CHAPTER XI

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

## scene I, act II is also italicized, but without square brackets. If we

wanted to emphasize this, we could use shorter lines or add square brackets, but it probably isn't necessary here. We're using 4 blank lines between acts and 3 between scenes, so we mark these accordingly. We leave one blank line between speeches. And following these simple conventions, we get:

JACK. There's a sensible, intellectual girl! the only girl I ever cared for in my life. [ALGERNON is laughing immoderately.] What on earth are you so amused at?

ALGERNON. Oh, I'm a little anxious about poor Bunbury, that is all.

JACK. If you don't take care, your friend Bunbury will get you into a serious scrape some day.

ALGERNON. I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious.

JACK. Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense.

ALGERNON. Nobody ever does.

[JACK looks indignantly at him, and leaves the room. ALGERNON lights a cigarette, reads his shirt-cuff, and smiles.]

END OF THE FIRST ACT

SECOND ACT

## SCENE I

Garden at the Manor House. A flight of grey stone steps leads up to the house. The garden, an old-fashioned one, full of roses. Time of year, July. Basket chairs, and a table covered with books, are set under a large yew-tree.

[MISS PRISM discovered seated at the table. CECILY is at the back watering flowers.]

MISS PRISM. [Calling.] Cecily, Cecily! Surely such a utilitarian occupation as the watering of flowers is rather Moulton's duty than yours? Especially at a moment when intellectual pleasures await you. Your German grammar is on the table. Pray open it at page fifteen. We will repeat yesterday's lesson.

About problems with the printed books:

V.125. I found some distasteful or offensive passages in a book I'm producing. Should I omit them?

Please don't. Readers understand that books are works of their time and place, reflecting the opinions and prejudices of the people who wrote them, and the people they observed. We shouldn't try to pretend those prejudices out of existence. It may be, in a century or two, that our descendants are repulsed by _our_ prejudices.

It is perfectly normal, for all kinds of reasons, not to want to produce a particular book, but producing one while deliberately removing passages is censorship, and is unfair to our readers.

If you find it too disturbing to handle the content, you can of course abandon the book, or pass it along to some other volunteer.

V.126. Some paragraphs in my book, where a character is speaking, have quotes at the start, but not at the end. Should I close those quotes?

Probably not.

When one character is making a speech that spans more than one paragraph, it is usual _not_ to close the quotes until the speech is finished. This avoids confusion about whether the next paragraph is the same speaker or another--once a character has started speaking, there are no closequotes until the speech is finished. However, there are openquotes at the _start_ of each new paragraph during the speech. This makes the quotes unbalanced, but it isn't a misprint; it's deliberate.

If this is not the case, if the same character is not continuing the speech in the next paragraph, then you may have found a typo in the book. [R.26]

V.127. The spelling in my book is British English (colour, centre). Should I change these to American spellings?

No.

Stay true to the edition you have. And this applies the other way, as well: if you have an American edition of a work by an English author, please leave the spelling as it is.

V.128. I'm nearly sure that some words in my printed book are typos. Should I change them?

The first thing to be aware of is that typos in books are not as rare as most people think. You may never have noticed typos in your normal reading, but under the kind of scrutiny that a book gets while being produced for PG, they often do become noticeable. It's quite common to find anything up to ten typos in a book.

Before you decide it's a typo, though, check that the same word doesn't occur elsewhere in the book with the same spelling. Often, the words or spelling used by pre-20th Century authors may just not be familiar to you.

When you find something that you believe to be a typo, you have four options: pretend you didn't see it :-), change the typo and add a transcriber's note [V.97], change the typo without a transcriber's note, or leave the typo as it is and add a transcriber's note. If you are adding a note, do it at the top or bottom of the file; don't try to work it into the text, and don't use the [sic] convention, since the reader won't know whether the [sic] was added by you or an earlier publisher.

In general, it's safest to leave the typo in place and add a note at the end of the file, listing the words you believe to be typos; that is the least contaminating and intrusive method. When adding the note, you don't need to leave a mark in the main text. You can just say something like:

[Transcriber's Note: "haw" near the end of