is one of the highest in Tierra del 

 Fuego, having an altitude of six thousand eight hundred feet. 

 Its base, for about an eighth of its total height, is clothed by 

 dusky woods, and above this a field of snow extends to the 

 summit. These vast piles of snow, which never melt, and 

 seem destined to last as long as the world holds together, 

 present a noble and even sublime spectacle. Several glaciers 

 descended in a winding course from the upper great expanse 

 of snow to the sea-coast : they may be likened to great frozen 

 Niagaras, and perhaps these cataracts of blue ice are full as 

 beautiful as the moving ones of water. 



As the snow-line is so low in Tierra del Fuego, we might 

 have expected that many of the glaciers would have reached 

 the sea. Nevertheless I was astonished when I first saw a 

 range, only from three to four thousand feet in height, with 

 every valley filled with streams of ice descending to the sea- 

 coast. Almost every arm of the sea which penetrates to the 

 inner higher chain, not only in Tierra del Fuego but on the 

 coast for six hundred and fifty miles northward, is terminated 

 by " tremendous and astonishing glaciers," as described by 

 one of the officers of the survey. Great masses of ice fre- 

 quently fall from these icy cliffs, and the crash re-echoes, like 

 the broadside of a man-of-war, through the lonely channels. 

 It is known that earthquakes frequently cause masses of 

 earth to fall from sea-cliffs; how terrific, then, would be the 

 effect of a severe shock (and such do occur here) on a body 



