ALPINE MOUNTAINS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 207, 30 August 1905, Page 5

ALPINE MOUNTAINS.

AMIDST THE GLACIER 3. A VISITOR'S rvrPRESSIONS.. Professor G. Carroll Curtis, geologist I and physiologist, of Harvard University, I Boston, United States America, who ! visited New Zealand recently, and crossled the Copcland Pass to the West j Coast, and visited the Fox and FranJoseph Glaciers, has furnished some j notes of his impressions to the Minis- | ter in charge of the Tourist Departj ment. "I count it a favour," he says, "to Ibe permitted to offer you a few obser- | vations from the notes made lately 'among the alpine mountains of New j Zealand. I can do no better than to supplement the Impressions* left for you in 1902 by the eminent Swiss geologist and explorer, Albert Heim. Had Profe-sor Heim crossed to the western side of the range these additions would be superfluous." '•' 'The student of glaeiation," says Dr Heim, "is much disappointed as he travels in New Zealand from the sea to the peaks above the ice. He finds only moraines, and sometimes glacierscratched blocks, but the "rooehes montonnees" are not to be seen. The rocks of the mountains do not bear, or if they bear they do not preserve, the polishing that glaeiation produces nearly everywhere in the European Alps and in Norway. Only occasionally the rocks are somewhat rounded—the blocks of the moraines I never found polished. The glacier-action in the Mount Cook region is not erosive, hut consist- in the export jf shingle and the accumulation of moraines/ "While this statement of Helm's appears to be largely true of the glaciers on the eastern side of the Alps, it can hardly be maintained for New Zealand as a whole, for had he visited either the Fox or Franz Josef Glaciers he would have seen not only abundant glaciated surfaces and quite typical 'rooehes moutonnes,' but even glacial polished blocks of stone upon the raines"The rapid forward movement of some of the New Zealand glaciers, the vast amount of 'rock-flower,'the grist of the glacier* which gives the milky appearance to the turbid outlet-streams, and the well-glaciated surfaces so fresh that the lichens have not as yet taken root upon the rock, intimate, moreover, that some of the glaciers, and perhaps even the Mount Cook glaciers, are erosive. In ancient times they were remarkably erosive, as many of he cold lakes and West Coast Sounds attest.

"It seems possible that the apparent scarcity of abrasive effects on the _ Mount Cook glaciers is due not so much to lack of active erosion as to a general condition of transportation. "On crossing the range one can ! scarcely fail to be impressed with the , prevailing Si-Terence in talus-accumula-tions. On the east side the rock-waste jis notably prominent; it slopes from j high up among the peaks, and spreads i out in huge fans on the fiat-bottomed valleys. Many of the mountain-tops are nearly buried in debris. This condition is due to a combination of factors. - "The Alps of New Zealand are at the stage of denudation called 'past maturity,* an earlier larger diversity of relief > having been lost by a general degradation of the land; the debris from the shattered peaks has become a domin- . j ant feature in the landscape. While ■ | this general condition of topographic : development holds throughout the j region, and talus is abundant on the j west coast slopes, they are not smotherled in debris as on the Canterbury side. | Here the streams from the principal glaciers empty into high-level lakes, usually maintained by morainal dams. While, as at Lake Pukaki, the outlet holds up the Mount Cook drainage, preventing the rapid removal of waste i from the mountains, the west coast • glaciers, on the other hand, flow uninterrupted and direct to the sea, the waste of the land passing rapidly into ■ j the ocean- These condi.ions seem to largely account for the differences noted in the Canterbury and Westland i topography. The waste on the east side is carried away so slowly that it gathers deep upon the mountain-sides, pusaing upwards towards the summits, great quantities falling upon the ice, building up enormous lateral moraines, while the bed-rock crumbles ' in situ,' and ol* fers so little resistance to the passing glacial stream that it is broken away i rather than grooved and striated, j polishing resulting from incessant rubi bings being hardly a possibility. | "As might be predicted from these conditions, the west coast glaciers are burdened with moraines both lateral and terminal, but scanty in comparison to those of the eastern side, and there iis present a good showing of glacial : gouged troughs, 'rooches moutonnees,' (striated surface, and grooved and | polished blocks on the moraine. I desire to record that the excellent guides and general equipment at the Mount _.ook Hermitage greatly ___u___itated work among the g__c_e__- ,F