ISLAND OF SOUTH GEORGIA. 147 



which in the space of a single year retrograded in the 

 centre of its broad front upwards of half a mile. 



With such a decided preponderance of solid pre- 

 cipitation as takes place in South Georgia, it is not 

 surprising that the larger part finds its way to the sea in 

 the form of glaciers. Matters are not quite so bad as 

 Cook thought in respect of the absence of flowing water, 

 and his assumption that there is a complete lack of 

 streams and brooks, nay, even of constantly flowing 

 sources on the island, has been confuted by observations 

 made in Royal Bay. It is true there are but few actual 

 sources ; the character of the subsoil and the enormous 

 accumulations of detritus brought down by weather, 

 envelop the slopes to such a height that the water 

 sinks and spreads, appearing at the foot of the deposits 

 without channel or flow. The higher glaciers and snow- 

 fields, on the other hand, feed numerous streams that 

 have worn " Klamms " in the rocks, and it is just in 

 the lower portions of these ravines and valleys that the 

 most luxuriant vegetation has developed, so luxuriant that 

 members of the German Station give accounts of pastures 

 that reminded them of the glorious pastures of the Alps. 



At the beginning of this section it was stated that 

 the geological structure of South Georgia seemed to 

 point to a close connection with the Cordilleras of South 

 America. According to Suess, the extreme eastern spurs 

 of the Cordilleras of Tierra del Fuego are built up of slatey 

 rocks, clay slate, mica slate and gneiss. So little is 

 definitely known of the geological period to which they 

 belong, that Darwin even designated them changed layers 

 of the chalk formation. Similar conditions are encountered 

 in South Georgia. Forster had remarked that at Cook's 

 landing place in Possession Bay the surrounding rocks 

 consisted of bluish-grey slate in horizontal layers, but 

 no further details were obtained till the time of the 

 German Station there. In the neighbourhood of Royal 



