ALPINE MOUNTAINS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1748, 6 September 1905, Page 73

ALPINE MOUNTAINS.

AMIDST THE GLACIERS. A VISITOR S IMPRESSIONS. ■Professor .G. Carroll Curtis, geologist and physiologist, of Harvard University, Boston, United States America,- who visited New’ Zealand recently, and crossed the Copeland Pass to the West Coast, and visited, the Fox and Franz Joseph, 1 .Glaciers, has furnished some notes of his impressions to the Minister in charge of the Tourist Department. '*T count it a favour,” he says, “to be permitted' to offer you a few observationjs from the notes niad|e lately among the alpine mountains of New Zealand. I can do no better than to supplement the ‘impressions’ left for you in 1902 by the eminent Swiss geologist and geographical sculptor, Albert "Heim. Had Professor Heim crossed to the western side of the range these additions would be, superfluous. “ ‘The student of glaciation,” 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 sometimts glacierscratched blocks, but the “roches moutonnees” are not to bo seen. The rocks of the mountains do not bear, or if they bear they do not preserve, the polishing that glaciation produces nearly. everywhere in the European Alps ami 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, but consists in the export, of shingle and the accumulation of moraines.’

“While this statement of Heim’s appears to bo largely true of the glaciers on the eastern side of the Alps, it can hardly be maintained fo-r New Zealand as a whole,' for had h.e visited either the Fox or. Franz Josef Glaciers he would have seen not only abundant glaciated surfaces and quite typical troches moutonnes,’ but even glacial polished blocks of stone upon the moraines.

“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 the 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 bo impressed with the prevailing difference in talus-accumula-tions. On the east side the rock-waste is notably prominent; it slopes from high up among the peaks, and spreads out in huge fans on the flat-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 dominant feature in the landscape. While this general condition of topographic development holds throughout the region, and talus is abundant on the west coast slopes, they are not smothered 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 from the mountains, the west coast glaciers, on the other hand, flow uninterrupted and direct to the sea, the

w.ast© of the land passing rapidly into the ocean. These conditions seem to largely account for the differences noted, in the Canterbury and Westland topography. The waste on tire east side is .carried away so slowly that it gathers deep upon the moun-tain-sides, pushing upwards towards the summits, great quantities falling upon the ice, building up enormous lateral moraines, while the bed-rbek crumbles ‘in situ,’ and offers so ‘little resistance to the passing glacial stream that it f is broken away rather .than. grooved and striated, polishing resulting front incessant rubbings being hardly a possibility.

“As might be predicted from these conditions, the west coast glaciers are burdened with moraines both lateral end terminal, but scanty in comparison to those of the eastern side, and there is present a good showing of glacial gouged troughs, ‘roches moutonnes,’ striated surf aces, and grooved and polished blocks on the moraine. I desire to record that the excellent guides and general equipment at the Mount Cook Hermitage greatly facilitated work among the glaciers.”