The scenery as well as the topographical and geographical conditions
of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, in fact all the southern
archipelago, are different from those in the arctic regions. There is
more vegetation and a greater variety of scenery than in the coast
countries of a corresponding latitude north. There are the beauties
of the Thousand Islands, and Darwin, in describing a voyage through
the Straits, compared the glaciers of Tierra del Fuego to a thousand
frozen Niagaras. All the beautiful tints and combinations of coloring
to be found in lakes Como and Lucerne, of the Mediterranean and the
bay of Naples, are equaled, if not surpassed by, the hues reflected in
the deep waters of those channels. Huge glaciers crowding down into
the sea; giant rocks, rising like sheer walls of masonry for thousands
of feet above the water, sometimes ending in shapes resembling church
pinnacles and cathedral domes; mountains, whose forest-fringed bases
are washed by the sea, their snow-mantled heads in the clouds; islands,
frosted with snow and bejeweled with ice, in which is mingled the hues
of gray-green moss and verdant vegetation; numerous winding, tortuous
water-ways, dividing the islands from each other and separating them
from the mainland, are some of the features of the panoramic view of
coast-line, mountains and islands, presented in a landscape that is
wonderfully picturesque and prepossessing. When storms sweep through
these narrow channels, driving seas mountain-high against rocky
shores, increasing the force of natural currents, obscuring the view
with a shroud of snow and sleet and mist, a wild aspect is added to the
scene. Mountains and islands rise ghostlike out of the water, their
forms dimly outlined against the angry sky; and the din of booming seas
and swiftly rushing waters adds terrifying confusion to the dangers of
navigation.
In Patagonia the Andes differ in many of the essential features
of their geographical conformation from that magnificent mountain
system which further north is the pride and despair of the western
countries of South America. The grand simplicity of structure in the
northern system, the magnificent continuity and lofty grandeur of
its main ranges, the altitude of its dominating peaks, its terrible
and forbidding wastes of desolate and highly elevated table-land are
wanting in the mountain masses of the far south. The topographical
condition of the Patagonian country represents an immense system of
ancient lake beds, and sea inlets separated and divided by groups of
mountain peaks, sometimes piled upon a massive pedestal of crystalline
rock, sometimes strung out in jagged lines of sierra or ridge, fringed
with moraines or terraces, shaped and reshaped by the ice-agency of
more than one glacial period; mountains which have been split again and
again by stupendous volcanic action, and enormous masses of volcanic
deposits.
TIERRA DEL FUEGO.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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