WOODWORTH: GEOLOGICAL EXPEDITION TO BRAZIL AND CHILE. 3] 
after an encounter with ice off Cape Horn. Captain Wm. B. Oakley 
of the Oravia informed me that after the Valparaiso earthquake of 
1906 there had been an. unusual amount of ice in the sea about the 
southern end of South America, the ice having been dislodged from 
glaciers by the earthquake, so it was believed. This report agrees 
with the effects reported by the late Prof. R. 5. Tarr arising from the 
Alaskan earthquake of 1899, which caused much disturbance of the 
glaciers on the Alaskan coast and warrants the belief that at least 
local earthquakes may greatly accelerate the flow of glaciers. 
December 4th We entered the straits of Magellan during the 
night. To the voyageur entering the straits from the east the high 
barren plains on the north and the treeless low-lying plain of eastern 
Tierra del Fuego on the south alike recall the plains of glacial Cape Cod 
veneered with glacial drift. Between Elizabeth Island and Punta 
Arenas there are some irregular terraces of varying height, appearing 
more like glacial contemporaneous terraces than the horizontally 
levelled benches cut by waves. Back of the town of Punta Arenas 
there is a deep gully at the mouth of which lies a prominent deposit 
forming a rounded southward slanting ridge, on the seaward slope of 
which the town is mainly built. There is a remnant of what appears 
to be a stream delta north of the town, now forming a terrace. The 
Pour-quoi-pas of M. Charcot’s French Antarctic expedition lay at 
anchor off the town. 
The passage from Punta Arenas to Cape Holland was made after 
4 p. M. but permitted a general view of the profile of the Andes 
rising above the plains of Tierra del Fuego. (Fig. 5.) It is evident 
Fria. 5.— Generalized profile of the Andes on Tierra del Fuego, showing the 
arching up of a once baselevelled but now deeply dissected mountain mass. 
It is not here intended to interpret the steep western descent into the 
Pacific Ocean. 
that here as far to the north the peaks and valleys are carved out of 
a theoretically smoothened surface of the deformed rocks composing 
the folded chain. It is conjectured that this now warped, once 
baselevelled, surface passes beneath the Tertiary and Pleistocene de- 
posits of the plains of Tierra del Fuego, forming the platform on which 
these less ancient deposits repose. Towards the western margin of 
