Chapter 5

STRAIT OF MAGELLAN.--CLIMATE OF THE SOUTHERN COASTS

Strait of Magellan--Port Famine--Ascent of Mount Tarn-- Forests--Edible Fungus--Zoology--Great Sea-weed-- Leave Tierra del Fuego--Climate--Fruit-trees and Productions of the Southern Coasts--Height of Snow-line on the Cordillera--Descent of Glaciers to the Sea-- Icebergs formed--Transportal of Boulders--Climate and Productions of the Antarctic Islands--Preservation of Frozen Carcasses--Recapitulation.

An equable climate, evidently due to the large area of sea compared with the land, seems to extend over the greater part of the southern hemisphere; and, as a consequence, the vegetation partakes of a semi-tropical character. Tree-ferns thrive luxuriantly in Van Diemen's Land (lat. 45 degrees), and I measured one trunk no less than six feet in circumference. An arborescent fern was found by Forster in New Zealand in 46 degrees, where orchideous plants are parasitical on the trees. In the Auckland Islands, ferns, according to Dr. Dieffenbach [82] have trunks so thick and high that they may be almost called tree-ferns; and in these islands, and even as far south as lat. 55 degrees. in the Macquarrie Islands, parrots abound.

On the Height of the Snow-line, and on the Descent of the Glaciers in South America. [For the detailed authorities for the following table, I must refer to the former edition:]

Height in feet Latitude of Snow-line Observer ---------------------------------------------------------------- Equatorial region; mean result 15,748 Humboldt. Bolivia, lat. 16 to 18 deg. S. 17,000 Pentland. Central Chile, lat. 33 deg. S. 14,500 - 15,000 Gillies, and the Author. Chiloe, lat. 41 to 43 deg. S. 6,000 Officers of the Beagle and the Author. Tierra del Fuego, 54 deg. S. 3,500 - 4,000 King.

In Eyre's Sound, in the latitude of Paris, there are immense glaciers, and yet the loftiest neighbouring mountain is only 6200 feet high. Some of the icebergs were loaded with blocks of no inconsiderable size, of granite and other rocks, different from the clay-slate of the surrounding mountains. The glacier furthest from the pole, surveyed during the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, is in lat. 46 degrees 50 minutes, in the Gulf of Penas. It is 15 miles long, and in one part 7 broad and descends to the sea-coast. But even a few miles northward of this glacier, in Laguna de San Rafael, some Spanish missionaries encountered "many icebergs, some great, some small, and others middle-sized," in a narrow arm of the sea, on the 22nd of the month corresponding with our June, and in a latitude corresponding with that of the Lake of Geneva!

In this case, I made some decisions. I made the lines in the contents at the top a bit shorter than usual, to help them stand out. I decided to use the full word "degrees" rather than "deg." where I could, but not in the table, where I shortened the entries as much as possible while preserving the sense. Since I was using the full word "degrees", I decided to go the whole hog and use the word "minutes" for the minutes symbol as well, (though the minutes symbol, a single quote, is in the ASCII set) since it seemed to make the text more readable than using the word degrees with the minutes symbol. I also made a choice about the table layout.

You might prefer different choices in some of these cases, and, as in our example of fiction above, there was more than one way to do it. However, this is a reasonable rendering.

What happened to the footnote? and how did it become [82] rather than the [1] of the original? In this case, I decided to put all footnotes at the end of the whole text, and renumber them accordingly. So the footnote on this page became number 82 in the overall text, and down at the end of the whole text, I would put:

[82] See the German Translation of this Journal; and for the other facts, Mr. Brown's Appendix to Flinders's Voyage.

I could also have transcribed this as:

. . . Forster in New Zealand in 46 degrees, where orchideous plants are parasitical on the trees. In the Auckland Islands, ferns, according to Dr. Dieffenbach [*] have trunks so thick and high that they may be almost called tree-ferns; and in these islands, and even as far south as lat. 55 degrees. in the Macquarrie Islands, parrots abound.

[*] See the German Translation of this Journal; and for the other facts, Mr. Brown's Appendix to Flinders's Voyage.

if I chose to put each footnote with its own paragraph.

V.123. Sample 3: Typical formatting issues of poetry

Poetry is easy to format: just be sure to use a non-proportional font, and make it look as much like the text as possible. To avoid ragged-looking centering, left-align titles.

In a whole book of poetry, there is no need to leave an indentation before every line; unlike a verse lost in fields of prose, there is little danger that someone will wrap it by mistake.

Look at the image poetry.tif. On this page, we have an enlarged first letter to start each poem, and capitals following--we can remove all that. The titles are centered, so we will move them left.

There are line-numbers at every fifth line, and these are common in poetry, especially where footnotes reference lines. We will keep these out on the right-hand margin.

The third poem obviously intends the centering of its last lines in each verse as a feature, so we will keep that as best we can.

The resulting etext looks like:

Mistress Mary

Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With cockle-shells, and silver bells, And pretty maids all in a row.

Ozymandias.

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 5 Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 10 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

NOTE: 9 these words appear: in some editions : this legend clear.

The Rosary.

The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over, every one apart, My rosary.

Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, 5 To still a heart in absence wrung; I tell each bead unto the end--and there A cross is hung.

Oh, memories that bless--and burn! Oh, barren gain--and bitter loss! 10 I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross, Sweetheart, To kiss the cross.

V.124. Sample 4: Typical formatting issues of plays

Look at the image play.tif. Stage directions are indicated by italics and square brackets. We don't have to do much special work with this--lose the italics, but keep the square brackets. The setting for