666 REPORT — 1902. 



yet found that part of the world where the careful study of local geographical 

 conformation will not inevitably invoke an inquiry into geological construction. 

 We must accept the inevitable criticism and go on with our glaciers. "Where in 

 the world can there be such an area for research into the conditions of glacial 

 formations as is presented by the Himalayas ? I grant the physical and political 

 difficulties in the way towliich I have referred, but still well within the limits of 

 our own red border there are glaciers yet to be studied, which if not the largest 

 are yet large enough to satisfy the loftiest aspirations, and beyond that border the 

 difficulties of approach are lessening day by day, and are no longer so formidable 

 that they need hinder the steps of any determined explorer. 



South American Glaciers. 



The speculative interest in glacial movements and their influence on the geo- 

 graphical conformation become far greater when one moves in a country which 

 has been recently shaped and polished, grooved and fashioned, by glacial action ; 

 when huge blocks of granite or porphyry, standing sentinel over terraces and ancient 

 glacier-beds, witness to the passing of icebergs in prehistoric seas. Such conditions 

 one may tind in two widely separated areas — viz., in the Pamirs and in Patagonia. 

 What causes led to the formation of the first vast ice-cap of which the glacier is 

 the latest evidence ? what caused its disappearance, its reappearance ? why are 

 the glaciers again withdrawing from the mountains ? and what causes the uni- 

 versal process of modern desiccation, of which there is such ample evidence in 

 the Pamirs, in Baluchistan, in Patagonia ? It is to the Himalayas that we 

 turn first for an answer to this question ; but there are other fields almost equally 

 promising, and one of them is to be found in South America. No one now can 

 pretend any longer that we know nothing of Patagonia. Probably no country in 

 the world has been described by so many geographers in so many different 

 ways ; there, at any rate, is a land of glaciers and snowfields awaiting research 

 which presents few of the physical difficulties of the Himalayas. Here is a won- 

 derful country truly, where glaciers reach down to the sea in low latitudes, 

 casting little icebergs into waters fringed by green banks of fuchsia and myrtle 

 and of bamboo ; where the laurel grows into magnificent timber, competing with 

 the Patagonian beech for root-hold on the moss-covered soil. The round grey 

 heads of the granite hills, scratched and seamed by a discarded ice-cap on one 

 side of the narrow straits balance the snow-bound peaks of the CordiUeras on 

 the other. No physical difficulties bar the way to the investigation of glacial 

 phenomena amidst some of the most striking coast scenery in the world. Near 

 the parallel of .51° S. are tvv'o Patagonian lakes closely associated — Argentina and 

 Viedma — which offer opportunities for the study of glaciers such as are probably 

 not to be found anywhere else in the same latitude. For here the phenomenon of 

 disappearance is in the stage of natural illustration. Glaciers are disappearing 

 rapidly which but a few years ago seemed to be a permanent feature of the sur- 

 rounding mountains, and the lake surface is chequered with their debris. There, 

 too, may be studied for hundreds of miles northward the natural sequences of 

 their disappearance— the formation of freshwater lakes and their gradual desicca- 

 tion in turn — whilst all around there is the continued story of geographical evolu- 

 tion due to the alternate forces of glacial and volcanic action written in gigantic 

 characters on the face of Nature. 



Central South America. 



Not very much has been added of late years to our practical knowledge of the 

 hidden depths of Central South America except from the inexhaustible mine of 

 information possessed by that eminent geographer Colonel Church. A Brazilian 

 expedition in 1890 ; the explorations of a commission sent to investigate the inte- 

 rior with a view to the establishment of new political capital to Brazil in 1892-93; 

 the discoveries of Ur. Ramon Paz in 1894, and a chequered journey in the Valley 

 of the Orinoco by Stanley Paterson in 1897, form the principal records of modern 



