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Updated: May 1, 2025
As the ship runs in from the open sea, Narborough presents its side in one dark craggy mass, soaring up some five or six thousand feet, at which point it hoods itself in heavy clouds, whose lowest level fold is as clearly defined against the rocks as the snow-line against the Andes. There is dire mischief going on in that upper dark.
The forest-belt, owing to the dry summer, lay towards the snow-line, and below it a scrub-belt, yielding poor hunting, drove men to grow their corn and olives and vines in the least swampy of the lowlands, scattered like mere oases amongst the hills and promontories. For a long time, then, man along the north coasts must have been oppressed rather than assisted by his environment.
No human creature had come across the Pass for four days. The snow above the snow-line was too soft for wheeled carriage, and not hard enough for sledge. There was snow in the sky. There had been snow in the sky for days past, and the marvel was that it had not fallen, and the certainty was that it must fall. No vehicle could cross.
The geniality of the Oligocene period was due, like that of the earlier warm periods, to the low-lying land and very extensive water-surface. These conditions were revolutionised before the end of the Tertiary. Great mountains towered into the snow-line, and vast areas were elevated which had formerly been sea or swamp.
Only on the loftier summits is he found particularly on that known as Mount Makmel. This summit is covered with snow; and it is under the snow-line he usually makes his haunt. Sometimes, however, he descends to a lower elevation; and in the village gardens just as does the snow bear in the Himalayas he makes sad havoc among fruits and vegetables.
The tip of this tongue had been broken off, and the edge presented a gigantic wall of crystal several hundred feet high, on which the sun glittered in blinding rays. This tongue a mere offshoot of the great glacier itself filled a valley full ten miles in length, measuring from its tip in the ocean to its root on the mountain brow, where the snow-line was seen to cut sharply against the sky.
Height in feet Latitude of Snow-line Observer Equatorial region; mean result 15,748 Humboldt. Bolivia, lat. 16 to 18 degs. S. 17,000 Pentland. Central Chile, lat. 33 degs. S. 14,500 15,000 Gillies, and the Author. Chiloe, lat. 41 to 43 degs. S. 6,000 Officers of the Beagle and the Author. Tierra del Fuego, 54 degs. S. 3,500 4,000 King.
"Just don't you say anything about it, Allie; we aren't even now, and we sha'n't be, very soon. Besides, it's worth all the rest to have the fun of getting the inside track of her. Good-by till breakfast-time!" And he vanished around the corner of the house. Late October had come, and already the snow-line was creeping down the mountain sides towards the little town in the cañon.
"I'm almost beyond the snow-line. I think I'll disobey the guards a little, but I'll keep on obeying Señora Paez. She told me on no account to try to sleep in a large town or village. They are all military posts, and too many questions might be asked. I'll try a hacienda, just as I did on the other side of the mountains. Everybody wants to hear the news."
Far off against the western horizon stretched the splendid snow-line of the Tibetan range from which I had just come, but now more than a hundred miles away. Every inch of land that could be irrigated was under cultivation, save where a substantial looking farmhouse set in groves of fine trees, bamboos, cypress, and namti, occupied a little knoll laboriously built up above the encircling marsh.
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