292 



TIERRA DEL FUEGO. 



June, 1834. 



land (only removed twice as far to the westward) would present 

 an island almost wholly covered with everlasting snow/^ 

 and having each bay terminated by ice-clifFs, from which 

 great masses yearly detached, would sometimes bear with 

 them fragments of rock. This island would only boast of 

 one land bird, a little grass and moss ; yet in the same 

 latitude the sea might swarm with living creatures. A 

 chain of mountains, which we will call the Cordillera, run- 

 ning north and south through the Alps (but having an 

 altitude much inferior to the latter), would connect them 

 with the central part of Denmark, Along this whole line 

 nearly every deep sound would end in bold and astonish- 

 ing glaciers.^^ In the Alps themselves (with their altitude 

 reduced by about half) we should find proofs of recent 

 elevations, and occasionally terrible earthquakes would cause 

 such masses of ice to be precipitated into the sea, that 

 waves tearing all before them, would heap together enor- 

 mous fragments, and pile them up in the corners of the 

 valleys. At other times, icebergs, " charged with no incon- 

 siderable blocks of granite,"* would be floated from the 

 flanks of Mont Blanc, and then stranded on the outlying 

 islands of the Jura. Who then will deny the possibility of 

 these things having actually taken place in Europe during a 

 former period, and under circumstances known to be difi'erent 

 from the present, when on merely looking to the other hemi- 

 sphere, we see they are among the daily order of events ? 



To the northward of our new Cape Horn, we should 

 only have certain knowledge of a few island groups, situated 

 in the latitude of the south part of Norway, and others in 

 that of Ferroe. These, in the middle of summer, would be 

 buried under snow, and surrounded by walls of ice ; so that 

 scarcely a living thing of any kind would be supported on 

 the land. If some bold navigator attempted to penetrate 

 beyond these islands towards the pole, he would run a 



* Geographical Journal. Capt. King uses these words when alluding 

 to the case in Sir G. Eyre's Sound, which I have more fully described 

 from the information of Mr. Bynoe. 



