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We left Singapore to-day at three P.M. by the English mail steamer Teheran, parting with very sincere regret from Major and Miss Studer, to whom we had been so much indebted for our week's happiness. These partings from kind friends on our way round the world are the sad incidents of the trip.
Not only have I confirmed my views upon glaciers and their attendant phenomena, on this new ground, but I have completed my examination of a number of details, and have had besides the satisfaction of convincing one of my most severe opponents of the exactness of my observations, namely, M. Studer, who accompanied me on a part of these excursions. . .
In the following summer of 1839 Agassiz took the chain of Monte Rosa and Matterhorn as the field of a larger and more systematic observation. On this occasion, the usual party consisting of Agassiz, Desor, M. Bettanier, an artist, and two or three other friends, was joined by the geologist Studer.
In one of the sections described by M. Studer in the highest of the Bernese Alps, namely in the Roththal, a valley bordering the line of perpetual snow on the northern side of the Jungfrau, there occurs a mass of gneiss 1000 feet thick, and 15,000 feet long, which I examined, not only resting upon, but also again covered by strata containing oolitic fossils.
On Sunday, Major Studer, United States Consul, and his accomplished daughter, drove us to the house and gardens of the leading Chinese merchant of this region, Mr. Wampoo, who received and entertained us with great cordiality. His residence is extensive and filled in every part with curios; but his gardens are most celebrated, and far surpass anything of the kind we have yet seen.
Von Buch, Escher, and Studer inferred, from an examination of the mineral composition of the boulders, that those resting on the Jura, opposite the lakes of Geneva and Neufchatel, have come from the region of Mont Blanc and the Valais, as if they had followed the course of the Rhone to the lake of Geneva, and had then pursued their way uninterruptedly in a northerly direction.
For example, Studer supposes that the drifting sand-hills of the African desert were originally coast dunes, and that they have been transported to their present position far in the interior, by the rolling and shifting leeward movement to which all dunes not covered with vegetation are subject.
We were driven one day, by the major and Miss Studer, some ten or twelve miles in the interior, passing through groves of cocoa and betel-nut trees, both in full bearing, to a tapioca plantation, where we saw many trees and plants new to us the fan and sago palms and many other varieties, bananas, nutmeg trees, bread fruit, durion, gutta-percha trees and others.
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