AN ANTARCTIC PARALLEL 305 
course I have seen nothing to compare for mass and con- 
tinuity with Victoria Land, but the mountains, especially 
Kinchin-jhow, are beyond all description beautiful ; from 
whichever side you view this latter mountain, it is a castle 
of pure blue glacier ice, 4000 feet high and 6 or 8 miles long. 
I do wish I were not the only person who has ever seen it 
or dwelt among its wonders. Now I have been N., S., E., 
and W. of it, up it, down it, to 16,000, 17,000, and 18,000 
feet ; and every view enchants me more than another. 
. . . I was greatly pleased with finding my most Antarctic 
plant, Lecanora miniata, at the top of the Pass, and to-day 
I saw stony hills at 19,000 feet stained wholly orange-red 
with it, exactly as the rocks of Cockburn Island were in 
64° South ^ ; is not this most curious and interesting ? To 
find the identical plant forming the only vegetation at the 
two extreme limits of vegetable life is always interesting ; 
but to find it absolutely in both instances painting a land- 
scape, so as to render its colour conspicuous in each case 
five miles off, is wonderful. 
1 See Himalayan Journals, ii. 130 and 165. 
