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Updated: May 1, 2025
Bryce and others have spoken of the astonishing height of the snow-line on Mount Ararat, which is placed at 14,000 feet; while in the Alps it is only about 9000 feet, and in the Caucasus on an average 11,000 feet, although they lie in a very little higher latitude. They assign, as a reason for this, the exceptionally dry region in which Ararat is situated. Mr.
Leave Tierra del Fuego. Climate. Fruit-trees and productions of the southern coasts. Height of snow-line on the Cordillera. Descent of glaciers to the sea. Icebergs formed. Transportal of boulders. Climate and productions of the Antarctic Islands. Preservation of frozen carcasses. Recapitulation. In the end of May 1834 we entered for a second time the eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan.
Its coating of snow gives it a dazzling appearance, and so sharply is the snow-line defined that it seems almost as if the volcano-king wore a white night-cap instead of a crown. The eruptions of this mountain are rare. One of the greatest of them lasted for three years, and desolated an immense extent of country with floods of lava.
We plunged down below the snow-line; we saw far beneath us a wide, green valley, where other people, the size of flies, were safe if not happy. We passed some barracks, where a lot of sturdy little mountain soldiers stopped bowling balls in a dull, stony square to watch us fly by.
There was no snow where we were, consequently it was proven that the eternal snow-line ceases somewhere above the ten-thousand-foot level and does not begin any more. This was an interesting fact, and one which had not been observed by any observer before. It was as valuable as interesting, too, since it would open up the deserted summits of the highest Alps to population and agriculture.
In spite of the intermittent breeze wandering down from the regions above the snow-line, the latter part of the ride had been intensely hot.
"There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let's down."
As you advance northward or southward to the Poles, it will be found lower and lower, until within the frigid zones it may be said to cease altogether for there, as we have said, snow covers the whole earth, and there can be no "snow-line." "`From this, one would suppose that an exact scale might be formed, giving the elevation of the snow-line for all latitudes. But that could not be done.
As for myself, I profess to be little more than a greenhorn above the snow-line. I have done but little and may do but little more. Yet there are so many that have done nothing that the plain account of a plain and long Alpine pass may interest them. I will take one of the easiest, the Schwartzberg-Weissthor, and walk it with them and with a friend of mine and two well-known guides.
This is why the tame sheep do so well on the moors of Scotland and mountains of Switzerland. But as the snow-line descends each winter far below their summer feeding haunts, wild sheep either migrate to the lower slopes of the mountains, or, like the deer of the Rockies, move off altogether to great distances.
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