Night comes on, but not with the darkness anticipated. For still another wonder is revealed to them ere closing their eyes in sleep—the long continuance of twilight, far beyond anything of the kind they have ever experienced, Seagriff excepted. But its cause is known to them; the strange phenomenon being due to the fact that the sun, for some time after it has sunk below the horizon, continues to shine on the glistening ice of the glaciers and the snow of the mountain summits, thus producing a weird luminosity in the heavens, somewhat resembling the Aurora Borealis.
Note 1. He discovered the Straits, or, more properly, Strait, in 1519. His name is usually given as “Magellan” by French and English writers, the Spaniards making it “Magallanes.” But, as he was a native of Portugal, and Magalhaens is the Portuguese orthography, it should be the one preferred. By sealers and others, Tierra del Fuego is often called “Fireland.” Lady Brassey heard it so called by the settlers at “Sandy Point,” in the Strait.
Note 2. The beeches are the Fagus Betuloides and Fagus Antarchia. The former partakes also of the character of a birch. It is an evergreen, while the leaves of the other fall off in the autumn. The “Winter’s-bark” (Drimys Winletii) is a laurel-like evergreen, which produces an aromatic bark, somewhat resembling cinnamon. It derives its name, not from the season, but from a Captain Winter, who first carried the bark to England in 1579.
Note 3. The Fuegian parrot, or paroquet, is known to naturalists as Psittacus Imaragdinus,—the humming-bird as Melisuga Kingii. It was long believed that neither parrots nor humming-birds existed in Tierra del Fuego; Buffon, with his usual incorrectness, alleging that the specimens brought from it were taken elsewhere; other learned closet naturalists insisted on the parrots reported to exist there being “sea-parrots” (auks).
Chapter Twelve.
A Catastrophe Not Anticipated.
Another day dawns upon the castaways, with again a bright sun on the horizon; and Ned Gancy and Henry Chester, who have risen early, as they look out over the water, become witnesses of the curious behaviour of another Fuegian fishing-bird—the cormorant.