December 25, 1902] 



NA TURE 



«75 



THE FARTHEST SOUTH. 1 



T T is with a feeling of disappointment that one learns 

 ■^ that the name of Tierra del Fuego does not carry 

 in it the tradition of the volcanic fires which, though 

 once seen by man, are now nearly all extinct ; but we 

 are told that the name was given by Magellan because 

 of the immense number of fires lighted by the native 

 Indians to keep themselves warm or cook their food, or 

 give notice of the approach of strange craft. All the 

 descriptions of the country connect it in climate with 

 Chili, the land of snow, as its native name implies, and 

 give greater prominence to its glaciers and icebergs than 

 to its one still active volcano. 



Fitzgerald has given a fuller account of the exploration 

 of the same region as that traversed by Sir Martin Con- 

 way, and the aspects of Nature which struck both these 

 travellers we may regard as characteristic of the region. 



Fie. 1. — Nieves Penitentes in Process of Formation. (From Conway's "Aconcagua and Tierra del Fuego.") 



Many of the accidents and incidents, often very untoward, 

 which befell them both may be expected as inevitable 

 accompaniments of exploration at great elevations, while 

 others may be provided against when the traveller has 

 realised what is before him and taken due precautions. 

 Both watched the purple shadows creeping over the 

 ocean, the gorgeous colours of the rocks and the deep 

 blue of the ice. Both tell us of the rapidly rising torrent 

 which carried off mule and man, of the glissade of the 

 ponies down the steep talus of crumbling stone, of the 

 struggle and recovery of the mule on the slippery rocks, 

 of the frost-bitten guide, the mountain-sickness and other 

 discomforts arising from impaired circulation and the 

 want of constant supplies of warm and nourishing food, 

 of the difficulties of the dense forest and spongy ground ; 

 and this similarity of experience and consensus of opinion 

 warns the future traveller who may try those heights 

 what to look out for and what to prepare for. 



1 " Aconcagua and Tierra del Fuego." By Sir M. Conway. Pp. xii + 

 252. (London : Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1902.) Price 12s. bii. net. 



NO. 173O, VOL. 67] 



Sir Martin Conway's diary, in its description of de- 

 tails, gives a freshness and local colouring to the story ; 

 even his constant references to the weather, by which, in 

 such cases, the best-laid plans are often thwarted, do, in 

 spite of Mark Twain's grumble, help the reader to realise 

 the nature of the enterprise. Perhaps this remark would 

 apply less strongly to his introduction of unexplained 

 Spanish or native words with which his readers could 

 not be expected to be familiar. We certainly do feel 

 that we are reading about a foreign country when 

 we come suddenly upon alameda, alfalfa, arriero, or 

 pejerey, peon and posado. They have their effect, 

 like "that blessed word Mesopotamia"; but we lose 

 the thread of the story if we do not know whether our 

 traveller has arrived at a wayside inn or a position of 

 equilibrium at the bottom of a crevasse. 



Darwin, in the " Voyage of the Beagle," has described 

 the features of this interesting 'region more especially 



from the scientific 

 point of view ; Sir 

 Martin Conway often 

 helps us greatly to 

 realise the general 

 effect by pointing out 

 that it is like some- 

 thing nearer"; home 

 which his readers 

 would probably have 

 seen. 



It is an interesting 

 region. The double 

 range of the Andes 

 carved into every 

 variety of peak and 

 valley is submerged 

 at its southern end 

 so that the deeper 

 hollows have been 

 invaded by the sea, 

 which fills a long 

 trough parallel to the 

 coast-line and many 

 a transverse channel. 

 He compares it to 

 the Norwegian and 

 Alaskan inland 

 steamboat routes (p. 

 141). The submerged 

 mountains are at- 

 tacked by air and 

 ocean with almost 

 ceaseless fury, and 

 we learn that it is 

 not always safe to assume, when we see the tops of a 

 group of mountains all touching an approximately uni- 

 form level, that we have there the wreck of a sea-plain 

 or, as some would call it, a plane of marine denudation 

 or base level of erosion, out of which the separating 

 valleys have been carved after its upheaval, for here we 

 have an example of a mountain region being submerged 

 and the heights during any stationary period being 

 planed off to a uniform level, the valleys having existed 

 previous to the submergence. 



The mountains around still rise so high that their 

 snows feed glaciers which descend to sea-level. Before 

 the submergence, their greater ice-flows crept further out 

 on to the lowlands and left traces of ancient glaciation 

 far beyond its present limit. 



How recent some of the great geographical and climatal 

 changes of the southern end of the Andes are, we may 

 learn from a comparison of what the glaciers of Sar- 

 miento were like when Darwin visited the straits and 

 the same glaciers as seen by Sir Martin Conway. In 



