ANOTHER VIEW OF THE GLACIER DE LOS TEMPANOS
From afar the forests appear to rim the slopes and spurs of the Cordillera with a seemingly impenetrable mass of blackness, reaching towards and often running up into the snow-line; as you approach the colour assumes its true hue, a deep dense green, a green that seems to have the quality of absorbing light, so that, as you gaze upon the expanse of foliage stretching back into the distances, fold beyond fold, where the valleys and mountain-sides close in behind each other, an impression of gloom and mystery lays hold upon your mind. Upon still nearer inspection you find the trees ranked in heavy phalanxes, while between their close-set trunks has grown up an under-tangle of thorn. Old storms have overthrown many of the giants, so that they lie in tens and twenties, or lean against their yet quick companions awaiting the slow decay of things. But it is very hard to give any adequate idea in words of these vast and nameless tree-kingdoms. Most common among the trees was the antarctic beech. I observed also redwood and cypress.
GLACIER AND GLACIAL DETRITUS
There are some wild cattle and huemules to be found in the outskirts of the woodlands; we also saw parrots, hawks and owls in some of our wanderings, while in other spots there seemed no sign of life at all save a few small rodents, and even those, as we pushed farther into the thicker recesses, disappeared. And then we came under the sway of that curious silence which broods among these forest depths.
The aspects of the various forests and the trees of which they were composed varied greatly. Some were bare and devoid of undergrowth as a northern forest; others were absolutely tropical in their heavy luxuriance. In one, a majestic place, the tall antarctic beeches were draped with long trailing Spanish moss, and on the carpet of moss beneath them lay here and there a dead tree.
Few places are more mournful than this region when rain is falling. After the rain ceases, mists arise and circle round you, shutting you in, these in their turn often being dissipated by a sudden fierce squall. In summer the climate is very humid, and many of the plants have the fat damp aspect seldom observable save in the tropics. The huge masses of rank vegetation seem to stifle you; once you have been in that great black insatiable woodland you can never quite shake off its influence.
In that particular forest was one glade by the outrunning of a little brook where the ground was thick with orchids.[30]