Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/308

100 inequalities of coastward slope, and so threw back the mountains in their true proportions and full grandeur. At dawn they had looked rather insignificant, their sharp serrated crests seeming merely to form a summit of a dark wall rising close to the water's edge. These mountains have a difierent aspect from those further to the south, for instead of solid cubical masses bounded by mural cliffs, they form groups of peaks joined by narrow ridges, and throw off sloping spurs towards the sea. The highest mountains almost overhang the sound on either side—Pembroke Peak on the north having a rounded summit covered with perpetual snow, and the Llawrenny Peaks to the south being also snow-clad. It was 11 o'clock before we passed Fox Point, which is the south headland, as at that time in fine weather the breeze commences to blow up the Sound from the seaward. Three miles from the entrance of the Sound it becomes contracted to the width of ½ mile, and its sides rise perpendicularly from the water's edge, sometimes for 2000 feet, and then slope at a high angle to the peaks that are covered with perpetual snow. The scenery is quite equal to the finest that can be enjoyed by the most difficult and toilsome journeys into the Alps of the interior, and the effect is greatly enhanced as well as the access made more easy by the incursion of the sea as it were into their alpine solitudes. The sea, in fact, now occupies a chasm that was in past ages ploughed by an immense glacier, and it is through the natural progress of events by which the mountain mass has been reduced in altitude that the ice-stream has been replaced by the waters of the ocean. The evidence of this change may be seen at a glance. The lateral valleys join the main one at various elevations, but are all sharply cut off by the precipitous wall of the Sound, the erosion of which was no doubt continued by a great central glacier long after the subordinate and tributary glaciers had ceased to exist. The precipices exhibit the marks of ice-action with great distinctness, and descend quite abruptly to a depth of 800 to 1200 feet below the water-level. Towards its head, the Sound becomes more expanded, and receives several large valleys that preserve the same character, but radiate in different directions into the highest ranges. At the time that these valleys were filled with glaciers a great "Ice Lake" must have existed in the upper and expanded portion of the Sound, from which the only outlet would be through the chasm which forms its lower part. Two hours' sail brought us into a fresh-water basin, where we anchored. Two streams of considerable size enter the head of Milford Sound, the Cleddau River from the, and the Arthur River from the south-west. A well timbered flat about a mile in extent lies between them, which has been principally formed by the materials brought down by the first-mentioned stream, consisting of shingle and stratified sands. It is evidently a