16 MAN AND THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 



through the plains of Hindustan have their rise in large 

 glaciers far up towards the summits of the northern 

 mountains. The Indus and the Ganges are both glacial 

 streams in their origin, as are their larger tributary 

 branches — the Basha, the Shigar, and the Sutlej. Many 

 of the glaciers in the higher levels of the Himalaya 

 Mountains where these streams rise have a length of 

 from twenty-five to forty miles, and some of them are 

 as much as a mile and a half in width and extend for 

 a long distance, with an inclination as small as one de- 

 gree and a half or one hundred and thirty-eight feet to a 

 mile. 



In the Mustagh range of the western Himalayas there 

 are two adjoining glaciers whose united length is sixty- 

 five miles, and another not far away which is twenty-one 

 miles long and from one to two miles wide in its upper 

 portion. Its lower portion terminates at an altitude of 

 16,000 feet above tide, where it is three miles wide and 

 two hundred and fifty feet thick. 



Oceanica.- — Passing eastward to the islands of the Pa- 

 cific Ocean, New Zealand is the only one capable of sup- 

 porting glaciers. Their existence on this island seems 

 the more remarkable because of its low latitude (42° to 

 45°) ; but a grand range of mountains rises abruptly from 

 the water ' on the western coast of the southern island, 

 culminating in Mount Cook, 13,000 feet above the sea, 

 and extending for a distance of about one hundred miles. 

 The extent and height of this chain, coupled with the 

 moisture of the winds, which sweep without obstruction 

 over so many leagues of the tropical Pacific, are sjjecially 

 favourable to the production of ice-fields of great extent. 

 Consequently we find glaciers in abundance, some of 

 which are not inferior in extent to the larger ones of 

 the Alps. The Tasman G-lacier, described by Haas, is ten 

 miles long and nearly two miles broad at its termination, 

 " the lower portion for a distance of three miles being 



