XI 



FLOATING ICEBERGS 



261 



effect of a severe shock (and such occur here ^) on a body like 

 a glacier, already in motion, and traversed by fissures ! I can 

 readily believe that the water would be fairly beaten back out 

 of the deepest channel, and then returning with an overwhelming 

 force, would whirl about huge masses of rock like so much 

 chaff. In Eyre's Sound, in the latitude of Paris, there are 

 immense glaciers, and yet the loftiest neighbouring mountain 

 is only 6200 feet high. In this Sound, about fifty icebergs were 

 seen at one time floating outwards, and one of them must have 

 been at least 168 feet in total height. Some of the icebergs 

 were loaded with blocks of no inconsiderable size, of granite 



46" 40' 



- 50' 



47 00 



GLACIER IN GULF OF PENAS 



and other rocks, different from the clay-slate of the surrounding 

 mountains. The glacier farthest from the Pole, surveyed 

 during the voyages of the AdventJire and Beagle, is in lat. 46° 

 50', in the Gulf of Penas. It is 15 miles long, and in one 

 part 7 broad, and descends to the sea-coast. But even a few 

 miles northward of this glacier, in the Laguna de San Rafael, 

 some Spanish missionaries^ encountered "many icebergs, some 

 great, some small, and others middle-sized," in a narrow arm 

 of the sea, on the 22nd of the month corresponding with our 



1 Bulkeley's and Cummin's Faithful Narrative of the Loss of the Wager. The 

 earthquake happened August 25, 1741. 



2 Agueros, Desc. Hist, de Chiloe, p. 227. 



