< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu
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SKETCH OF CHARLES A. JOY.

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months followed, and at last, when he was able to again consider the resumption of his work, strength was lacking. In consideration of his years of faithful service, the college trustees retired him with a pension, and he returned to the scenes of his student days. For a time he was in Hanover, then in Switzerland, also in France, and in Munich. The World's Fair in Paris during 1889 attracted him there; but finally, after an absence of nearly ten years, he turned his steps homeward, and spent the winter of 1890-'91 at his own country home in Stockbridge, Mass. When the spring came he was already making plans to visit the great World's Fair, to be held in Chicago, but suddenly and with scarcely any warning a trifling indisposition seized him, and he died on May 29, 1891.

As has been shown. Prof. Joy filled many places of high honor with distinction. His associates and pupils held him in worthy esteem, and from the scientific world at large he deserves a more than passing notice, for it may be said it was his efforts that indirectly brought about that recognition of science in this city that culminated in the organization of the greatest School of Mines in the United States.

The ice scenery of the mountains of New Zealand was first brought to notice by the Rev. W. S. Green in 1882, who that year explored the glacier region of Aorangi, or Mount Cook. Since then visitors have been attracted to the mountain region in increasing numbers; a hotel has been built in a convenient situation near the foot of one of the glaciers; surveys have been undertaken; and a series of exploratory expeditions has been begun by Mr. G. E. Mannering and his coadjutors. The southern Alps proper of New Zealand run from northeast to southwest for about a hundred miles, nearer to the western than to the eastern coast of the South Island. Hence the valleys fall more rapidly toward the west than toward the east; and on the latter side a wide tract of plain separates the sea from the foot of the hills. Being pierced more deeply by the lowlands, although the New Zealand peaks are considerably lower than those of the European Alps—the summit of Aorangi, the highest of them, being only 12,349 feet high—they tower as high and as steep above their actual bases. Aorangi, according to Mr. Mannering, rises “for nearly 10,000 feet from the Hooker Glacier, and Mount Seften 8,500 feet from the Mueller Glacier, while the western precipices of Mount Tasman (11,475 feet) are stupendous.” The snow-line in these mountains lies much lower than in Switzerland, being only about 5,000 feet above the sea. Thus the glaciers are greater and descend lower than those of Switzerland. The Tasman glacier is eighteen or twenty miles long, and terminates at a height of 2,456 feet above the sea. On the western side the ice approaches occasionally to within 600 feet. Thus in the New Zealand Alps, says Mr. T. G. Bonney, renewing Mr. Mannering's book in Nature, “the Alpine climber meets with the same difficulties and is surrounded by the same class of scenery as he finds in the Old World amid peaks and passes 3,000 feet higher.” But, great as are these glaciers, Mr. Bonney adds, they are, like those of Europe, attenuated representatives of their predecessors, for New Zealand also has had its Ice age.
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