December i, 1904] 



NA TURE 



103 



labours in Patagonia — impressions all the more valu- 

 able because they are those of a distinguished soldier 

 and man of science who has spent the greater part of 

 his life in the East, and whose principal achievements 

 have been amongst the great mountain masses and 

 plateaux of Central Asia, which find their only parallel 

 in the Andes. Again and again he dwells on the like- 

 ness and on the contrasts between the new lands 

 that he was visiting and those with which he had long 

 been familiar. 



We have only space to quote one passage (p. 149) : — 

 " One could not see the stiff rows of poplars streaking 

 the stony slopes of the eastern Andes near Mendoza 

 without being forcibly reminded of the Indian 

 frontiers ; and the plains of Chile round about Santiago 

 might be the plains of Afghanistan round about Kabul. 

 Standing on the slopes of the hills near Kabul, where 

 Baber's tomb overlooks the Chardeh vallev and the 



It is, however, the pages that describe the author's 

 experiences in Patagonia that will appeal most 

 strongly to the scientific reader. The international 

 differences have borne at least some good fruit. In 

 the hope of finding evidence to support one view or 

 the other the interior of Patagonia has been so 

 energetically explored that there are few countries of 

 which there has been so rapid an increase of our geo- 

 graphical knowledge in recent years. Comparatively 

 little of the tract examined by Sir Thomas Holdich 

 had been trodden by the foot of civilised man a dozen 

 years before his visit. 



We follow with absorbing interest the author in his 

 rapid journey through the varied scenery of the central 

 depression between the Andes on the one hand and 

 the pampas on the other — a fertile land of hill and 

 valley, with here and there great lakes that occupy 

 the deeper hollows and overflow, some to the Atlantic 



-CorcQvado \'a!ley. Fri 



of the King's .\ward. ' 



flat range of the Hindu Kush fills up the western 

 horizon, where interlacing lines of poplars chequer- 

 ing the purple and yellow fields mark the course of 

 the irrigation channels, an impression once drifted in 

 upon my mind of a land of promise set in the midst 

 of barren hills, specially designed to illustrate man's 

 ingenuity in making green things to grow where no 

 green thing had been before. It was the wealth , of 

 the poplars and the willows which produced the im- 

 pression, contrasted with the sterility of the mountains 

 which formed their background and which were only 

 faintly visible through the summer haze, with just 

 the glint of snowpatch here and there. The impression 

 was reproduced with the first view of the plains stretch- 

 ing from the foot hills of the Andes outwards to the 

 Pacific. For twenty-five years Time might have stood 

 still, and Chardeh, Maidan, and the road to Ghazni 

 were all back again before me." 



NO. 183I, VOL. 71] 



and others through deep breaks in the mountains to 

 the Pacific. Everywhere there are evidences of im- 

 portant changes in the still recent past — the shrinkage 

 or complete disappearance of lakes, the diversion of 

 the drainage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the 

 retrocession of the glaciers. 



Elsewhere we read of cruises amid the channels and 

 inlets of the Pacific coast, which form the submerged 

 continuations of the central valley of Chile, and of the 

 glens of the rivers that traverse the Andean chain. 

 Further inland these latter are filled with alluvium 

 overgrown with impenetrable jungle. On this side, 

 too, of the Andes there is evidence of recent changes, 

 for — as Darwin was the first to point out — high above 

 the sea-level are raised beaches and deposits contain- 

 ing shells of forms that still live in the neighbouring 

 ocean. 



But although the axis of the Cordillera and the outer 



