GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTHERN PATAGONIA. 



INTRODUCTION. 



IT is not my purpose in the succeeding pages on the geography of 

 southern Patagonia to attempt either to locate accurately or to 

 describe in detail even the principal geographic features of the 

 region. Moreover, I wish at the outset distinctly to warn the reader that 

 both the text and the map accompanying it are very deficient and that 

 many features of the very first importance are neither mentioned in the 

 former nor located on the latter. While the present writer possessed 

 neither the instruments nor the training necessary for the accomplish- 

 ment of exact geographic and cartographic work, yet it is believed that 

 such features as are shown on the map, aided by the descriptions given in 

 the text, will prove fairly accurate and may be easily identified by future 

 travellers. 



The mountains especially are inadequately represented on the map. 

 The general trend of the central main range of the Andes is indicated, 

 while that of the eastern lateral range is shown only south of Lake Buenos 

 Aires. No attempt is made to locate the western range. Of the entire 

 region shown on the map, all the area west of the seventy-second meridian 

 is extremely mountainous, and to determine and indicate with any degree 

 of accuracy the position of the thousands of isolated peaks and lateral 

 spurs, with their intricate systems of enclosed water-ways, would alone 

 require the services for several years of a corps of well-equipped and 

 experienced geographers and cartographers. 



It is true that on our first expedition we visited the region lying north of 

 Lake San Martin a year before the members of either the Chilian or the 

 Argentine Boundary Commissions, and that during the two months passed 

 in the Andes of that region we discovered many new geographic features. 

 Indeed, the whole was at the time of our first visit almost entirely 

 unexplored, and abounded in undiscovered and unnamed mountains, 

 lakes, rivers and glaciers, many of them of great size and exceeding 



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