Bulkeley's and Cummin's
"Faithful Narrative of the Loss of the Wager." The earthquake
happened August 25, 1741.)) 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 and other rocks, different from the clay-slate of the
surrounding mountains.
(PLATE 57. GLACIER IN GULF OF PENAS.)
The glacier farthest from the Pole, surveyed during the voyages of
the "Adventure" and "Beagle," is in latitude 46 degrees 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 22 of the month
corresponding with our June, and in a latitude corresponding with
that of the Lake of Geneva! (11/14.
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