Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors and inconsistencies have been corrected without note, whilst significant amendments have been listed at the end of the text. Archaic and variant spellings have been retained.

CRUISE OF THE "ALERT."

H.M.S. "ALERT" AT ANCHOR IN TOM BAY, WEST COAST OF PATAGONIA (see p. [42]).

CRUISE OF THE "ALERT"

FOUR YEARS IN

PATAGONIAN, POLYNESIAN, AND
MASCARENE WATERS

(1878-82)

BY
R. W. COPPINGER, M.D.
(Staff-Surgeon Royal Navy, C.M.Z.S.)

With Sixteen full-page Woodcut Illustrations from Photographs by
F. North, R.N., and from Sketches by the Author

FOURTH EDITION

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM.
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1899

First Edition, May 1884; Second Edition, January 1885;
Third Edition, May 1885.

PREFACE.

In preparing the following pages for the press, I have endeavoured to give a brief account, divested as much as possible of technicalities, of the principal points of interest in Natural History which came under observation during the wanderings of a surveying ship; while at the same time I have done my utmost, at the risk of rendering the narrative disconnected, to avoid trenching on ground which has been rendered familiar by the writings of travellers who have visited the same or similar places. And if in a few instances I have given some rather dry details regarding the appearance and surroundings of certain zoological specimens, it has been my intention, by an occasional reference to the more striking forms of life met with in each locality, to afford some assistance to those amateurs who, like myself, may desire to avail themselves of the opportunities afforded by the surveying ships of the British Navy for performing, although with rude appliances and very few books of reference, some useful and interesting work.

Large collections of zoological specimens were made, and as these accumulated on board, they were from time to time sent home to the Admiralty, whence they were transmitted to the British Museum, the authorities of that institution then submitting them to specialists for systematic description. For much kindly aid in making these arrangements, as well as for advice and encouragement received during the progress of the cruise, I am indebted to Dr. Albert Günther, F.R.S., Keeper of Zoology in the British Museum.

I take this opportunity to thank Mr. Frederick North, R.N., for the use of a collection of photographs which were taken by him during the cruise under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, and of which most of the engravings in this work are reproductions.

I am also under obligations to all the other officers for assistance rendered to me in various ways; and especially to those officers who acted successively as Senior Lieutenants, for the consideration with which they tolerated those parts of my dredging operations that necessarily interfered with the maintenance of good order and cleanliness on the ship's decks.

Finally, I have to thank my friend, Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe, the distinguished ornithologist of the British Museum, by whose advice and encouragement I was induced to submit these pages to the public, for his assistance in perusing my MS., and offering some useful suggestions.

R. W. C.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CRUISE OF THE "ALERT."

INTRODUCTION.

In the summer of 1878 it was decided by the Lords of the Admiralty to equip a vessel for the threefold purpose of continuing the survey of the Straits of Magellan, of investigating the nature and exact position of certain doubtful reefs and islands in the South Pacific Ocean, and of surveying a portion of the northern and western coasts of Australia. The special object of the Magellan portion of the work was to make such a detailed survey of the sheltered channels extending southward from the Gulf of Peñas to Port Tamar as would enable vessels to pass from the Straits to the Pacific, and vice versâ, without having to encounter the wild and inhospitable outer coasts presented by the chain of desolate islands here fringing the western coasts of South America. It was also desirable that additional anchorages should be found and surveyed, where vessels might lie in safety while waiting for the cessation of a gale, or for a favourable tide to help them through the straits. The surveys made by the Adventure and Beagle in 1826-36, and by the Nassau in 1866-9, were excellent so far as they went, and so far as the requirements of their times were concerned; but the great increase of ocean navigation within the last few years had rendered it necessary that the charts should contain more minute surveys of certain places which were not formerly of importance. The South Pacific portion of our survey was to be mainly in connection with the recently acquired colony of the Fiji Islands, and was to be devoted to an exploration of the eastern passages leading to this group, with an investigation of the doubtful dangers reported in the vicinity of the great shipping tracts. Finally, on completing the above, and arriving at Australia, we were to spend a year and a half, or thereabouts, in surveying the line of reefs which fringe its whole western seaboard, the ill-defined position of which is a serious obstacle to the now extensive trade between Western Australia and the Dutch islands of the Malay Archipelago.

The latter part of the orders was subsequently changed, inasmuch as we were directed to omit the survey of the western shores of Australia, and were ordered instead, on completing the North Australian work, to proceed to Singapore, in the Straits of Malacca, to refit. Thence we were to return home by the Cape of Good Hope, stopping on our way at the Seychelles, Amirante Islands, and Mozambique, in order to fix astronomically the position of the Amirante Group, and, as opportunities occurred, to take a line of soundings off the east coast of Africa.

The vessel selected for this special service was the Alert, a man-of-war sloop of 751 tons measurement and 60 horse-power nominal; and the command of the expedition was given to Capt. Sir George Nares, K.C.B. By a happy coincidence the same stout craft which had already done such good service in the Arctic Expedition of 1875-6, and which bears the honour of having attained the highest northern latitude, was selected as the ship in which Sir George Nares was now about to proceed on a voyage of exploration in high southern latitudes. She was officially commissioned on the 20th of August, with a complement of 120 officers and men, her equipments including apparatus for conducting deep sea sounding and dredging operations, and a miscellaneous collection of instruments not usually supplied to H.M.'s ships.

It being the wish of the enterprising hydrographer of the navy—Captain, now Sir Frederick Evans, K.C.B.—that the opportunities which this expedition would afford of making a valuable natural history collection in regions little known to science should not be thrown away, and Sir George Nares warmly seconding him in this wish, the Admiralty determined on appointing as surgeon an officer who, in addition to his duties as medical officer of the ship, would be inclined to devote his spare time to the cause of natural science. Sir George Nares, knowing my fondness for natural history, with characteristic kindness gave my application his support, and I had therefore the good fortune to be appointed as medical officer of the Alert, on the understanding that (so far as my medical duties permitted) I would not lose sight of the advantages which would accrue to science from a collection of natural-history objects illustrative of the fauna and flora of the countries visited in the course of the voyage.

During the four years over which my narrative extends, many changes took place in the personnel of the expedition. Scarcely a year had elapsed from the date of our departure from England, when we had to regret the loss of Sir George Nares, who left us at Valparaiso, and returned to England by mail-steamer, in order to enter upon his duties as Director of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade. We were fortunate, however, in having as his successor Captain John Maclear—formerly of the Challenger exploring expedition—to whom I take this opportunity of expressing my thanks for the unvarying kindness which I have always experienced at his hands, as well as for much assistance and encouragement in the prosecution of our zoological work.

The following is a list of the officers:—

Captain Sir George S. Nares, K.C.B., F.R.S.; succeeded by Captain John Maclear, F.R.M.S.

Lieut. George R. Bethell; succeeded by Lieut. James Deedes.

Lieut. the Hon. Foley C. P. Vereker; succeeded by Lieut. George Rooper.

Lieut. Gordon S. Gunn (subsequently became senior lieutenant).

Nav. Lieut. William H. Petley.

Sub-Lieut. James H. C. East (subsequently served as lieutenant).

Sub-Lieut. Charles W. de la P. Beresford (left the ship at Singapore).

Staff-Surgeon Richard W. Coppinger, M.D.

Paymaster Frederick North.

Engineer, John Dinwoodie.

Engineer, William Cook.

Boatswain, Alfred Payne.

(Lieut. Grenfell joined the ship at Singapore, and remained until the close of the commission.)

CHAPTER I.
FROM ENGLAND TO THE FALKLANDS.

After various delays, owing to defects in machinery, we finally bade adieu to the shores of England on the 25th of September, 1878, taking our departure from Plymouth.

On the second day at sea the little storm petrels appeared over our wake, and accompanied us, off and on, for most of our way to Madeira. These seemed to be of two kinds, the Thalassidroma pelagica and Thalassidroma leachii, the latter being sufficiently recognizable from their having forked tails, in which respect they differ from other species of the genus. Many attempts were made to catch them by means of hooks baited with fat, skeins of thread, etc., but all to no purpose; and I rather fancy that in this thoroughfare of the ocean the wily creatures have had too much experience of the arts of man, and are therefore not to be caught so easily as their more ignorant brethren of the southern hemisphere.

On the 28th of September, when 155 miles to the westward of Cape Finisterre, and during a fresh easterly breeze, a sparrow-hawk made his appearance, at first hovering round the ship, and ultimately settling on the rigging. It had probably strayed too far from the shore in the pursuit of some tempting prey, and had then lost its reckoning, being eventually blown to seaward. At all events, it had travelled some long distance, as it evinced its weariness by resting quietly and contentedly on the main-topgallant rigging, until one of the seamen, who had managed to climb up unobserved, suddenly laid hands on it. On placing it in a meat-safe, which we extemporised as a cage, it ate ravenously, as well it might after its long journey.

When in the latitude of Lisbon, and 180 miles to the westward of the Portuguese coast, a large "sea-flier" bird paid us a visit, soaring over the waves in our vicinity, and evidently on the look-out for garbage from the ship. The plumage of the upper surface of wings and body was of a dusky brown colour, the under surface of the body was whitish, and the wings were long and pointed; in mode of flight he resembled a large tern. He did not long remain with us, probably not finding it a sufficiently productive hunting-ground. I may here mention that on the 6th of October, when a hundred miles from Madeira, we sighted a bird answering the same description.

All opportunities of plying the tow-net were duly availed of, but owing to the unusually rapid speed of the ship, these were few. However, we succeeded in capturing many specimens of living Foraminifers (mostly of the genus Orbitolites), stalk-eyed Crustaceans, Radiolarians, an Ianthina, a few Salpæ, and the pretty little Pteropod Mollusc, the Criseis aciculata, besides many other organisms which the rapid motion of the net through the water had rendered unrecognizable. As it is usually found that these minute pelagic organisms are to be obtained from the surface in most abundance at night-time, and during the day retreat for some fathoms from the glare of the sunlight, I constructed a wooden apparatus on the principle of a kite, which I attached to the towing line at some three or four yards from the net, and which had the effect of dragging down the net some yards below the surface, and then retaining it at a uniform depth. It of course required to be adjusted each time to suit the required depth and the rate of the vessel, but it had this great advantage over the usual system of employing heavy weights, that the strain not being nearly so great, a light and manageable rope could be used; and that, moreover, the adjustment for depth could be readily made by altering the trim of this water-kite. When I first tried this apparatus, and before I had succeeded in trimming it satisfactorily, it caused great amusement to the bluejackets by the playful manner in which it manœuvred under our stern, now diving deeply towards our rudder post (the shimmer of the white wood in the deep blue water reminding one of a dolphin), and now whimsically rising rapidly to the surface with an impetus that shot it fully six feet out of the water.

On the 4th of October, the captain made some experiments with the "Lucas deep-sea sounder." It consists of a strong brass drum carrying 2,000 fathoms of fine steel wire, and fitted with a cyclometer which registers on a dial the number of fathoms of wire run out. The sinker, which weighs 20 lbs., is made of lead, and has at its lower extremity a bull-dog snapper, which, on striking the ground, shuts up suddenly, so as to enclose a sample of the sea bottom. The apparatus is supposed to be capable of sounding to a depth of 500 fathoms in a vessel going 5 knots, and to 50 fathoms when going 12 knots. It is said to be a modification of an invention of Sir W. Thompson's. We subsequently used this largely, and found it to be a most convenient and expeditious method of sounding to depths of 500 fathoms, with the ship almost stationary. The wire could be wound up again while the ship was under way.

During the forenoon of this same day we saw, to our astonishment, a land swallow, which flew about the ship for a few minutes, and then went on his way rejoicing. He would have had to travel 254 miles to make the nearest land, which was the island of Porto Santo.

An erratic fragment of gulfweed (Sargassum bacciferum) was entangled in the tow-net on the 5th of October, when we were 105 miles north-east of Madeira, a circumstance which is of interest as regards the distribution of the plant, the locality cited being considerably beyond the northern limit of the great eddy between the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic equatorial current, commonly called the Sargasso Sea. It was encrusted with a delicate white Polyzoon (Membranipora), and among other organisms carried on its fronds a pretty little Spirorbis shell, and several entomostracous Crustaceans of a deep-blue colour.

The phosphorescence of the sea is a trite subject, and one about which a very great deal has been written; but nevertheless, of its actual cause, or of the purposes which it is intended to serve, really very little is positively known. The animals to which it would seem mainly due are the small stalk-eyed Crustacea, the Pyrocystis noctiluca, and the Tunicate Molluscs. I have sometimes observed, when occupied at night in sifting the contents of a tow-net, that these organisms, as they were being sucked through the nozzle of the dip-tube, emitted flashes of light, so brilliant, that they could be distinctly seen even in a well-lighted room. During the voyage from England to Madeira, the wake of the ship was every night, with one exception, phosphorescent. The exception alluded to was on the night previous to our arrival at Madeira, when probably the unusual brilliancy of the moonlight caused the light-emitting creatures to retreat a few yards from the surface, as happens in the day-time. I have often noticed that while the phosphorescence of the comparatively still water abeam of the ship and on her quarter usually seems to emanate from large spherical masses of about a foot in diameter (commonly called "globes of fire"), yet the luminosity of the broken water in the vessel's immediate wake comes apparently from innumerable minute points. I have rarely captured any of the larger jellyfishes in the tow-net; and on those nights when I have observed the water lighted up the most brilliantly, the prevailing organisms have proved to be the small entomostracous Crustaceans.

The morning of the 7th of October broke cool and hazy, as we steamed up and dropped anchor in Funchal Roads, on the south side of the island of Madeira. Crowds of native boats, with their half-naked occupants, quickly thronged around; remaining, however, at a respectful distance, until the boat containing the haughty pratique officer came alongside. On the present occasion this portentous individual was contented with a very superficial inquiry into our sanitary condition, and after a few formal questions as to our tonnage, complement of crew, number of guns, and general condition, shoved off with the laconic exclamation, "All right!" We soon availed ourselves of this permission to visit the shore.

The most conspicuous objects in Funchal, as seen from the anchorage, are the "Loo Rock" (used as a fort and lighthouse), on the west side of the town, and on the centre of the crescent-shaped beach which fronts the town a remarkable and lofty cylindrical tower of dark-brown stone. This tower, we were informed, was built about the year 1800, and was intended as a support for a huge crane, which was to facilitate the loading and disembarkation of the cargo of merchant ships. The tower as it stands is about eighty feet in height, and as its base is now about forty yards distant from high-water mark on the beach, as an article of utility it is quite effete. Our surveyors have ascertained that the land has not been elevated since the first admiralty surveys. This they arrive at by a comparison of old and recent charts with known marks on the shore, and we are therefore inclined to believe that the beach has been silted up by accumulations of basaltic rubble brought down by the two adjoining rivers, and here washed inshore by the sea. The tower is now without any appearance of the crane, and raises its plain cylindrical body in gloomy grandeur, reminding one of the old round towers of Ireland; and, as in their case, its origin will probably some years hence be veiled in obscurity.

Madeira was considered to be looking unusually dingy, on account of a long season of drought, rain not having fallen for nine months. But some two or three days after our arrival a great religious ceremony took place at the village of Machico, eight miles to the eastward of Funchal. The object was to offer up prayers for rain; and, sure enough, two days afterwards, rain fell abundantly!

During our stay here the dredge was several times brought into requisition. On the 8th of October, a party, consisting of the captain, Lieut. Vereker, some seamen, and myself, started in the steam-cutter on a dredging expedition to the bay of Santa Cruz, which is distant about eight miles from Funchal. As we steamed along the coast, we had excellent opportunities of observing the sections exhibited by the cliffs of the varieties of volcanic rock of which the upper crust of the island is mainly formed. At Point Garajas (Brazen Head), of which Lieut. Vereker made a good sketch, the north-east face of the cliff presents a magnificent dyke—a nearly vertical seam of dark lava, about three feet in width and two hundred feet in height, extending from summit to water line, and sealing up this long fissure in the older trachytic rock of the head. Farther on, masses of basalt resting unconformably on variously arranged layers of laterite tuff and trachyte, the latter in many places honeycombed in weird fantastic caverns, afforded a fertile subject for geological reveries into the early history of this now beautiful island. On reaching the bay of Santa Cruz, we lowered the dredge in thirty-five fathoms, finding, as we had half anticipated, that it was altogether too heavy to ride on the mass of sand that here forms the sea bottom. It buried itself like an anchor, and it was not without great difficulty that we could succeed in dislodging it. On bringing it up, we found it to contain some shells of the genera Cardium, Pecten, Cypræa, Oliva, and Dentalium, a few small Echini, a Sertularian Polyp, several Annelids—among others, a Nereis—and Alcyonarians. We returned on board soon after dusk, having spent a most enjoyable, if not materially profitable, day. On subsequently dredging in fifty fathoms in the same bay, our work was more satisfactory; but besides some Crustaceans, an Ophiocoma, and an Asterias of a brilliant orange colour, obtained few specimens of any interest. On another day we tried the coast to the westward of Funchal; and as we moved along in the steam-cutter, obtained, by means of the tow-net, several specimens of gulfweed entangling small sponges. The dredge, being put over in seven fathoms, procured for us many specimens of a Cidaris, studded with black spines three to four inches long, and whose oblate spheroidal tests of about two inches diameter were of a beautiful smalt colour. Off the same coast, in forty fathoms, the bottom was found to consist of black basaltic sand crowded with tooth-shells. This fine black sand seemed to form the sea-bottom along the south coast of the island as far out as the fifty fathom line, and from our experience does not prove a favourable berth for our friends the Mollusca and Annulosa.

Among the Crustaceans obtained in the above dredgings was a species of Glaucothöe new to science, which has since been described by Mr. E. J. Miers, of the British Museum, under the title of "Glaucothöe rostrata."

On the afternoon of the 12th of October, in company with Sir George Nares, and under the guidance of Dr. Grabham, a British doctor for many years resident in Madeira, we had an opportunity of inspecting a "pinery," established within the last two years by a Mr. Holloway, and by which he expects to amass a considerable fortune. This establishment, which lies to the north-east of the town, at an altitude of about three hundred feet, consists of a series of long, low hothouses with sloping glass roofs, painted white, and facing to the southward, and is heated entirely by the sun's rays. The material in which the pines are planted consists of the branches of the blackberry plant chopped to fragments, and spread out in a thick layer, and in this substitute for mould the young pines are placed, at intervals of about eighteen inches apart. They grow to an enormous size, as we ourselves witnessed; and being cut when they show the least sign of ripening, and packed carefully in well-ventilated boxes, are shipped to London, where they fetch prices varying from twenty-five to thirty shillings each.

Dr. Grabham was kind enough to give us much interesting information concerning the natural history of the island, which, from his long experience and constant observation, was most valuable. He pointed out to us a considerable tract of land in the vicinity of the town which used to be thickly planted with vines, but which is now only devoted to the cultivation of sweet potatoes. During the last seven years the vine crops have been steadily decreasing, owing to the ravages of the Phylloxera vastatrix, and wine-making is now at a low ebb. The number of trees in the island was also rapidly diminishing, owing to the demand for fuel; and although efforts are made, by the cultivation of pine forests, to supply that want, the demand yet exceeds the supply. In a few years Madeira will no longer be, as its name implies, a land of wood. Although so late in the season, numbers of flowers were still in full bloom; the Bougainvillea with its dark-red bracts, and the yellow jasmine adorning the trellis-work; further up the hill the belladonna lily attracted attention, and on the heights were the old familiar furze blossoms, reminding us of the land we had left behind us.

On October 12th we weighed anchor, and proceeded to the southward. All that night and the following day we steamed quietly along in smooth water, with a long, shallow ground swell (of which, however, the old craft took advantage to display her extraordinary rolling powers), and late in the afternoon, just before dark, caught sight of Palmas, one of the Canary Islands, whose peak, 7,000 feet high, loomed conspicuously through a light bank of clouds. It was distant seventy miles. On the morning of the 15th we experienced for the first time the influence of the north-east trade wind, which wafted us along pleasantly at the rate of about seven knots. Up to this the only sign of animal life had been a solitary storm petrel, but on the following day a shoal of flying fish (Exocetus volitans) appeared, to pay their respects and greet us on our approach to the tropical zone. During the night, the wind, which had hitherto only behaved tolerably, fell light; and as the morning of the 17th dawned, we found ourselves flapping about in almost a complete calm. There were several merchant vessels in sight, with one of which, a fine-looking full-rigged clipper ship, we communicated by signal, when the usual dumb interchange of civilities took place; she informing us that she was the Baron Collinson, seventeen days out from Liverpool, and we in return giving the latest news we were aware of, viz., the failure of the Glasgow Bank. During the afternoon, a shark, which seemed to be the Squalus glaucus, hovered about our stern. It was accompanied by at least four "pilots" (Naucrates ductor), whose conspicuous dark-blue body stripes showed out in striking contrast to the sombre hues of the shark, whose body formed the background.

It is during those tropical calms, usually so wearisome to the seaman, that the lover of natural history reaps his richest harvest. On the present occasion the tow-net brought up quantities of a minute conferva consisting of little bundles of delicate straw-coloured fibres, about one-eighth of an inch in length, and resembling, on a small scale, the familiar bundles of "faggots" as one sees them hawked in the streets. Under a high magnifying power the individual fibres composing these bundles were seen to consist of jointed segments marked with dots and transverse striæ as a diatom. When placed in spirit, they at once broke up into a shapeless fluffy mass. The surface water was thickly impregnated with them, yet not so as to impart any obvious discolouration. About dusk the trade wind suddenly returned, and a heavy shower of rain brought to a close a day of great interest.

On the 18th of October, many of us fore and aft were diligently expending our ingenuity in fishing for bonitoes, of which several (apparently the Thinnus pelamis) were to be seen about the ship; but, to our great chagrin, only one, a small specimen, was captured. The tow-net still brought up quantities of the conferva before mentioned, and multitudes of minute unattached specimens of the Spirorbis nummulites.

On the following day, as we lay all but becalmed, the storm petrels (Thalassidroma pelagica) appeared in great numbers, settling on the water close to our stern, in flocks of twelve or fourteen, and feeding greedily on the rubbish thrown overboard. It seems that the natural food of these birds (which probably consists of the minute surface organisms) is not within their reach when the surface of the water is unbroken, and hence during calms they are more than commonly anxious to avail themselves of any offal thrown overboard. It was most interesting to observe the neat and graceful way in which they plant their webbed feet on the water, as with outstretched wings and legs erect they maintain a stationary attitude while pecking at the object of their fancy. They appeared to scrupulously avoid wetting the tarsi, and still to use the feet as a means of maintaining a fixed position on the surface of the water. I had never previously observed those untiring little navigators at rest in mid-ocean, but on this occasion we all saw them, with wings closed, floating as placidly on the water as ducks in a millpond. The old idea of their following ships only before and during stormy weather is, I believe, now quite exploded. I think that within the tropics, at all events, they are most numerous in the vicinity of ships during calm weather. Finding animal life scarce at the surface, I tried the tow-net sunk to a depth of about three fathoms, and having previously raked the surface, was enabled to institute a comparison; the result being that similar species were captured in both situations, but that a far greater number of individuals were present in the deeper water. During the day-time we obtained a number of Crustaceans, several Atlanta shells, Globigerina bulloides, and the same conferva as on the previous day. After dark I got a great quantity of highly phosphorescent Crustaceans, and one small cuttle-fish.

On the 20th the trade wind returned in full force, and the monotony of an otherwise uneventful day was varied by the appearance of a shoal of porpoises, which accompanied us for some time, moving along abreast of us and about two hundred yards off on our starboard beam, and making themselves conspicuous by their usual frisky behaviour.

On the afternoon of the 22nd the high land of San Antonio, the most northerly of the Cape de Verde Islands, hove in sight, far away on our starboard bow; but the evening closing in thick and dark, and this group being almost without lighthouses, the captain decided on laying-to until next morning. When about twenty miles off, we received a visit from a good-sized hawk, evidently out on a foraging tour; he hovered for a while about our mastheads, reconnoitring our decks, and then soared away.

As we sailed along the east coast of San Antonio (the largest island of the Cape de Verde group), we observed a small outlying island rock, composed of closely packed vertical columnar masses of rock (probably basaltic), which, from their artificial appearance, reminded one forcibly of the Giant's Causeway, or of the Staffa Columns. The hills of the main island, which sloped up majestically from a low rocky beach to peaks five or six thousand feet high, were clothed with herbage, whose varying tints of green, to which the shadows of the secondary peaks added dusky patches of brown, created a most pleasing landscape.

We reached the harbour of Porto Santo, St. Vincent, on the afternoon of the 23rd of October, and soon after the anchor was dropped, those of us who could leave the ship proceeded to land. As we approached the beach, we were greatly struck by a contrivance, new to most of us, for carrying coals from the yard where it is stowed to the shipping wharves, a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile,—a row of posts, like those used for telegraph wires, placed about four yards apart, and supporting on iron rollers a long endless wire, to which are hung at intervals large metal buckets containing the coal. There is an incline from the depôt to the wharf, and consequently, as the full buckets travel down to the lower end of the circuit, and are canted so as to discharge their contents, the empty buckets pass up the incline back to the coal-yard, and so a circuit is completed. Most of the large passenger-steamers traversing the South Atlantic find St. Vincent a convenient place to stop at to replenish their bunkers, and it is to this coal trade that the island owes its importance.

After a cursory inspection of the little town, which presented a very neat and orderly appearance, we strolled out into the country, following the direction of the western shore of the bay. The country exhibited a tolerably green appearance, and we were informed that vegetation had been exceptionally good during the previous two years, owing to the rainfall having been much above the average. Of trees of course there were none to be seen, and of shrubs only a few stunted representatives, scattered singly or in patches. A species of rank grass, however, flourished, and here and there a rather stately fungus raised its head as if in defiance of its otherwise sterile surroundings, the blown sand of the foreshore supplying sufficient nutriment for its humble wants. Of dead shells a great variety were picked up on the beach between tide marks, including representatives of the genera Arca, Patella, Cardium, Harpa, Littorina, and Strombus; a very perfect Spirula shell was also noticed. The blown-sand ridges above high-water mark were everywhere perforated by the burrows of a very active grey-coloured crab (Remipes scutellatus), whose feet terminated in sharp incurved claws admirably adapted for the creature's mining operations. Its burrows extended obliquely downwards, and to a depth of two feet from the surface of the blown-sand ridges. A couple of grasshoppers were the only other additions made on this occasion to our zoological collection.

The afternoon of the next day (24th October) I was enabled to devote to dredging operations, working over the bay at depths varying from two to twelve fathoms. From these I obtained some large and active specimens of a large wing-shell, the Strombus pugilis, whose gymnastic performances, when subsequently placed in a vessel of sea-water, excited general interest. Armed with his long powerful foot, he struck out boldly in all directions, the operculated extremity acting like a sword blade, and alarming me for the safety of the seaweeds and other more delicate organisms which occupied the same vessel. When disposed to turn about, it protruded the foot so as to half encircle the shell, and by then rapidly straightening the organ the desired change of position was effected. It was very interesting to see the complete control which the animal thus exercised over its heavy and apparently unwieldy shell. In twelve fathoms of water we came upon a great quantity of blue-spined Echini, the tangles of the dredge in one short haul bringing up about two dozen. Fishing-lines were also brought into requisition, resulting in the capture of some fishes of a pale crimson colour, belonging to the blenny family.

In the evening of this day (24th October) we sailed from St. Vincent. Up to the 29th instant the north-east trade wind proved fairly propitious, but it now failed us completely; and as we were at this time in latitude 8° N., and there were otherwise unmistakable indications of our having arrived at the "Doldrums" (the region of equatorial calms), steam was had recourse to. Under this artificial stimulus we proceeded at a rate of from five to six knots, a speed unfortunately too great for the use of the tow-net; and on this occasion the circumstance was all the more vexatious, as the surface water seemed peculiarly rich in animal life. Ultimately, however, determining on sacrificing some bunting in the cause of science, I put a tow-net over the stern, and the captain aided me materially by towing from the end of the lower studding-sail boom a ten-foot trawl-net. Between the two we succeeded in capturing some water insects of the genus Halobates, several beautiful large Ianthinæ, but unfortunately with their fragile shells partly broken and severed from their rafts; also a Physalia, a small free-swimming Actinia, some discophorous Medusæ, and several Pteropod Molluscs of the genus Hyalea. For several consecutive days the surface water after dusk was thronged with the above-mentioned Medusæ, whose tough gelatinous discs, of three inches diameter, continually clogged up the meshes of the tow-net. On the 2nd of November we obtained some Globigerina forms, several Crustaceans, some minute Pteropods of the genus Cuvieria, and a host of minute Confervæ, of the kind met with previously to the northward of Madeira. On the afternoon of the 5th of November, when we were about a hundred miles from St. Paul's Rocks, we noticed that the little petrels, which for weeks had accompanied us in great numbers, were now feebly represented, and in the evening were completely gone. Perhaps they had found out their proximity to terra firma, and were gone for a run on shore. It is very strange how these birds, which follow ships over the ocean for thousands of miles, can manage to time their journeys so as to reach land for their breeding season. That the same individuals do follow ships for such great distances we have good evidence; for Captain King, in his voyage of the Adventure and Beagle, mentions a case in which the surgeon of a ship, coming home from Australia, having caught a Cape pigeon (Daption capensis), which had been following the ship, tied a piece of ribbon to it as a mark, and then set it free. The bird, recognized in this way, was observed to follow them for a distance of no less than 5,000 miles.

From the last date to the 9th of November, but little of interest occurred. One day a petrel (Thalassidroma pelagica) had been caught with a skein of thread; and on opening the body the crop was found to contain a number of stony particles, bits of cinders, minute shells, and otolites of fishes. In the tow-net we caught a number of Rhizopods, of 1⁄20 inch diameter, which kept continually unfolding and shutting up their bodies in telescopic fashion. When quiescent, the animal is egg-shaped, and about the size of a mustard seed; but when elongated, it is twice that length, and exhibits a tubular sort of proboscis armed with an irregular circle of vibrating cilia. We also obtained a Pteropod resembling the Criseis aciculata, an Ianthina, and some hyaline amœbiform bodies, which were entirely beyond my powers of recognition. On the following day we got more of the pretty violet shells (Ianthina fragilis), several Crustaceans, including a large and perfect Glass-crab (Phyllosoma), and several large Salpæ and Medusæ.

On the 12th of November we entered the north limit of our surveying ground, being in latitude 17° S., and in the vicinity of the Abrolhos Bank. Here, in latitude 17° 18′ S., longitude 35° 34′ W., we made a cast with Bailie's deep-sea sounding apparatus; reaching bottom in 1,975 fathoms, and finding it to consist of "Globigerina mud," of a pasty tenacity, tinged with red, and containing a great mass of Globigerina tests, whole and fragmentary. Later in the day, when in latitude 17° 32′ S., longitude 35° 46′ W., we again sounded, getting bottom in 700 fathoms, and bringing up a sort of light-grey ooze. Towards evening we struck soundings in thirty-five fathoms, over the Hotspur Bank. There we made a successful haul of the dredge, finding the bottom composed of dead coral encrusted with Nullipores, Polyzoa, and slimy Algæ, and containing in its crevices some Crustaceans of the genera Actæa and Corallana, and a few Annelids. The stony masses of coral which we brought up were pierced in all directions by boring molluscs; and one specimen of a long elaborately woven sponge (which has since been described by Mr. S. O. Ridley, of the British Museum, as a new variety of Cladochalina armigera) was found attached to a lump of coral.

The next day we sounded in latitude 18° 4′ S., longitude 36° 1′ W., using the Lucas wire sounder. We reached bottom in 300 fathoms, the bull-dog apparatus bringing up fragments of coral rock encrusted with calcareous Algæ. In the afternoon we passed into deeper water, sounding over the Globigerina ooze area, in 1,395 and 2,025 fathoms. The surface water again exhibited the same conferva-like bodies which were so abundantly obtained near Madeira. The Pyrocystis noctiluca was also largely represented; and in the evening the tow-net was found to contain small cuttle-fish, some dead spirorbis shells, specimens of the Criseis aciculata, Cleodora pyramidata, and of a species of Hyalea, and a thick fleshy Pteropod, a species of Pneumodermon, small globe fishes, many long, transparent, stalk-eyed Crustaceans, and other minute members of the same class of Arthropoda.

On the 14th of November we sounded in latitude 19° 43′ S., longitude 36° 5′ W., the bottom consisting of a pale chocolate-coloured tenacious mud. Towards evening we reached the position of the Montague Bank, which is indicated on the chart as a bank about three miles long, and in one part covered by only thirty-six fathoms of water. We sounded for this bank repeatedly, but in vain, nowhere getting bottom with 470 fathoms of line. The ship was now allowed to drift during the night-time, soundings being made from time to time; and towards morning we filled our sails to a northerly breeze, and stood on for the Victoria Bank. In the afternoon we met with a large school of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus), displaying to advantage, as usual, their huge cylindrical snouts, and alternately their great spreading tails; this circling exercise appearing to be a favourite amusement of theirs.

On reaching the Victoria Bank, we hauled the dredge in thirty-nine fathoms, but dropping on a rugged coral bottom, the bag was torn to pieces; however, the tangles contained numbers of an oval-shaped sponge, varying in length from a quarter of an inch to an inch, and studded with beautiful glassy spicules (determined by Mr. Ridley to be a new species of Chalina), and also numbers of the genera Vioa, Nardoa, Aphroceras, and Grantia. Among Polyzoa, the genera Canda, Membranipora, Cribrillina, Gigantopora, Rhyncopora, Smittia, and Cellepora were represented. Our operations in the Abrolhos region being now at an end, we shaped a course for Monte Video.

On the 22nd of November, when we were a hundred miles from the Brazilian coast, and in about the latitude of Rio, great numbers of moths appeared, hovering about the ship, and settling on the rigging. The wind was at the time blowing freshly from the westward; but the moths appeared, strange to say, as if coming up from the south-eastward. Conspicuous among them by their great numbers as well as by their formidable appearance, were the Sphinx moths. These large insects seemed gifted with marvellous powers of flight; for although the wind amounted to a fresh breeze, I noticed that they were not only able to hold their own, but even to make headway against it. We concluded, however, that nearer in shore the wind was much stronger, perhaps reaching us so as an upper current, and that it had consequently blown them off the land. Later in the day the Lepidoptera were represented in still greater variety, so that altogether the ship exhibited an unusually sportive appearance; men and officers alike striking out with their caps here and there, as they pursued the objects of their fancy. In the course of the day I collected no less than seventeen species, of which fourteen were moths, and the remainder butterflies. As illustrating the great tenacity of life of the Sphinx moths, I may mention that, in the case of one refractory individual, it was only after employing all the deadly resources at the time at my command, viz., prussic acid, ammonia, oxalic acid, chloroform, crushing the thorax, etc., that I could succeed in removing all the ordinary manifestations of life. However, as, after long incarceration in a bottle filled with the fumes of chloroform, he at length appeared to have succumbed, I proceeded to remove the contents of his large fleshy body. This done, I filled in the body with cotton wadding, and placing the specimen on one side, proceeded to operate on another. But no sooner had I put down the specimen thus prepared, than it proceeded to kick about in a most vigorous way, and otherwise gave unmistakable signs of vitality. On turning it on its legs, it crawled about, clung to my finger, and seemed to imply that it could get on just as well with a cotton interior as with the whole complicated apparatus of intestine and so forth, which it had given me so much trouble to remove.

It was a strange coincidence, that among the contents of the tow-net on this occasion was a large black Chrysalis. It also contained a great number of little phosphorescent spheres, which, under a high magnifying power, proved to be similar to the bodies described by Sir Wyville Thompson, under the term Pyrocystis noctiluca. On the same day we entered the Albatross region, one large white bird (Diomedea exulans) and several sooties (Diomedea fuliginosa) soaring around our ship. Some land-birds were also seen, one of which, a species of finch (?) was captured and preserved.

On the 24th of November we approached within eighty miles of the Brazilian coast, and on getting soundings in forty-eight fathoms, immediately put the dredge overboard. The hempen tangles contained starfishes of three or four species, and the bag brought up a mass of bluish tenacious mud, which, on sifting, was found to contain some Crustaceans and tube-building Annelids, and many small shells, living and dead, of the genera Dentalium, Hyalea, Arca, and others. About the same time a turtle was observed floating on the water.

On the forenoon of the 26th, land—the coast of Uruguay—was in view on our starboard beam, a long low line of beach, whose uniform outline was broken by a conspicuous tall lighthouse, which stamped the locality as Cape Santa Maria. A few hours later we obtained a view of Lobos Island, a bare-looking uninviting mass of rock, situated just off Maldonado Point; and as we now fairly entered the estuary of the Plate, a number of large gulls (apparently of the genus Dominicanus) joined us, eagerly picking up any offal cast overboard.

We arrived at Monte Video on the 27th of November, and stayed until the 14th of December, during this time making several trips into the country.

On one occasion I went by train to a place called Colon, about ten miles to the N.W. of Monte Video. Starting from the central station of the Northern Railway, I took my seat in a clean well-fitted carriage, with two other passengers, one of whom, my vis-à-vis, might have realized one's ideas of a Guy Fawkes. In the course of the journey, this individual somewhat surprised me by diving his hand into a back coat pocket, and producing therefrom a formidable-looking silver-sheathed dagger, which, however, to my relief, he quietly laid down beside him on the seat, perhaps that he might the more conveniently stretch himself out; possibly because he thought me a suspicious companion, and wished to show in time that he was not unprepared in case of an attack.

About Colon the country was open enough, presenting to the eye a great bare tract of weedy-looking land varied by gently undulating hills, and studded with oxen innumerable; the farm-houses, low structures disposed about half a mile apart, hardly breaking the monotony of the landscape. Here and there a gaily caparisoned Gaucho cantered about, apparently without any fixed object, except to enjoy his liberty, and gave a picturesque character to the scene. These Gauchos are really fine-looking fellows, well mounted, and most excellent horsemen. They have about them a certain air of well-fed contentment, which, in spite of their known ferocity, almost elicits admiration. It is a popular error to apply the term "Gaucho" indiscriminately to all the horse-riding community of the lower classes, for the term is properly only applicable to those homeless wandering horse-riders whose sole worldly possession consists of a horse and its trappings, who roam about from place to place, picking up whatever they can appropriate by fair means or foul, and who, consequently, do not enjoy a very high reputation among the settled inhabitants. The word "Gaucho" is looked upon as a term of reproach, and an honest, self-respecting peasant so addressed would reply, "No, Señor, no soy Gaucho, soy Paysano." By a clever stroke of policy the present dictator of Uruguay, Señor Letore, has almost succeeded in putting a stop to the infamous practice of "cattle lifting," formerly so common among the "Gauchos." Their equipment usually includes a long strip of hide, ostensibly carried as a tether for the horse, but frequently turned to account as a lasso. A law has now been enacted, and is rigidly enforced, restricting the length of this rope to five "brazeros," i.e., five arm spans; and as it is in consequence much too short to answer the purpose of a lasso, these mounted tramps are no longer able to capture stray bullocks for the sole pleasure of gouging out the tongue as a dainty dish. Indeed, a gentleman of Durazno, for many years resident in the country, informed me that it was now no uncommon thing to see a Gaucho carrying a hempen rope instead of a thong, the want of a lasso leaving him without the means of helping himself to a cowhide.

About Colon the prevailing plants were a large thistle and a purple-flowered Echium, and these so predominated as at a distance to seem to cover the entire surface of the ground. A light fall of rain, and a puffy breeze, combined to make it a bad day for insect hunting, and accordingly very few of these creatures were seen or captured. Of birds, the cardinal grosbeak, partridges, and pigeons, were abundant.

Some days subsequently we received, through the courtesy of the directors of the railway company, permission to travel free to the extremity of their line, and of this indulgence we availed ourselves so far as to make a trip to Durazno, the northern terminus of the railway. Accordingly, a party consisting of the captain and four of us ward-room officers started by a train leaving the central terminus at seven in the morning. This railway, which has been for eleven years in existence, and for a long time struggling against unfavourable circumstances (rebellion and so forth), is now gradually assuming a prosperous condition, and has been extended so far that it now pierces the republic of Uruguay in a northern direction, to a distance of 128 miles from Monte Video. As we emerged from the precincts of the town, and passed through a hamlet called "Bella-Vista," on the shores of the bay, we noticed here and there woods of the eucalyptus tree growing in great luxuriance to a height of eighty and even a hundred feet, the foliage of adjoining trees being so interlocked as to afford considerable patches of shelter from the sun's rays. Sir George Nares, who has had some experience of these trees in Australia, where they are indigenous, said that he had rarely seen them clad with so dense a foliage. We were told that these trees had been imported and planted only twelve years previously; yet such is their rapidity of growth, that they are now of the magnitude of forest trees. On reaching a distance of about twelve miles from Monte Video, the number of trees (none of which, except the willows, were indigenous) had so far decreased, that the few solitary representatives which dotted the landscape served only to render the paucity of the race the more remarkable. The surface configuration of the land was everywhere the same—a gently undulating grass-covered plain, where the depths from crest to hollow averaged about thirty feet, admitting a range of vision of about twelve miles from the summit of each rise. Of ravines, fissures, or gullies, there were none; and as the railway track had evaded the difficulties of levelling by pursuing a most meandering course, not even a cutting was to be seen to afford means for arriving at a geological examination of the district. About the station of Independencia, rock was to be seen for the first time, consisting of a coarse-grained (apparently felspathic) granite, showing itself through the alluvial soil in the shape of low rounded masses, or as boulders disseminated in streams directed radially from the outcropping source. At the next station, appropriately named "Las Piedras" (the stones), the rock was in greater proportion; and during the remainder of our journey north, perhaps once in every ten miles, the wide expanse of grass-land would be varied by an odd-looking outcrop of granite. Stone was evidently a rare commodity in these parts, most of the huts being built of sticks and mud.

As far as Santa Lucia, a station about forty miles from Monte Video, the land (divided into fields by hedgerows of aloes) was studded thickly enough with large prickly thistles of a very coarse description; but to the northward of this position the prominent features of the landscape underwent a change. Trees disappeared altogether, and except along the river banks, where some bushes resembling bog-myrtle eked out an existence, no shrubs were to be seen. Thistles were still present, but in very small numbers, and indeed there was little to meet the eye but a wide expanse of grass-land dotted here and there with herds of oxen, sheep, and horses (which seemed in very small proportion to the acreage), and exhibiting, at distances of about two miles apart, small one-storied huts. For ploughing and other agricultural work, oxen seemed to be used, to the exclusion of horses; which is all the more strange, as the latter here exist in great abundance, and are so cheap as to create that equestrian peasantry which to a European visitor is, I think, the most striking characteristic of the country.

As one of the up-trains passed by us at the station of Joashim Suarez, we noticed several trucks piled up with ox skulls and other bones, and on enquiry ascertained that they were for exportation to England, to be used in sugar-refining factories: the bones were piled up so high on the trucks as to tower above the engine, so that as the train approached us end-on, they formed a ghastly sort of figure-head.

At Santa Lucia the train stopped half an hour for refreshments, and all hands adjourned to an hotel close by the railway station, where a good breakfast, consisting of many courses (including beefsteak and potatoes), was satisfactorily disposed of. The charge for this repast was moderate, being only six reals = 3s. 6d. a head.

Of birds a great many were to be seen as we travelled along. Looking forward from the carriage windows, we could see ground doves of a dull slate colour, rising from the track, and sheering off to either side in great flocks, as the train advanced. A species of lapwing, with bluish-grey plumage barred with white across the wings, and displaying a pair of long red legs, kept us continually alive to its presence by its harsh double cry. Partridges were also abundant. These birds are strictly preserved all over Uruguay, and during the breeding season, from September to March, no shooting of any kind is allowed without special permission. We saw one flock of ostriches stalking about unconcernedly among the cattle. We were subsequently told that the ostriches in this district were all allowed to run wild, the value of the feathers not repaying the cost of farming. Of deer, the largest indigenous mammal, we saw only one individual, browsing quietly among a herd of cattle. They are allowed to come or go as they please, not being sought after or utilized by the inhabitants.

On arriving at Durazno we were most hospitably received and entertained by Mr. Ware, the engineer of the railway, under whose guidance we inspected the sights of this dilapidated country town, and then proceeded to explore the banks of the river Yi, a tributary of the Rio Negro, where a great variety of animal life was to be seen. There was here a large lagoon bordered with low bushes, a favourite haunt of the largest living rodent, the capybara or "carpincho," as the natives call it, and also largely stocked with birds. Snipe and dottrel were here so tame as to allow one to approach within a few yards of them. In the course of the day we had the good fortune to meet a Mr. Edye, an Englishman, who, during thirteen years' residence in the Plate, had acquired a considerable insight into the natural history of the country. He told us that a great variety of birds inhabit the low bushes of the "Monte" (as they call the shallow valley of the river), including three species of the cardinal, one humming bird, the calandria or South American nightingale, etc. With reference to the tucutuco (Ctenomys), he assured us, contrary to the opinion expressed by Dr. Darwin, in his "Journal of a Naturalist," as to the animals never coming to the surface, that the little rodents were commonly to be seen near their holes about the time of dusk, and that they invariably retreated to the burrows on the near approach of a human being. He considered it almost impossible to catch them, but had no doubt about their habit of coming to the surface. As we strolled along the river banks, we saw and captured a black snake about two and a half feet long, which was swimming gracefully from bank to bank, with its head elevated about two inches from the top of the water. We also got some living specimens of a river mussel, which is here used as fish bait.

Everywhere among the English-speaking community we heard the same gloomy accounts of the dulness of trade, arising from the yet unsettled state of the country. All agreed that the present Dictator was managing the country admirably, but expressed their fears that he would some day be "wiped out," as others had been before him, and that the country would again relapse into a state of anarchy and brigandage.

Some days later I had an opportunity of visiting Buenos Ayres, the capital of the Argentine Republic, situated on the opposite or south shore of the river Plate. Accompanied by Lieut. Gunn, I started from Monte Video on the evening of the 9th of December, taking passage on board one of the river-steamers (Villa de Salto), then plying daily between the two cities. The distance, 120 miles, is usually traversed at night-time, and in this arrangement sight-seers lose nothing, as, owing to the lowness of the banks and the great width of the river, the opposite shores are barely visible from a position in mid-channel. Our fellow-passengers, about eighty in number, represented Spanish, Italian, and English nationalities, and among the latter we were fortunate enough to meet two gentlemen residing in the country, to whom, as well as to the captain, a jovial, hospitable American, we were indebted for much interesting information concerning the men and manners of the country. After dinner—a long, ponderous affair—had been disposed of, a general dispersion took place, the gentlemen to smoke, and the ladies to their cabins; but in an hour or so the latter again appeared in the saloon, arrayed in evening dress of a more gay and airy character than that worn at dinner, and they now applied themselves diligently to the luxury of maté drinking. The fluid known as maté is an infusion of the leaves of the Ilex paraguayensis, commonly called Paraguay tea, and is usually sucked through metal tubes about ten inches long, from a gracefully carved globular wooden receptacle about the size of an orange. One stock of "yerba" seemed to stand a great many waterings and sugarings, the necessary manipulations for which furnished the ladies with a suitable occupation. It was amusing to watch the eagerness with which the latter sucked away at their maté tubes, the attitude reminding one of a boy using a decoy whistle.

We anchored off the town of Buenos Ayres at an early hour the next morning, and here the inefficiency of the landing arrangements were made unpleasantly manifest. Three different means of locomotion were resorted to, in order to convey us from the steamer to the shore. We were pulled in a small boat for a portion of the way; then, as the boat grounded, the rowers got out, and, wading alongside, dragged it on for a few hundred yards more. We were then transferred, with our baggage, to a high-wheeled cart, drawn by two horses, which brought us through the last quarter of a mile of shallow water fringing the shore. The cost of effecting a landing was no inconsiderable item in the expense of our trip, and was moreover one calculated to prejudice unfavourably one's first impression of Buenos Ayres.

After securing rooms at the Hotel Universal, and breakfasting at the Strangers' Club, where we were most kindly received by the secretary, Mr. Wilson, we proceeded in search of the museum, so celebrated for its collection of fossil remains of the extinct South American mammals, arranged under the direction of Dr. Burmeister. We found the learned Professor enveloped in white dust, and busily engaged in restoring with plaster of Paris the spinous process of the vertebra of one of his specimens; and on explaining the object of our visit, he kindly drew our attention to the principal objects of interest in his collection. This museum has already been fully described, and I need hardly allude to the splendid specimens which it possesses of the Glyptodon, Machairodont, Toxodon, Mylodon, and other fossils; its beautiful specimens of the Chlamydophorus retusus (a mole-like armadillo), the leathery turtle (Sphargis coriacea), the epiodon, etc. The Professor pointed with great pride to a recent specimen of armadillo, with the young one attached to its hind-quarters in a peculiar manner.

On the same day we inspected the Anthropological Museum, which is in a large building in the Plaza Victoria, opposite the old market, where we saw a fine collection of Tehuelche and Araucanian skulls, recently made by Señor Moreno in his travels through Patagonia. Among others was the skull of "Sam Slick," a son of the celebrated Casimiro, the Patagonian cacique, so well known for many years in the vicinity of Magellan Straits. We also saw a mummified specimen of a Patagonian, recently found in a cave at Punta Walichii, near the head waters of the Santa Cruz river.

In the course of the day we called upon Mr. Mulhall, the enterprising and courteous editor of the Buenos Ayrean Standard, and from him we acquired much valuable information as to the condition of the country. On taking up the Standard next morning, we found ourselves treated to an editorial notice chronicling our visit to the Argentine capital, and referring to the past and present services of H.M.S. Alert.

Coming fresh from so neat and trim a town as Monte Video, Buenos Ayres was not to be expected to impress one very favourably. It seemed, indeed, to be a great straggling town that, having arrived at a certain degree of civilization, had now for some years back considered itself entitled to rest on its laurels, and gradually fall into decay. Streets, plazas, and tramways were in a wretched state of neglect; and such were the great ruts which time and traffic had made in the streets, that baggage-carts might be seen brought to a dead lock, even in the principal thoroughfares. Buenos Ayres can boast of several fine old public buildings, among which the cathedral, with its classic front, stands pre-eminent; and although there are some fine pieces of modern architecture, such as the Bolsa, or Exchange, the latter are so stowed away among lofty houses in narrow streets, that they require to be specially looked for to be noticed at all. I must qualify the above observations by mentioning that these are the impressions of only two days' sojourn in Buenos Ayres.

Some days later, His Excellency the Governor of the Falkland Islands (Mr. Callaghan) and his wife arrived at Monte Video, en route for his seat of government; and as the sailing schooner, which was the only regular means of communication between Monte Video and the Falklands, was then crowded with passengers, the Governor gladly accepted Sir George Nares's kind invitation to take him as his guest on board the Alert.

We left Monte Video on the 14th of December, and on the 26th, amid a furious storm of wind and hail, anchored in Stanley Harbour, Falkland Islands. Here we found that the great topic of conversation was a landslip of peat, which had occurred about a month previous to our arrival, laying waste a portion of the little settlement. On the summit of a hill above the east end of the town, a circular patch of turf, about two hundred yards in diameter, had collapsed; and at the same time a broad stream, four feet high, of semi-fluid peat, flowed down the hillside to the sea, in its course sweeping away walls and gardens, and partly burying the houses. This phenomenon, occurring at night, caused great consternation among the inhabitants of such an uneventful little place; but after the people had shaken themselves together somewhat, and recovered from their surprise, they found that after all no great damage had been done. The appearance of the peat avalanche, as seen from the ship, was very peculiar, and in many respects the whole occurrence resembled a lava flow.

On the evening of our arrival, we were most hospitably entertained at Government House, where we had also the pleasure of meeting all the rank and fashion of this part of the colony.

The next day, being fine, I determined to devote to an inspection of the "stone runs," which have been rendered so famous in the geology of the Falklands by the writings of Darwin, Wyville Thompson, and others. In this excursion I was fortunate in having the assistance of Dr. Watts, the colonial surgeon, a gentleman who, from his long experience of the group, was well acquainted with all the salient points in its natural history. The "run" which we visited lay in the hollow of a winding valley, situated about two miles to the westward of the settlement of Stanley. The rocks, heaped together confusedly, formed a so-called "stone river," varying in width from fifty to two hundred yards, and extending up the valley as a single "stream" for about one mile and a half, to a point where it seemed as if originated by a confluence of tributary streams flowing from the surrounding hills. The stones, composed of quartzite, presented a roughly rounded appearance, which was seemingly due to excessive weathering; and they were so covered with lichens, as to appear of a uniform grey colour. Those which lay below the surface were of a rust colour, and, by all accounts, the upturned stones required an exposure of many years to assume the uniform grey tint of the surface layer. The margin of the "run" was distinctly defined by an abrupt edge of swampy soil, with its tangled vegetation of diddle-dee, tea-plant, and balsam bog. Now, why are the stones of the "run" so entirely destitute of soil? and why do they exhibit a margin so sharp and well defined, yet without the elevated, rounded appearance of a river bank? Sir Wyville Thompson's theory, it seems to me, falls short of explaining this. I have as yet seen too little of the country to justify me in forming a fixed opinion; but I am, so far, inclined to think that these "streams of stones" are of a date anterior to the existence of peat on the island, and that the peat has been approaching the valleys from the elevated land by growth and slippage, and in its descent has encountered difficulty in obtaining a footing in those places where the stones are large, and being heaped to a great depth, act like a gigantic drain, and so prevent any soil from forming. As far as I can ascertain, no attempt has ever been made to estimate the rate of movement (if any) of these "runs," and there is no evidence whatever of their motion during the present century. There is not sufficient land comprised by the watershed to form torrents capable of removing the dense mass of peaty soil, which, according to Sir W. Thompson's theory, would have been necessary for the transportation of the large blocks of stone that are here accumulated. The inhabitants remark, and I think with truth, that the summits of the hills and the upper slopes are as a rule more wet and boggy than the hollows below. This supports my view of the drainage being greatest in the valleys where the big stones were originally packed to a greater depth, and towards which the peat is now encroaching. It is worthy of remark that the surface of the stream is tolerably flat, and does not indicate a process of accumulation by flow from either side.

To Dr. Watts, my guide on this occasion, I was also indebted for a skin of the Falkland Island fox, an animal now almost extinct, a skull of the sea elephant, and a dried specimen of the petrel, which is known here as the "fire bird," from its habit of dashing itself against the lantern of the lighthouse, at whose base dead specimens are occasionally found.

CHAPTER II.
EXPERIENCES IN PATAGONIA.

We left the Falkland Islands on the evening of the 27th, and sailed to the westward. On the morning of the 1st of January, 1879, we entered the eastern entrance of the Straits of Magellan, passing within easy sight of Cape Virgins and Dungeness Point. As we approached the latter, we noticed a herd of guanacos browsing quietly near the beach, as if a passing ship were an object familiar to their eyes. This, our first impression of the famous Straits, was certainly favourable. A winding channel, the glassy smoothness of whose surface was only broken by the splashing of cormorants, steamer-ducks, and other sea-birds, stretched away to the westward. On the north side were the low undulating plains of Patagonia, covered with their summer mantle of greenish-yellow vegetation; while to the southward a few widely separated wreaths of blue smoke, ascending from the gloomy shores of Tierra del Fuego, marked out the dwelling-place of one of the most remarkable varieties of the human species. Favoured by the tide, we passed rapidly through the first Narrows, and at 6.30 in the evening had got as far as Cape Gregory. Here the flood-tide setting strongly to the westward, fairly brought us to a standstill, so we steamed in towards the north shore, and anchored close under Cape Gregory. A party of us who were bent on exploring soon landed, and proceeded in various directions in quest of game, and in the few remaining hours of daylight we succeeded in getting several ducks, some small birds, and a young fox. The ground was for the most part covered with a sort of rank grass, through which bushes of the Berberry, Empetrum rubrum, and Myrtus nummularia, grew luxuriantly. A very pretty dwarf calceolaria was also abundant. The only quadruped seen was a fox, but the tucutucos (Ctenomys) must have been very numerous, for the ground was riddled in all directions by their burrows. Some of our party, who strolled along the beach towards Gregory Bay, found a small settlement of Frenchmen, who, it seemed, had recently come out here to try their hands at farming. After our arrival on board, one of the men brought me a specimen of a Myxine, which had come up on his fishing line, not attached to the hook, but adhering by its viscid secretion to the line at some distance above the hook. Of this curious fish I subsequently obtained many specimens in the western Patagonian channels.

FUEGIAN IMPLEMENTS 1-7.—AUSTRALIAN "WOOMERAHS" 8-11.
1. Stone Axe-head. 2. Bark Bucket. 3. Bone harpoon head. 4. Glass Spear-head. 5. Bone Spear-head used in fishing. 6. Glass-tipped Arrow. 7. Bow. 8. "Woomerah" or Throwing-stick, used by natives of Torres Straits. 9, 10. 11. "Woomerahs" used by Aborigines of North-West Australia.

We got under way again before daylight, and about eight in the morning we arrived at Sandy Point. This interesting little Chilian settlement was established in the year 1843, and although a great portion of it was burnt to the ground during the mutiny of 1877, it yet shows signs of ultimately becoming a place of considerable importance. Great credit is due to the Chilian Government for their perseverance in maintaining a settlement in this wild region, notwithstanding the sad fate of the colony which was established by Sarmiento in 1580, at a bay to the westward of Sandy Point, which he named "Bahia de la Gente." On Sarmiento's return, eight years subsequently, it was discovered that nearly all the colonists had perished of starvation. That bay has since been called Port Famine. Of late years the Straits of Magellan have been largely availed of by men-of-war and merchant-steamers. Two lines of mail-steamers, viz., the P.S.N.C. and the Kosmos line, now run bi-monthly through the Straits; and as all these vessels touch regularly at Sandy Point, the colonists are kept in frequent communication with the rest of the civilized world. For some years after its foundation the population consisted mainly of convicts, undergoing penal servitude, who were kept in control by a small garrison; but since the mutiny of November 1877, the importation of convicts has ceased, and as a consequence labour has become scarce. At the time of our visit there were 1,100 inhabitants, including the garrison, which now consists of 120 men, rank and file, all of whom are armed with the Winchester repeating rifle.

The country possesses at least two great sources of mineral wealth, viz., gold and coal. When the coal mines were first established, sanguine ideas were entertained of their successful working. But commercial difficulties arose. The company who were working the mines became involved in a lawsuit, which, whatever may have been the rights of the case, has at all events put a stop to mining operations; and at the time of our visit the railway leading to the mine seemed to be going to decay; and the rolling stock, in a disjointed state, scattered about the wharf and line, testified to the stagnant condition of affairs.

I was here fortunate in finding a friend in the Government (Chilian) surgeon of the settlement—Dr. Fenton—with whose assistance and guidance I made some pleasant trips into the country adjoining Sandy Point. On our first day there he kindly provided horses, and took me for a ride into the forest, to the end of the settlement. There I saw for the first time the evergreen and deciduous beeches, the winter's bark as well as the berberry, diddle-dee, and other plants, of which we saw a great deal subsequently, during our Patagonian surveys. As we crossed a flat dreary plain which lay between the margin of the forest and the sea coast, we encountered a great number of very bold hawks, which alighted on the big thistles near our bridle path, and coolly stared at us as we went by. We also saw flocks of Bandurria, a species of black and white ibis, which is common in these parts, but being sought after by the Chilians as an article of food, has naturally become distrustful of the ways of man, and is difficult to approach. On returning to the settlement, we found some excitement prevailing, for two of the inhabitants had just been drowned by the capsizing of a boat near the landing-place. With southerly winds, heavy rollers break along the beach; and as there is no protection in the shape of a breakwater (for boats), communication with the shore is dangerous while these winds continue. It appeared that a party of five were returning from a hulk in the roadstead, where an auction was being held, and on nearing the shore the boat got broadside on to the rollers, and capsized. Two were drowned. The other three narrowly escaped a similar fate, and owed their preservation to the gallant conduct of two of our bluejackets, who, happening to be on shore near the scene of the disaster, plunged boldly in at the risk of their lives, and brought the survivors to land.

On the following day two of us rode along the shore to the southward of the town for a distance of about six miles, when we struck into the woods, following a cart track which led us to a sawmill in the heart of the forest, belonging to Mr. Dunsmuir, the British Vice-consul. Here we shot a small owl, specimens of the Magellan thrush, and a diminutive bird of a general black colour, with a rusty-red collar, the Centrites niger. The beach was in places covered with dense clusters of mussels, and strewn with the dead shells of Volutes, Arcas, and Patellas, the tests of crabs, and the calcareous remains of a small Cidaris. We were greatly struck with the sagacity of our little horses—requiring little or no management, going for the most part at an easy canter, and climbing over logs, trunks of fallen trees, and banks, with the agility of goats. On our dismounting, and leaving the bridles trailing on the ground, they remained quite patiently, without showing the least inclination to make off, although we several times discharged our guns close to their heads.

We left Sandy Point on the afternoon of the 4th, and proceeded under steam to Peckett Harbour, an anchorage about twenty-five miles to the north-east of the colony. Arriving about four p.m., all of us who could, landed, and set off in pursuit of game. Even here, so little to the eastward of Sandy Point, the aspect of the country was completely different. The land was entirely devoid of trees, and the only plants of any size were the barberry and balsam bog, the latter growing as luxuriantly as at the Falklands. Walking was laborious, for the ground was everywhere riddled with the burrows of the tucutuco, a curious rodent (Ctenomys), which the Chilians call carouru. There was a fresh breeze blowing, and the birds were consequently very wild, and by no means numerous. We obtained specimens of the crested duck (Anas cristata), upland goose (Chloephaga magellanica), grebe, plover, soldier starling, snipe, sandpiper, and Centrites niger. The tucutucos here evidently differ in their habits from those described by Mr. Darwin, for they come out of their burrows occasionally (I believe at dusk), and one was caught by Lieut. Vereker, and given to me.

The next day we were again under way, and having taken on board some horses belonging to Mr. Dunsmuir, the British Vice-consul of Sandy Point, proceeded towards Elizabeth Island, a few miles off. This island has recently been rented from the Chilian Government by Mr. Dunsmuir, and proves of value for stock farming. Tucutucos have not yet succeeded in reaching it, a matter of no small importance as regards the value of the land, for their mining operations are almost ruinous to the pasturage. The island is about six miles long and four miles broad, and consists of an elevated plateau of undulating grass-land, terminating at its margin in cliffs three hundred feet high, which front the sea. Mr. Dunsmuir has stocked it with four hundred sheep, who are left usually in charge of a shepherd and his family; and he has also, for commercial purposes, adopted measures for the protection of the upland geese, which breed in large numbers on the island. The object of our visit was to bring over for him some horses, which were required for the working of the island. As we steamed round its eastern end, myriads of terns rose in a cloud from the low sandy pits, where they had their breeding place.

After getting out the horses, and letting them swim on shore, we dropped our anchor, and soon afterwards many of us landed to explore. It was the breeding time of the upland geese, and the birds were consequently very tame, and afforded little sport in shooting. Along the beach below the cliffs a variety of birds were to be seen, including oyster-catchers, steamer-ducks, and a species of Cinclodes. As I walked by the foot of the cliffs, a steamer-duck would occasionally rush out from its retreat, and make for the water, cackling vigorously as it waddled over the shingle. As these birds steamed out seaward, they seemed undoubtedly to flap their wings in unison; but there was a sort of wabble in their swimming motion, arising probably from the alternate paddling of the feet. On the heights above, I shot several military starlings, and others of our party obtained some brown ducks (Anas cristata) and snipe.

The cliff was apparently breaking away in many places, exposing fresh sections of its face, and exhibiting pebbles, rounded stones, and rocks imbedded in the clayey mass, a feature which is characteristic of this part of the coast. Lines of stratification, of varying degrees of fineness, were to be seen; and in several places, at about fifty feet from the summit of the cliff, streams of water oozed out from the seams. I could detect no trace of a fossil. Along the beach lay many dead shells of the genera Voluta, Arca, Patella, Mytilus, and Trophon. During this walk I noticed about six different species of butterflies and a few beetles.

The dredge had been laid out from the ship on anchoring, so that it might profit by the swinging of the ship; and when we hauled it up in the evening, it contained a quantity of dead barnacles covered with ophiurids, and also shells of the genera Trochus and Trophon, Amphipod Crustaceans, Annelids, and some red, jelly-like Gephyreans. These were all entangled in a mass of red seaweed, interlaced with stalks of the Macrocystis.

Early next morning (January 7th) we steamed back to Sandy Point. As we approached the anchorage, we noticed dense clouds of smoke rising from the woods some distance inland, and it soon transpired that the forest in the vicinity of the Consul's sawmills was on fire. In the afternoon I rode out with Dr. Fenton to the scene, and we found the troops of the garrison employed in felling trees, so as to make a sort of lane through the woods to leeward of the fire, in order, if possible, to limit its ravages. Dr. Fenton afterwards came on board, and gave us an interesting account of the mutiny of 1877, in which he and his wife narrowly escaped being shot. His house, like most others, was burnt down on that occasion. Sixty of the peaceable inhabitants were shot by the mutineers, and nine of the latter were subsequently executed. Those of the population who escaped had fled to the woods, and there fortified themselves against an attack. Eventually the mutiny was quelled by the arrival of the Chilian gunboat Magellanes, at whose approach the mutineers fled away into the pampas.

At two o'clock in the afternoon of the following day we weighed anchor and proceeded to the westward. We had scarcely left Sandy Point a few miles behind us, when the character of the scenery underwent a marked change. The straits narrowed, its shores rose in lofty hills, whose lightly inclined slopes were clothed with forest from the summits to the water's edge, and we exchanged the clear blue sky of Patagonia for an atmosphere of mists and rain squalls. As we passed by Port Famine, two Fuegian canoes pulled off to us from the southern shores, the natives hailing us vociferously for "galleta tabac" (biscuit and tobacco). However, we could not spare time to interview them, and they turned back disappointed, and moreover evidencing signs of indignation. When abreast of Borja Bay, we experienced such a succession of heavy squalls from the westward, that we were compelled to put in for shelter, and accordingly anchored. On landing, we found the trees placarded in various places with wooden records of ships that had called there; and on pushing our way through the bushes adjoining the beach, we were not a little surprised at stumbling across a coffin, which from its position seemed to have been hurriedly deposited there by a passing ship. It bore an inscription stating that it contained the remains of some person who had belonged to the Chilian man-of-war Almirante Cochrane. Animal life was at a discount; only a few moths, a Cinclodes, a brace of duck, and a few gulls being seen. The vegetation was luxuriant, and the Philesia, berberry, and diddle-dee plants were in full bloom. We stopped for only a few hours; for on the wind lulling we again proceeded on our course. Passing through the "Long Reach," the scenery became of a most imposing character; several straggling, highly inclined glaciers creeping down on either side through the deep mountain gorges, their dazzling whiteness contrasting strikingly with the richly verdured hillsides, and the lofty snow-covered mountain summits beyond fading away imperceptibly into a hazy sky. Later in the evening we anchored in Playa Parda Cove, a beautiful little land-locked basin, and most of us landed at once, to spend the last few remaining hours of daylight. A solitary steamer-duck was seen, but for the rest animal life was unrepresented. As at Borja Bay, several little billets of wood, attached conspicuously to trees bordering the shore, recorded the visits of previous explorers to these outlandish regions.

On the morning of the 10th we left Playa Parda, and steamed northward through the Sarmiento Channels. In the afternoon, as we were passing by Fortune Bay, we sighted and exchanged signals with the Chilian man-of-war Chacabuco, a vessel which was now employed in surveying certain portions of the Straits. Our halting-place for this evening was at Isthmus Bay, where we anchored about six p.m. At the head of this bay, where a narrow neck of lowland separated us from the waters of Oracion Sound, was the remains of a Fuegian encampment, which, to judge from the appearance of the shell heaps, could not have been left for more than a year uninhabited. Across the isthmus was a "portage" for boats, consisting of rudely-cut stakes laid on the ground parallel to each other, and a few yards apart, like railway sleepers. The aspect of the green forest encircling this charming little bay was variegated with a luxuriant display of really beautiful flowers, among which were conspicuous the Philesia buxifolia, Fuchsia magellanica, Gaultheria antarctica, Berberis ilicifolia, and a number of composites of different species. A kind of cedar, the Libocedrus tetragonus ("cipres" of the Chilotes), was here also very abundant, furnishing good straight poles suitable for various purposes. Its four-sided arrangement of leaves at once attracts attention.

We got under way early in the morning, and proceeded up the Sarmiento Channels, passing by the Chilian ship Chacabuco in the midst of a rain squall. No natives were to be seen. The channel here narrowed, and the scenery of the opposing shores became of a grand yet rather sombre character, the round-topped granite mountains which seemed to overhang us, with their streaky patches of forest creeping up the gullies, being enveloped in a hazy mist, and presenting a sort of draggled appearance, as if rain had been falling over their rocky faces for ages.

About five in the evening we entered Mayne Harbour, a few cormorants and steamer-ducks sheering off with much splashing, as we slipped between the islets that almost block up the entrance.

So we continued to wend our way through these desolate channels, looking into nearly every anchorage on the way, and usually anchoring for the night, until the 14th of January, when we reached "Tom Bay," which was to be our base of operations for the ensuing survey of the Trinidad Channel. Some hours after we had anchored, a native boat suddenly emerged from a narrow channel opening into the bay, and paddled towards the ship, displaying a green branch in the bows of the boat, while one individual standing up waved a small white cloth, no doubt intended as a flag of truce. Our people on board made amicable demonstrations in response, by waving handkerchiefs and so forth, and then slowly and warily the natives approached. This was our first experience of representatives of the Channel tribe of Fuegians. There were altogether eight of them. But I must not omit to mention the dogs, five in number, as the latter formed by far the most respectable portion of the community; for it would indeed be difficult to imagine a more diabolical cast of countenance than that presented by these savages. Their clothing consisted of a squarish scrap of sealskin looped round the neck, sometimes hanging over the back, sometimes resting on the shoulders, but apparently worn more by way of ornament than for any protection which it afforded; and a very narrow waistcloth, which simple garment was sometimes deemed superfluous. An elderly lady of a saturnine cast of countenance sat on a wisp of grass in the stern of the canoe, and manœuvred the steering oar. They could not be induced to come on board the ship, and from their guarded demeanour would seem to have had rather unfavourable experiences of civilized man. After bartering their bits of seal and other skins, and getting some biscuit, tobacco, and knives, they paddled away, and established themselves on an islet about half a mile from the ship, where we saw that the skeleton frameworks of some old huts were standing.

On the following day a small party, consisting of North (the paymaster), three seamen, and myself, pulled over to the native camp. We were received on landing by four men with bludgeons in their hands, who did not seem at all glad to see us, and who seemed apprehensive of our approaching the hut, where the women had been jealously shut up. However, by a few presents of tobacco and biscuit, we established tolerably amicable relations, and were permitted to examine the canoe, which lay hauled half out of the water. It was composed of five planks, of which one, about twenty feet long and two and a half feet wide, formed the bottom, while the other four, each one and a half foot in width, formed the sides. The bottom plank was turned up at the ends, so as to form a flat bow and stern of nearly similar shape; and to this plank, as well as to each other, the side pieces were secured by a lacing passed through rude square shaped holes about an inch in area, which were made in an even row close to the edges of the planks. The lacing used for this purpose is the tough stem of a bignoniaceous creeper (the Campsidium chilense), which is commonly seen twining round the tall forest trees, forming festoons from branch to branch, and again extending from the horizontal branches vertically downwards like the cordage of a ship. Caulking was effected by stuffing the seams with moss and strips of the winter's bark (bark of the Drimys winteri), over which the lacing was carried; and the square-shaped holes were plugged with some pulpy vegetable matter, of which moss seemed to be the chief constituent. The oars were made of young stems of the Libocedrus tetragonus, to one end of which elliptical pieces of wood were lashed by way of blades. These oars were used in the ordinary way, the loom resting on crescentic-shaped crutches, fashioned out of a single piece of wood, and lashed to the gunwale. The everlasting Fuegian fire, from which Tierra del Fuego derives its name, burned in the middle of the boat, resting on a bed of clay; and the half-decomposed head of a seal, which either the natives or the dogs had recently been gnawing, completed the furniture of this crazy vessel. The hut in which the women were shut up was a haycock-shaped arrangement, composed of a skeleton framework of boughs, over which were thrown several old skins of the sea lion (Otaria jubata). The chief of this party, who was, by the way, the tallest Fuegian ever seen by us, we found by measurement to be five feet four inches in height. One hut accommodated the entire party, consisting, as I have said, of four men, four women, and five dogs.

The greater part of the subsequent four months was spent in the vicinity of the Trinidad Channel, which it was our special duty to survey; and as our movements during this period were most erratic, and we frequently paid five or six different visits to the same parts, I shall for a time abandon all chronological order, and speak of events according to the places in which they occurred.

But in the first place, in order to render my narrative more intelligible, I shall here give a brief general description of this region, referring to its climate, natural features, and inhabitants.

The weather is peculiar, for the rainfall is excessive, and as a rule there is not more than one moderately dry day out of the seven.

The peaks and ridges of the broken-up range of mountains, of which the islands and coast are formed, intercept the moisture-laden clouds which are being continually wafted from seaward by the prevailing westerly winds, frequent and long-continued downpours being the result. From observations taken with the rain gauge, we estimate the average daily rainfall to be 0·41 inch, and that of the wettest month of which we have had experience, viz., the month of April, 0·522 inch. The annual rainfall, estimated from the mean of eight months' observations, we find to be 149·65 inches. The mean annual temperature, estimated similarly from observations extending over the months of January, February, March, April, May, (nine days of) October, November, and December, we found to be 49·2, the extremes of temperature being 36° and 60°. When we reflect that the annual rainfall in London is about 23·5 inches, while the yearly average of temperature is 46·9 Fahr., we can realize the extent to which rainy weather prevails in this land, and the comparative coldness of its nevertheless equable climate. We were told by the master of a sealing schooner that the climate of Western Fuegia varied but little throughout the year, and that in his opinion the finest weather was to be found in mid-winter; and, indeed, on entering the channels in the month of October—that is, in the early spring—we ourselves found the appearance of the country but little different from our recollections of the previous midsummer. There was, perhaps, more snow on the hill-tops, but there was none at all on the lower slopes of the hills, and the evergreen vegetation seemed almost as luxuriant as during midsummer.

As might be expected from the large rainfall and comparatively equable temperature, this climate is very favourable to the growth of cryptogamous plants; ferns, mosses, and Hepaticæ abound, clothing the stems of dead and living trees, and occupying every shady nook and crevice. Among the ferns most commonly seen were several beautiful species of the genus Hymenophyllum. Of flowering plants there were also some of great beauty, the most attractive of which were the Philesia buxifolia, the Desfontainea hookeri, the Berberis ilicifolia, the B. empetrifolia, and the Embothrium coccineum. The former is a sort of under-shrub, of creeping habit, and is most commonly seen twining round the stem of the evergreen and antarctic beeches, to a height of six or eight feet from the ground, its lovely, rose-coloured, bell-shaped flowers showing to great advantage against the delicate background of ferns and mosses, which, growing from the bark of the tree, display the flowers, but almost conceal the branches of the twining Philesia. There is another beautiful plant, of the same natural order, met with in Southern Chili, which the people take great pride in, showing to strangers as the glory of their gardens. It is called the "Copigue" (Lapageria rosea). The only trees which attain to any reasonable size as such are the evergreen and antarctic beeches (Fagus antarctica and F. betuloides), the winter's bark (Drimys winteri), and the cypress (Libocedrus tetragonus). The bark of the Drimys winteri was formerly employed in medicine, but has latterly fallen into disuse, partly from the difficulty of obtaining the genuine article in Europe. It has tonic and stimulant properties. The infusion of the dried bark is so hot and peppery as to burn the tongue and throat; but, strangely enough, the spirit tincture extracts the tonic bitter with but very little of the peppery principle.

The summits of the low hills, which are usually bare of trees or brushwood, are covered with a sort of swamp formed of astelias, gaimardias, and calthas, whose interlacing roots form a more or less compact sod, which, as one walks on it, shakes from the fluctuation of the bog water beneath.

The rock of the district is a cross-grained syenite, intersected with dykes of greenstone, of very variable thickness. This is the prevalent rock; but about Port Rosario, on the north side of "Madre de Dios" island, there is an outcrop of limestone. The latter is of a pale-blue colour, in some cases assuming the character of marble; and when much exposed to the weather, presents a curious honeycombed appearance, due to the solvent action of the rain. This rock is unfossiliferous. The disintegration of the syenite from the usual atmospheric agencies is rapid enough; but the resulting detritus does not contribute to form a good clay.

If an artificial section be made of the soilcap, or if advantage be taken of a landslip to examine it carefully, it will be seen to be composed of a dense network of interlacing roots, containing in its interstices a small quantity of black mould, the latter increasing in proportion as the basement rock is reached. This spongy mass of tangled vegetation, ever saturated with moisture, is the soil on which the trees clothing the hillsides take root. On the little plateaus about the hill-tops, however, it only contains the roots of the marsh plants above mentioned, and those of an odd stunted bush. On first coming to this region, I was much struck on seeing that the forest approaches so close to the water's edge, and that the banks overhang so much that frequently the branches of the trees dip into the salt water; and in some places a black snag projecting above the surface of the inshore water tells the fate of a tree that had perished from immersion. These phenomena, among others to be hereafter alluded to, are, I think, to be attributed to a slow but steady sliding motion of the soilcap over its rocky foundation on the sloping hillsides, a motion which is in many respects analogous to the flow of a glacier.

Of the natives inhabiting the Patagonian channels between the Gulf of Peñas and Smyth's channels, very little is known; and I am the more inclined to attempt a description of their physical characteristics and habits of life, because of all the savage tribes of whom I have had experience—including the Australian aborigines, who are generally credited with being of the lowest order—I believe that the people whom I am about to describe bear away the palm as the most primitive among all the varieties of the human species. They are certainly closely related to the Fuegians who live south of the main Straits of Magellan, from whom, however, they differ sufficiently to show a tribal distinction. Fitzroy, in enumerating six tribes of Fuegians, denominates those of whom I speak as "the Channel or Chonos tribe." They lead a wandering life, constantly shifting in their canoes from place to place, and travelling in families of about twelve individuals, all of whom stow in the same canoe, and sleep in the same hut. We have never been able to ascertain the precise relationship existing between the different members of these families; but a party of twelve would probably consist of three men, five women, and four children.

For the greater part of the year they live almost entirely on mussels and limpets, this simple fare being only varied occasionally by the capture of a seal, a small otter, or of an equally small coypu. That they get this kind of fresh meat but rarely is evident from our inspection of their midden heaps, hillocks of refuse in the vicinity of the huts, consisting mainly of shells. I must not omit to mention, however, that bones of the steamer-duck and cormorant are also found about the huts, but not in any quantity. During the months of December and January, the Magellan seals "haul up" to breed on the rocks of the outer coasts, and during this season there is a great gathering of natives about the "rookeries," as the sealers call them, so that for a short portion of the year these unfortunate wretches can luxuriate upon a diet of fresh meat.

They are of low stature, the men averaging 5 ft. 1 in. in height, while the women are still shorter. Of eight men whom I measured carefully, the extremes were 4 ft. 10 in. and 5 ft. 3 in.; so that there is a strong contrast between them and their neighbours in the same latitude, the Patagonians, whose average stature (I speak of the men only) is 5 ft. 10 in. Their complexion is of an ochrey copper colour; the eyes are dark, and placed close together; the upper eyelid curving downwards abruptly as it approaches the nasal side, or inner canthus, in such a way as to give an appearance of obliquity in the eye, which reminds one of that feature in the face of a Japanese. The sclerotics, or so-called "white" of the eye, have a yellow tinge, and in the adults the conjunctiva is injected or bloodshot, probably from their habit of sitting over a smoky wood fire. The upper lip is thin and curved; and when a grimace is made, it tightly embraces the teeth, so as to communicate a peculiarly wicked expression to the countenance. The maxillæ are broad, and the teeth are of glistening whiteness. In the female the front teeth present an even regular line; but in the male adult there is usually a front tooth missing, as if knocked out designedly. The hair is long, black, and coarse, and is peculiar in growing sometimes from the temples, as well as from the scalp, a circumstance from which the forehead acquires a narrow pyramidal appearance. There are no whiskers, but on the lips and chin a few scattered hairs are seen. The upper extremities and trunk are well formed, but the legs are very poorly developed, so much so as to seem out of proportion to the rest of the body. The skin overlying the kneecaps is particularly loose, baggy, and wrinkled when the native stands erect, a circumstance which, in the case of the southern Fuegian, is very justly attributed (vide Voyage of Adventure and Beagle, p. 176) to the practice of frequently sitting on the heels, with the legs flexed to a maximum.

Some of the emotions are expressed by very decided contortions of the features and limbs. Delight, when intense, is shown by a display of the closed teeth, accompanied by a clucking sound, and a curious up and down bobbing motion of the body. Eagerness is expressed by a clucking sound and a frothing of the lips. Anger is characterised by a tightening of the upper lip, a protrusion of the lower jaw or mandible, and a slight display of the upper incisors.

The men are almost entirely naked, sometimes wearing a square piece of sealskin suspended from the neck, and hanging over either shoulder. This seems to be intended as a sort of weather screen; but, strangely enough, it is one of the first things parted with when a chance of bartering occurs. Although so careless about protecting their bodies against the rigour of the weather, it was nevertheless evident that they were keenly sensible to the cold; for they were frequently to be seen with their teeth chattering, and trembling from head to foot, as the rain, wind, and spray swept over their unprotected skins. The women generally have a large skin mantle, which they wear with the hair turned outwards. Those with infants carry the child in a pouch between the shoulders; but those not so burdened readily part with their only covering for a plug of tobacco. That these people should attach any value to tobacco is difficult to understand; for not only are they unprovided with native pipes in which to smoke it, but, as far as we could judge, they had never enjoyed sufficient opportunities of doing so to render the process anything but highly unpleasant, although its anticipation undoubtedly afforded them great pleasure. In fact, one or two whiffs of smoke were sufficient to put a man into the nauseated and giddy condition familiar to every schoolboy when he makes his first trial of tobacco.

Although the dress of the women is, as I have mentioned, far from elaborate, they otherwise evinced the usual love of their sex for articles intended to be ornamental. They commonly wore round their throats necklaces composed of margarita shells, porpoise teeth, or fragments of calcareous worm-tubes, strung together. Their faces, as well as those of the men, were sometimes daubed with black charcoal, and sometimes with a paste composed of white wood-ashes, but with what precise object we did not ascertain.

CANOE OF "CHANNEL FUEGIANS" HAULED UP ON BEACH.

The affection of these savages for their children does not seem to be of a very stable character; for, by all accounts, they are willing to part with them for a trifling consideration. A Fuegian boy, christened Tom Picton, whom we took on board in the Trinidad Channel, quitted his relations without any manifestation of reluctance; and they, on their part, were readily conciliated by the gift of a few necklaces and some biscuit. In Byron's narrative of the loss of the Wager, there is a most interesting account of his wanderings among the natives of the Gulf of Peñas. He mentions that, on one occasion, a savage was so exasperated with his son, a child of three years, who had accidentally dropped into the water a basket containing some sea-eggs (Echini), that he "caught the boy up in his arms, and dashed him with the utmost violence against the stones," the child dying soon afterwards.

Their hunting appliances are few and simple; the canoe is a rude structure, but answers its purpose well enough. It is constructed of five planks, of which one, about 20 ft. by 21⁄2 in width, forms the bottom, and the other four, each 11⁄2 ft. wide, form the sides. The bottom plank is turned up at the ends, so as to form a flat bow and stern of nearly similar shape; and to this, as well as to each other, the side planks are laced by the long flexible stem of a creeping plant, which is passed through rude squarish holes, about one inch in area, which are made in an even row close to the edges of the planks. The material used for the lacing appeared to be the stem of the Campsidium chilense, a creeper which grows to a great length, is very abundant, and is remarkable for its exceeding toughness. Caulking is effected by stuffing the seams with bark, over which a lacing is carried, and the squarish holes are finally plugged with some vegetable pulpy matter, of which moss is the chief constituent. Two oars, with very large broad blades, are used for propelling the boat, and not paddles, as in the case of the southern Fuegians. A young woman, seated in the stern sheets, steers very dexterously with a short paddle. Such rude boats leak, of course, a good deal, and hence require constant baling out. This office is performed by the old woman of the party, who, crouching amidships, bales out the water with a bark bucket.

Spears of two kinds are used, one for fishing, the other for sealing. The one for sealing, which is rather a harpoon than a spear, has an arrow-shaped bone head, which is movable, and is attached by a slack line of hide to the spear shaft. The use of the loose line is probably to facilitate the capture of the seal, into which the movable arrow-head has been driven by the impetus conveyed through the detachable shaft. A harpoon similarly constructed is used by the Eskimo hunters for a like purpose. The fish spear is a formidable weapon, having a long bone head securely fixed to the shaft, and with many deep serrations along one side. The shafts of both are about eight feet long, and are made of the young stems of a coniferous tree, the Libocedrus tetragonus.

Every party that we met with was provided with an iron axe of some kind. The axes are usually made of bits of scrap iron which have been picked up from wrecks, or obtained by barter from passing vessels. Sometimes, though rarely, an axe of civilization pattern is seen. In other cases the piece of iron, having been ground into a rude triangular shape, is fitted into a wooden handle, as some of the old stone celts are supposed to have been; that is to say, the small end of the axehead is jammed into a hole made near the end of a stout piece of stick. I may here mention that, in spite of a most diligent search, I have once, but only once, succeeded in finding a STONE axehead. It was of very primitive shape—being only in part ground—and was found lying among the shells of a very old abandoned kitchen-midden.

For holding drinking water they use large cylindrical buckets, which are made from the bark of the Drimys winteri; the single scroll-shaped piece which forms the cylinder and the disc-shaped bottom being sewn together with rushes. From this same kind of rush plant, which they use so frequently for making temporary hitches, they make three-plaited ropes for mooring the canoes, and also baskets to hold shell fish. The kind of plait used in fashioning their baskets is a simple network, which must, however, be tedious to construct, owing to the necessity for frequently splicing the rushes.

Their huts somewhat resemble small haycocks in general shape, but are rather oblong, the floor (which is never excavated, as in the case of some of the southern Fuegians) usually measuring ten by twelve feet; the height in the centre is six feet, so that one of us could always stand upright when in the middle of the hut. A skeleton framework is made of boughs, whose thicker ends are stuck in the ground, while the terminal twigs are made to interlace, and are moreover secured to each other by rush lashings. The required amount of shelter is obtained by placing leafy boughs and dried sealskins over the framework of the hut. A fire is kept burning in the centre; and when the boat is about to be used, a few burning sticks are transferred to it, and kept alight on a clay flooring amidships.

I have never seen their appliances for striking a light, but I have no doubt they use iron pyrites, with dried moss or down for tinder, as do the southern Fuegians, from whom I have obtained these appliances. These materials for obtaining fire are very judiciously guarded, and are the only articles among the properties of a canoe which are not submitted for barter. The "Pecheray" Fuegians keep their stock of tinder in water-tight pouches, made of the dried intestine of the seal.(?)

Neither stone slings, bows and arrows, nor bolas, are used by the Channel Fuegians, so that altogether, with respect to hunting appliances, they are in a more primitive state than any of the southern tribes.

The remains of the deceased, so far as we have known, are deposited in caves in out-of-the-way localities. During the voyage of Sarmiento, towards the latter end of the 16th century, a cave containing human remains was found in a small island called the "Roca Partida," or cleft rock; and subsequently, when the shipwrecked crew of the Wager, one of Commodore Anson's ships, were wandering about the Gulf of Peñas, Mr. Wilson, the surgeon, discovered near the seashore a large cave which contained the skeletons of several human beings (vide Byron's narrative of the loss of the Wager; Burney's Voyages). During the surveying cruise of H.M.S. Nassau, in 1866-9, a diligent search was made for such burial places, but without success; but, on the other hand, no signs were observed of any other method of disposing of the dead, either by fire, as in the case of some of the southern tribes, or by covering the bodies with branches of trees, as described by Fitzroy. However, during our late survey of the Trinidad Channel, we found a small cave containing portions of two skeletons in a limestone islet, near Port Rosario, on the north side of Madre de Dios Island; and this would seem to have been used as a burial-place, at some very remote period. The remains have been deposited in the British Museum.

It has been stated by the late Admiral Fitzroy, on the authority of Mr. Low, a sealing captain, that during times of great scarcity of food, these savages do not scruple to resort to cannibalism, and that for this purpose they select as victims the old women of the party, killing them by squeezing their throats, while holding their heads over the smoke of a green wood fire. Mr. Low's evidence on this point is so circumstantial, being derived from a native interpreter who served on board his ship for fourteen months, that it can hardly be doubted. On this subject I can only add that we noticed a singularly small proportion of old people, whether male or female, among the parties of natives with whom we met. This circumstance may support Mr. Low's opinion, or it may be the natural consequence of the short span of life which is allotted to these wretched people.

Regarding the treachery of these savages, there can be no doubt. Their faces alone indicate it, but unfortunately further evidence is not wanting. We recently met with a small sealing schooner, the Annita, of Sandy Point, the master of which—a Frenchman, named Lamire—gave us a detailed account of an attack made upon his vessel about two years ago, when he was "sealing" at the north end of Picton Channel. He lay at anchor one night in fancied security, when he was surprised by a large party of natives who came alongside in seven canoes. A dreadful struggle ensued, in which his crew defended themselves with their guns against the axes, spears, sticks, and stones, of their savage assailants. The natives were eventually driven off, but not before five of the sealers had lost their lives. The sealers are now well aware of the anxiety of the natives to gain possession of their vessels, and consequently put no trust in their overtures of friendship. A white man is feared only so long as his party is known to be the strongest.

Fitzroy has described six tribes of Fuegians who speak different dialects, and also differ somewhat in their habits. These are (1) the Yacanas, or inhabitants of the north portion of King Charles's South Land; (2) the Tekeenicas, who live in south-eastern Fuegia; (3) the Alikhoolips, who inhabit the South-Western Islands; (4) the Pecherays, a small tribe of savages who hover about the middle and western part of the Straits of Magellan; (5) the Huemuls, so called from the Chilian name of a deer which has been found about Skyring Water and Obstruction Sound, the head-quarters of this tribe; and (6) the Fuegians who inhabit the shores and islands of western Patagonia, between the parallels of 47° and 52°, and whom Fitzroy denominates the Chonos or Channel Fuegians. In Fitzroy's account of the Fuegians, he naturally selected as his type the people with whom he was best acquainted, viz., the Tekeenicas, who inhabit the shores of the Beagle Channel. These people build conical wigwams, which are made of large poles leaning to from a circular base, with their upper ends meeting in a point. Their canoes are built of bark, and are small and skiff-shaped. They also use bows and arrows, and stone slings, and in this respect are considerably in advance of the Channel Fuegians.

In their methods of disposing of the dead, the Fuegian tribes differ somewhat strangely. Fitzroy tells us that among the Tekeenicas, Alikhoolips, and Pecherays, the bodies of the dead are carried a long way into the interior of the forest, where they are placed upon broken timber, and then covered up with branches. On this subject some information has recently been obtained from the missionaries, who have now for some years maintained a settlement at a place called Ushuwia, in the Beagle Channel. We heard, on the authority of these gentlemen, that a form of cremation is now commonly practised among the Tekeenicas, and that charred human bones may often be found among the embers of the funeral pyre. The Fuegians of the Western Channels, as I have mentioned already, deposit their dead in caves.

To continue with Tom Bay. The month of January is here the breeding season with most of the water birds. About the middle of the month the steamer-ducks (Tachyeres cinereus) and the kelp geese (Bernicla antarctica) were paddling about with their young ones; and the oyster-catchers (Hæmatopus leucopus, and ater), with their young broods, occupied the small low rocky islets, where they made themselves conspicuous by their shrill piping cry. We remarked that the kelp geese, which, as a rule, never wet their feet, except with the damp seaweed of the foreshore, take to the water as soon as the young are hatched, being probably induced to do so in order the better to protect their goslings from the hawks and rats. The male and female adult birds differ remarkably in plumage; that of the female being almost black, with a few white dots and dashes, whereas the feathers of the male are perfectly white. The sombre colour of the female is probably intended as a protection during the hatching time, when she remains almost continuously on the eggs, while the gander does sentry in some conspicuous position adjacent. Whenever at this time of the year a solitary gander is seen standing on a projecting point or headland, it may safely be inferred that his faithful consort is on her nest somewhere within sixty yards. Even under these circumstances it is by no means an easy matter to find the nest; for the black plumage of the female assimilates with the dark wind-blown seaweed and rank grass in which her nest is made, and she lies so close that she will not stir until almost walked on. While the birds are immature (i.e., less than one year old) the sexes are scarcely distinguishable, the plumage of both male and female being an almost equal mixture of white and black colours.

The ashy-headed Brent goose (Chloephaga poliocephala), remarkable for the splendid chestnut colour of its breast, is the only other goose met with in these western channels. The common Magellan and Falkland Islands goose (C. magellanica) does not, as a rule, extend its range to the damp western regions.

About the islets adjacent to the Tom Bay anchorage were great numbers of abandoned huts, and at some the size of the shell mounds and the compactness of the bottom layers indicated considerable antiquity. These mounds are principally composed of mussel and limpet shells, the latter predominating; and among the interstices were great numbers of insects and worms. There was one very old grass-covered mound near our anchorage, of which we made a thorough examination by digging cross-section trenches. Besides the usual shells, there were a few seal bones and sterna of birds, and at a depth of four feet from the surface we found a partly disintegrated bone spear-head, which was different in shape from any which we saw among the natives either before or subsequently. Instead of being rounded, it was flattened from side to side, like a very large arrow-head. In most of the other shell heaps which we examined, bones of the nutria (Myopotamus coypu) and of the otter (Lutra felina) were observed.

To the westward of our anchorage (i.e., in the large island of Madre de Dios) was a long narrow inlet, partly overhung with trees, which communicated by a shallow bar with a brackish lagoon of about thirty acres in extent. At low water there was only about three feet of water on the bar, and we could then see that the bottom was covered with huge white sessile barnacles (the "picos" of the Chilians), growing closely together. During the ebb and flood tides the current ran fiercely over this bar, so as to render it an exceedingly difficult matter to pull through the channel when the tide was adverse. This lagoon was a favourite haunt of the Magellan sea otter (Lutra felina), which is abundant in all these waters, but is very difficult to kill without the aid of dogs. Its "runs" are generally strewn with the shells of a large spiny crab (the Lithodes antarctica), which appears to form its principal food. I have seen an otter rise to the surface with one of these hideous crabs in its mouth, as unpalatable a morsel, one would think—for it is armed all over with strong spines—as a "knuckleduster." In the Alert, the great feat of sportsmanship was to shoot and bag an otter; for if the animal be not struck in the head, and killed outright at the first shot, it is almost certain to make a long dive, crawl up the beach in the shade of the overhanging bushes, and escape.

When exploring in a small boat the winding shores of this lagoon, we one day came upon a little sequestered cove, where there was a luxuriant growth of Desfontainea bushes, and on landing on the shingly beach we saw, by the way in which the larger stones had been moved aside, that the place had been used by the natives for hauling up their canoes. On walking through the long rank grass, which encroached on the beach, we tripped over some logs which seemed to have been arranged artificially, and we then discovered that we were at the extremity of a "portage," intended for conveying boats overland. On tracing it up, we found a sort of causeway leading into the forest; and after following it for about three hundred yards, we ascertained that we had crossed a narrow isthmus, of whose existence we were previously unaware, and had reached the shore of an arm of the sea (probably Delgado Bay), which communicates with the Trinidad Channel not many miles to the eastward of Port Henry. It was evident that by means of this "portage" the natives were able to proceed from Concepcion Channel, viâ Tom Bay, towards the outer coasts, without undertaking the much longer and more hazardous journey through the main channels round Point Brazo. The logs forming the "portage" were partly imbedded in the ground, and were arranged parallel to each other, like the sleepers of a railway, and at a distance of about two feet apart. There was, however, no appearance of the natives having recently visited the place. We had reason to believe that these "portages" were of frequent occurrence, and were largely used by the natives, and that it was owing to the facilities thus afforded them for crossing isthmuses and the necks of promontories that they were enabled to surprise sailing vessels at anchor, approaching them unobserved from the land-locked side of bays and inlets at a time when the attention of the sailors on "look-out" was naturally only directed towards the entrance of the harbour which had previously seemed to them to be untenanted. The "portages" are so concealed by a luxuriant growth of grass and brushwood that they readily escape observation.

The brackish lagoons, which are fed continuously by fresh-water streams, and receive an influx of sea-water while the flood tide is making, are a peculiar feature of this Patagonian archipelago, and we usually found that the outlets were excellent places for catching fish. Our fishing parties were in the habit of placing a "trammel" net across the outlet while the tide was ebbing, and in this way entrapped great quantities of mullet and mackerel; sometimes upwards of eighty, ranging in weight from two to eleven pounds per fish, being taken at one haul.

I collected some green flocculent matter from the surface of one of these lagoons, and found it to consist almost entirely of diatoms.

One fine day in April we noticed a great concourse of gulls and shags, attracted by a shoal of fish, in the pursuit of which they ventured unusually close to the ship. This gave us an opportunity of observing that the common brown gull of the channels, the female of L. dominicanus, behaves towards the male bird in many respects like a skua. No sooner would one of the "black-backed" (male) birds capture a fish, and rise from the surface, than he would be attacked by one of the brown birds, and chased vigorously about the harbour; the predatory bird not desisting from the pursuit until the coveted prize had been dropped by its rightful owner. This I noticed on more occasions than one. As a rule, however, the female was content to fish for herself. Several Dominican gulls in immature plumage were seen amongst the crowd, and were easily distinguished from the adults by the mottled brown plumage, and by the colour of the mandibles being green instead of orange, as in the males, and black as in the females. Now and then the whole flock of gulls and shags would rise on the wing, as they lost the run of the shoal of fish. They would then be directed to the new position of the shoal by the success of some straggling bird, when a general rush would be made to the new hunting ground. It was most amusing to witness the widely different fishing powers of the shags and gulls, and the consequently unequal competition in the struggle for food. The shag in flight, on observing a fish beneath him, at once checks himself by presenting the concave side of his wings to the direction in which he has been moving, and then, flapping legs foremost into the water, turns and dives; whereas the gull has first to settle himself carefully as he alights on the water, and has then to trust to the chance of some unsophisticated fish coming within reach of his bill. It was impossible to avoid noticing the mortified appearance of the poor gulls as they looked eagerly about, but yet caught only an odd fish, whilst their comrades, the shags, were enjoying abundant sport.

FUEGIAN "PORTAGE" FOR TRANSPORTING CANOES OVERLAND.

It is odd that the silly gull manages at all to survive in the struggle for existence. Here is another instance of his incapacity. A piece of meat, weighing a few ounces, drifted astern of the ship one day, and for its possession a struggle took place between a dominican gull and a brown hawk. The gull had picked up the meat, and was flying away with it in his bill, when he was pursued by the hawk—a much smaller bird—who made him drop it. Again the gull picked it up, and for a second time was compelled by the hawk to relinquish it. The latter now swooped down upon the tempting morsel, as it floated on the water, and seizing it with his claws, flew off rapidly into an adjoining thicket, to the edge of which he was followed by the disappointed gull.

Steamer-ducks (Tachyeres cinereus) are very abundant at Tom Bay, as indeed they are throughout all the western channels. Their English name, "steamer-duck," has reference to their habit of moving rapidly along the surface of the water by means of a paddling motion of the wings, and leaving a wake of foam which resembles, on a small scale, that of a paddle-steamer. A great deal has been written about these remarkable birds, and I shall not therefore attempt any general description, which at the best would only involve useless repetition. There are a few remarks about them, however, which I should like to make. Although aware of the careful investigations made by Dr. Cunningham in 1866-9, and his conclusion as to their being but one species, I have yet some reason to believe that the fliers and the non-flying birds which I have seen belong to two distinct species, and my impression is—though I am by no means sure—that the volant species frequents the fresh waters in the interior of Patagonia, and in the western channels is only represented by an odd straggler. Mr. Cox, of Talcahuano, who has travelled in Araucania and central Patagonia, mentions in his narrative, that in the fresh-water lakes of the latter district there are two different species of steamer-ducks, one of which possesses the power of flight. Immature specimens, although differing in the colour of the bill, and somewhat in plumage, from the adult birds, need not be confounded with a second species. The largest steamer-duck which I have come across weighed only 14 lbs., and although text books assign a much greater weight as the extreme limit, I think I am right in saying that few heavier birds are met with either in the Straits of Magellan or in the western channels. The female forms a low, oval-shaped nest of twigs, lined with a thick coating of down, and deposits therein six large cream-coloured eggs, 33⁄8 in. long, by 21⁄4 in. width. The nest is usually placed on the ground, at the foot of an old tree, some few yards from the beach, but in a place where the bush is almost impenetrable to a human being.

Land-shells must be exceedingly scarce. I met with representatives of only four species, of which one, a specimen of Helix, I found on the frond of a Hymenophyllum at Tom Bay. Two others of the same genus were taken from the rotten trunk of a tree in the same locality. At Port Henry, in the Trinidad Channel, and other parts in the neighbourhood, I collected several specimens of a species of Succinea which clings to dead leaves and decayed pieces of driftwood lying on the shore just above high-water mark. These four species of shells have since been described by Mr. Edgar Smith, of the British Museum, as new to science. In a fresh-water lake, where I made some casts of a light dredge, I obtained from the bottom of stinking mud several examples of a large Unio shell, and some small shells of the genus Chilinia. I afterwards found species of Unio in a stream issuing from the lake. North of the English Narrows many pond snails of the genus Chilinia were also found abundantly in the stream beds.

I have found only two species of fresh-water fish, Aplochiton zebra, and a small Galaxias; and they inhabit most of the upland lakes which are of any considerable extent. The former is a smooth-skinned fish, with the general shape and fin arrangement of a grayling, but with a dark scaleless skin. It averages half a pound in weight, ranging up to three-quarters; and although it rose like a trout, we could not succeed in making it take the artificial fly, but caught it readily with worm-bait. These fish were also met with in mountain lakes far removed from the sea, whither their ova were probably, in the first instance, conveyed by cormorants. On one occasion Sir George Nares caught a specimen of this fish in a brackish lagoon, which communicated with the sea at high tide, so that it may have been derived from a marine progenitor which possessed the power of adapting itself to a fresh-water existence.

In the course of our survey of Concepcion Strait, we stopped for six days, in the month of March, at Portland Bay, an anchorage on the east side of the strait, and nearly opposite to Tom Bay. On the forenoon of our third day, a party of natives pulled in from the westward, with their canoe well-provisioned with shell-fish, as if they were about making a long voyage. There were three men, four women, three children, and four dogs. They were provided with a good iron axe, bone-pointed spears, a boat-rope made of plaited rushes, and other rude implements. It was evident that this party had previously met with some friendly vessel, for they readily came on board, and poked about the ship. Two of us went on a visit to their camp on the following day, but were received very ungraciously by a villainous-looking old hag armed with a club, who deprecated any attempt at landing on our part. We could only examine the canoe, which we found to be twenty-two feet long, four feet in beam amidships, and in other respects of the usual construction. On the next day we pulled over again, but only to find the hut deserted, and the party gone. We inferred, from various circumstances connected with their disappearance, that they must have penetrated up the Bay to the eastward, where there are unexplored channels which are supposed to extend towards the base of the Cordillera.

On the next day (March 24), a strong westerly breeze, with occasional rain-squalls, induced most of us to remain on board, and we were not a little surprised when, about 10 a.m., a boat under sail was reported standing across the Strait towards our anchorage. On nearer approach it turned out to be a native canoe, with a large sealskin hoisted in the forepart of the boat, so as to form a sort of square sail. As the natives came alongside to beg for biscuit and tobacco, we found that the wretched-looking boat contained three men, five women, eleven children (mostly very young), and five dogs. They had shipped a good deal of water on the passage, as might be expected, and all the wretched creatures looked as wet as fishes; indeed, to say that they were wet to the skin would be simply a truism in the case of the Fuegians. We had not previously noticed so prolific a family, the proportion of children being usually one for each woman. I use the word "family," because each of these canoe parties appears to constitute a sort of complicated family. One young mother did not appear to be more than sixteen years of age. I now inclined to the opinion, which subsequent experience gave me no reason to alter, that the Channel Fuegians are a migratory tribe, passing the summer months about the outer islands, where at that time of the year they may get seals, and the eggs and young of sea-birds, and in the autumn migrating up some of the fiords of the mainland, when the deer, driven down the hills by the winter snows, would be within their reach. There is no doubt that deer (probably the Cervus chilensis) have been seen from time to time on this coast. A few years ago the officers of one of the German steamers of the "Kosmos" line, stopping at Puerto Bueno about mid-winter, captured three or four in the immediate vicinity of the anchorage. We ourselves never met with any, although we saw doubtful indications of their presence; but further south we obtained portions of a deer from a native canoe. I was led to form the above-mentioned idea from comparing the great number of deserted wigwams which we encountered in our wanderings about these channels, with the small number of natives actually seen. The huts alluded to, moreover, bore indications of having been in use not many months previously, when they were probably inhabited temporarily by parties of natives on their way to the outer coasts. Fitzroy would seem to have entertained the same belief with reference to tribes about Smyth's Channel, from the fact that a party of men from his ship, when surveying Obstruction Sound in the summer-time, discovered a large deserted encampment containing many huts and canoes, and showing signs of its being the site of a great periodical gathering of the clans.

FUEGIANS OFFERING THEIR CHILDREN FOR BARTER

CHAPTER III.
EXPLORATIONS IN THE TRINIDAD CHANNEL.

In prosecuting the survey of the Trinidad Channel, we anchored, for short periods each time, at a great many ports on its northern and southern shores; and in crossing and re-crossing the channel we ran lines of soundings which enabled us to ascertain roughly the general conformation of its bed. Across the seaward entrance of the channel, i.e., from Cape Gamboa on the north to Port Henry on the south, the soundings gave a mean depth of thirty fathoms, showing the existence of a sort of bar, while one mile inside of this the depth increased to two and three hundred fathoms. This was just as we expected; the bar across the entrance representing the terminal moraine of the huge glacier which originally gouged out the channel, and whose denuding action is abundantly recorded in the scorings, planings, and striations so palpable on all the hard rocks of these inhospitable shores.

At Port Henry, on the southern side of the entrance to the channel, we anchored several times. The scenery here is very grand. A clay-slate rock enters largely into the formation of the hills, its highly inclined strata forming jagged peaks and ridges of great height; while the low-lying rock about the coast is a friable syenite traversed with dikes of greenstone. Immediately to the south of our anchorage was a lofty ridge of clay-slate hills, terminating above in a multitude of vertical columns of rock, which from our position on board reminded us of a cluster of organ pipes, and suggested the name which now appears on the chart, of the "Organ-pipe Range." The aspect of the vegetation is also different from that of other ports in these waters, owing to the abundance of a veronica (V. decussata), which forms large glossy-green bushes, covered with a profusion of snow-white flowers, and so varies the otherwise monotonously green appearance of the beech forest.

Only one party of natives was here seen. They at first approached us very stealthily, paddling between the small islands off the eastern entrance of the harbour, and after the usual interchange of signals (waving of green boughs and caps), they came alongside. The boat was similar in construction and size to those already examined at Tom Bay and elsewhere; but we were now greatly struck at perceiving what a load it could accommodate; for there were in it sixteen natives and six dogs, besides provisions, weapons, and camp furniture. The party consisted of three men, five women, and eight children; and although they pulled only three oars (the women never taking part in this work), yet they managed to get along at a fair pace. On their arrival they were partially clad in seal skins; but in their eagerness to barter with our seamen, for knives, tobacco, and such treasures, they soon divested themselves of all artificial garb, and appeared in a state of nature. It was noticed that the males, who conducted the barter, compelled the women to give up their scanty covering. In the way of provisions, the boat contained a supply of large trumpet shells (Concholepas) in rush baskets, and the drinking water was carried in little bark buckets. They encamped near us for the night, but disappeared unaccountably the next day.

On our exploring the islets just mentioned, we found a large deserted encampment, in which we counted the remains of nine native huts. The refuse-heaps contained a good many seal and whale bones, besides echinoderms, limpet and trumpet shells, the latter shell here taking the place of the mussel. The trumpet shell (Concholepas) is found about the entrance of the Trinidad Channel, inhabiting rocky places immediately below low-water mark on the weather (i.e., the west) side of islets which are exposed to the heavy wash of the outer ocean. I have not seen the shell south of this latitude. The brown duck (Anas cristata) was here tolerably abundant, and with the ashy-headed Brent goose, and the two species of oyster-catcher, were in great request with our sportsmen, being the only edible birds worth mentioning in the western channels.

From Port Henry we shifted our base of operations to Wolsey Sound, the next inlet to the eastward. Here we anchored in an apparently well-sheltered cove, surrounded by lofty hills, but which we soon found to our cost to be a sort of aerial maelstrom. A strong westerly gale was blowing over the hill-tops, as we could see by the fast-flying clouds; while below at the anchorage we experienced a succession of fierce squalls (williwaws) from various quarters, with intervals of complete calm; so that the ship kept swinging to and fro, and circling round her anchors in a most erratic manner. Eventually one of the cables parted; but with the other, aided by steam, we managed to ride out the gale, and to thoroughly satisfy ourselves that Wolsey Sound was not one of the anchorages to be recommended to passing vessels. From the translation given in "Burney's Voyages," (vol. ii., p. 10), of the journal of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who discovered the Trinidad Channel in the year 1580, it would appear that this is the same anchorage which his sailors named "Cache Diablo" (devil's box-on-the-ear), from the boisterous nature of the reception which they experienced.

On the east side of Wolsey Sound the rock of the mountain masses is for the most part a hard grey unfossiliferous limestone, irregularly stratified, but sometimes showing a dip of 10° or 15° to the westward. The most striking peculiarity of this rock consists in its solubility under the influence of both fresh and salt water, and it is this property that so often causes it to present a jagged honeycombed appearance. I noticed that in many places fresh-water streams, running over bare patches of this rock, had eaten away narrow gutter channels, and that in other places where a broad sheet of water flowed slowly—as from a turf bank—over a long gently-sloping table of rock, an incrustation of hard calcareous matter had been deposited, presenting a sort of "ripple-marked" appearance, and reminding one of the effect produced when a film of slowly-moving water is submitted to the influence of intense cold. When viewed from a distance, the limestone hills presented a whitish bleached appearance, which contrasted strangely with the sombre hues of the other greenstone and syenite hills. Of this description was "Silvertop," a lofty and conspicuous mountain on the south side of the Trinidad Channel, which was frequently used by our surveyors as a landmark.

The next port to the eastward is Rosario Bay. It was named by Sarmiento "Puerto de Nuestra Señora del Rosario." The rock formation here is limestone, and of the kind above mentioned, but the effects of frequent rain in washing away the more soluble parts of the rock were not only manifested by the honeycombed appearance of exposed surfaces, but also by the prevalence of caves of most irregular shape. Soon after we had anchored, Sub-Lieutenant Beresford and I, who had gone away in the skiff, were paddling around an islet with lofty and precipitous sides, when we noticed in the face of a bare rocky cliff a suspicious-looking dark opening, partly blocked up with stones, and situated about thirty feet above the sea level. We ran the boat alongside the rocks, and Beresford kept her from bumping while I climbed up the cliff to reconnoitre. On clearing away a heap of stones and rubbish, I laid bare a sort of niche in the rock, in which were portions of a human skeleton, the long bones lying together in a compact bundle, as if they had been so placed there when in the dried state. Not many yards from this crevice we soon discovered a small cave in the rock, and partly imbedded in the soil which formed its floor were a human jaw-bone and fragments of smaller bones. On excavating the floor of the cave we found it to consist of a stiff pasty greyish-white marl-clay, abounding in small shells, amongst which were species of the genera Patella, Fissurella, Chiton, and Calyptræa. On reaching a depth of about one foot, we came upon a nearly complete human skull of immature age, an otter skull with bones of the same, and the tooth of an Echinus. The human bones obtained were part of the skeletons of two individuals, one of whom must have been young, for the epiphyses of the long bones were not quite cemented to the shafts. I noticed that the skull presented a completely ossified frontal suture, although, from the nature of the teeth and alveoli, the person to whom it belonged could not have lived for more than twelve years or thereabouts. A tibia found in the first depôt bore marks of having been chopped by some sharp cutting instrument. From the fact of these bones being found interbedded with marine deposits, coupled with what we know of these islands having been elevated within recent times—I here refer to the evidence afforded by raised beaches and old high-water marks in the faces of cliffs—there is reason to believe that these bones were deposited in the cave at a time when it was under water, that they thus became surrounded by and imbedded in an ordinary marine shallow water deposit, and that eventually, on the island being elevated so as to raise the cave to its present position—thirty feet above sea level—the surface deposit was reinforced by the percolation of lime-charged water from the rock above, thus resulting in the formation of the marl-clay surface-layer above mentioned.

We made different attempts at dredging, but as the bottom was everywhere very rocky and the dredge in consequence continually getting foul, we were not successful in obtaining many objects of interest. However, among them there were specimens of a hydroid stony coral representing two species of the genus Labiopora—one of which Mr. Stuart Ridley of the British Museum has ascertained to be a species new to science—and a fine orange-coloured Astrophyton of a new species, recently described by Mr. F. J. Bell as A. lymani.

On the north side of the Trinidad Channel we stopped for a time at an anchorage near Cape Gamboa, which forms the north headland of the entrance. At Cape Gamboa the rock is a clay-slate showing distinct stratification, containing concretions of a whitish sandstone, and dipping to the N.E. at an angle of about 45°. To the eastward of Cape Gamboa is a limestone similar to that of the south shore. We did some dredging here on a smooth sandy bottom, the principal results of which were specimens of the Chimæra (Callorhynchus australis), and some curious Isopod Crustaceans of the genus Serolis. Another day (March 28th) when sounding across the entrance of the Channel, we made a heave of the trawl in thirty fathoms with most fruitful results, obtaining a magnificent specimen of the orange-coloured Astrophyton (A. lymani), several small rays and flat fish, large Actinia, a new Crustacean of the genus Arcturus, starfishes, and a Cephalopod Mollusc of the genus Rossia. On the evening of this day we were fortunate enough to witness a most beautiful sunset effect. As the sun disappeared from a western olive-tinted sky it seemed to be followed in its descent by several horizontal bands of delicate rose-tinted stratus clouds, which extended themselves in parallel lines over an arc of 45°, and finally tapered away into the most delicate threads of silvery light. In the east the dark purple-tinted clouds melted upwards into the grey gloom of approaching night, and foreshadowed to us the advent of another day of sunshine in this the only really fine and summer month in these western channels.

At the head of Francisco Bay—which was the name subsequently given to this anchorage—at the outlet of a small river, we one day made a very large "take" of fish in a somewhat singular manner. A trammel net had been placed across the mouth of the stream at high tide, and on the tide falling had been examined and found to contain a fair number of fish (mackerel). Some hours later two of our people were wading up the river, and on coming to a depression in its bed, which was at about the limit to which the tidal salt-water reached, they found an immense collection of half-dead and living mackerel in a pool, in which—the tide being then rather low—the water was almost entirely fresh. Here they caught, with their hands, fish enough to fill a boat, amounting to a gross weight of 4 cwt. The probable explanation of this lucky "take" seems to be that the fish entered the mouth of the river with the flood tide—as is their wont—and on attempting to retreat with the ebb found their return to the sea barred by our net, and instead of endeavouring to pass through the meshes preferred to move back into the brackish water of the river. Here, as the tide fell still further and laid bare banks of sand stretching across the stream, they became shut off altogether from the sea, and at dead low tide the flow of fresh water so predominated over the salt as to render them helplessly stupid, so that they fell an easy prey to our sailors.

On the shores of this bay I came across a magnificent Winter's bark tree, the largest which I have ever seen in the channels. Its smooth and almost cylindrical stem was nine feet in circumference, and ran up without branching to a height of thirty feet from the ground.

In cruising to and fro about the channel we frequently came across whales. They were usually either "finners" or "sperms"; more commonly the former. I saw only one "right" whale during the many months which we spent in these waters. On the 17th of February we steamed by a school of about twenty "finner" whales, and shortly after we passed through a shoal of small red shrimps (Galatheas), which were so densely clustered together as to give the water quite a scarlet appearance. This accounted for the great gathering of Cetaceans. Skeletons of whales in a very imperfect state were abundant about the shores of this channel, and many were of large size. On the shore of Francisco Bay I saw lower jaw bones which measured eleven feet from condyle to symphysis. I looked, but in vain, for remains of the Ziphioid Whales.

Some few miles to the eastward of Francisco Bay a deep inlet pierced Wellington Island in a northerly direction. We were anxious to explore it, as we thought it not unlikely that it might prove to be a navigable passage, connecting Trinidad Channel with the Gulf of Peñas. At length an opportunity occurred, and on a fine morning in the month of March we steamed into this unsurveyed inlet. On fairly passing the southern entrance, we found ourselves traversing a lane of water of such glassy smoothness, and bordered by such straight running shores, which were not more than half-a-mile apart, as to seem more like an inland canal than (which it eventually proved to be) a strait leading through a nest of breakers to an inhospitable ocean. Its eastern shore exhibited the kind of scenery prevailing about the Guia Narrows; viz., round-topped hills with great bare patches of rain-worn rock extending from the summits to a talus, which was covered with an uniform mantle of evergreen forest, the latter encroaching upon the sea-beach. But the country to the west presented a more pleasing variety, being composed of low undulating slopes of grassy-looking land, with here and there fissures or landslips exhibiting what seemed to us, as we scrutinized them with our glasses, to be sections of a sedimentary formation. We had hitherto seen nothing like this anywhere among the western channels, and consequently I for one was extremely anxious to land. However, the captain had to make the most of daylight for the surveying work in hand, so that our conjectures as to the nature of this formation remained unverified. When we had attained a distance of twenty-five miles from the southern entrance of the Strait, the western shore was found to be broken up into a chain of low islets, which in time dwindled away into a great arc of submerged rocks, over which the swell of the broad Pacific broke with great fury. This then was the end of what is now known as the Picton Channel, and bold would be the mariner who would attempt to traverse it, and thread his way through such a maze of reefs and breakers. Among the islets at this, its northern extremity, we found an anchorage, where we decided on stopping for the night. As we cast anchor, a native boat approached, carrying no less than twenty-three inmates, most of whom were males, and of a most savage and treacherous appearance. They had with them several young fur seals, recently killed, which they were glad to barter for tobacco or biscuit. After stopping alongside for about half-an-hour, they paddled away and were seen no more. On the following day we steamed back.

The rocky shores and islets of the Trinidad Channel bear abundant indications of old ice action. These marks are not very apparent on the coarse-grained friable syenite which is the common rock of the district, but on the dikes of hard greenstone, with which the syenite is frequently intersected, scorings and striations of typical character may be seen. Close to the anchorage in Port Charrua, on the north side of the channel, there is a broad band of greenstone on which I observed very perfect examples of "crosshatchings," where the prevailing east to west striæ were intersected by those of another system at an angle of about 40°. These rock erosions, coupled with what we know from the sounding-lead as to the contour of the sea-bottom, lead us to infer that the Trinidad Channel was at some remote period the bed of a huge glacier, which flowed westward from the Cordillera. That most, indeed, of the other straits and channels of Western Patagonia were also at one time occupied by glaciers is clearly testified by the markings on the rocks.

There is a peculiar form of syenite rock not uncommon in exposed situations on the hill-tops, which is composed of quartz, felspar, and hornblende, the quartz occurring in crystals of about the size of large peas. The felspar, being of a very friable nature, rapidly succumbs to the disintegrating influence of the weather, and crumbles away, taking with it the small particles of hornblende, so that the big quartz crystals, when in the last stage prior to being dislodged, are seen standing out in bold relief from the matrix. When this rock is seen projecting in round bosses, through the turfy soil of a hilltop, it looks at a short distance as if strewn with hailstones; and the illusion is heightened on observing on its leeward side heaps of loose quartz crystals, which have been completely weathered out from the parent rock, and have been drifted by the wind into this comparatively sheltered situation, as would be the case with hailstones under similar circumstances.

But the most characteristic feature in the scenery of the western shores of Patagonia is owing to the phenomenon of "soil motion," an occurrence which is here in a great measure due to the exceptionally wet nature of the climate. This slippage of the soilcap seems in this region to be continually taking place wherever the basement rock presents a moderately inclined surface. Some of the effects of this "soil motion" are apt to be confounded with those due to glacial action, for the soilcap takes with it in its downward progress not only its clothing of trees, ferns, and mosses, but also a "moraine profonde" of rock, stones, and stems of dead trees great and small, whereby the hills are being denuded, and the valleys, lakes, and channels gradually filled up. When we first entered the Western Channels my attention was at once directed to this subject on noticing that the lower branches of trees growing in immediate proximity to the seashore were in many places withering from immersion in the salt water, and that in some cases entire trees had perished prematurely, from their roots having become entirely submerged. On looking more closely into the matter, I noticed that sodden snags of dead trees, mingled with stones, were often to be seen on the bottom of the inshore waters, and that the beds of fresh-water lakes were plentifully strewn with similar fragments of wood, the remains of bygone forests which had perished prematurely. These circumstances are fully explained by the occurrence of soil motion, for as the soilcap by its sliding motion, imparted by gravitation, and aided by expansion and contraction of the spongy mass, reaches the water's edge, the soluble portions are removed, while its more durable contents are left to accumulate at the foot of the incline. In this way rocks and stones may sometimes be seen balanced in odd situations near the sea beach, simulating the "roches perchées" which are dropped by a melting iceberg or a receding glacier. These circumstances are all the more interesting from their occurring in a region where the effects of old and recent glacial action are exhibited to a marked degree. Planings, scorings, striations, and "roches moutonnées" may, one or other, be almost invariably found wherever the rock is sufficiently impervious to the disintegrating action of the weather to retain these impressions. Thus they are nowhere to be seen on the coarse-grained friable syenite, which is the common rock of the district; but where this rock is intersected by dikes of the more durable greenstone, the above-mentioned signs of former glacial action may be seen well developed. I speak now of old glacial action, because we have not found any glacier existing in the neighbourhood of the Trinidad Channel, from whence they seem to have entirely receded; but they are yet to be seen in the fiords of the mainland further north; and in the main Straits of Magellan we had opportunities of studying fine examples of complete and incomplete glaciers, exhibiting in all its grandeur that wonderful denuding power which these ponderous masses of ice exercise as they move silently over their rocky beds. There are, therefore, in this region, ample opportunities of comparing and differentiating phenomena, which have resulted from former glacial action, and those which are due to soil motion—a force now in operation.

Sir Wyville Thompson (vide "Voyage of Challenger," vol. ii., p. 245) attributes the origin of the celebrated "Stone Runs" of the Falkland Islands to the transporting action of the soilcap, which among other causes derives its motion from alternate expansion and contraction of the spongy mass of peat, due to varying conditions of moisture and comparative dryness; and this hypothesis is to a certain extent supported by the occurrences which I now endeavour to describe. Here, in Western Patagonia, an evergreen arboreal forest, rising through a dense undergrowth of brushwood and mosses, clothes the hillsides to a height of about 1,000 feet, and this mass of vegetation, with its subjacent peaty, swampy soil, resting—as it frequently does—upon a hillside already planed by old ice action, naturally tends, under the influence of gravitation, combined with that of expansion and contraction of the soil, to slide gradually downwards until it meets the sea, lake, or valley, as the case may be. In the two former cases the free edge of the mass is removed by the action of the water, in a manner somewhat analogous to the wasting of the submerged snout of a "complete glacier" in the summer time; whereas in the last instance a chaotic accumulation of all the constituents of the transported mass gradually takes place, thereby tending to an eventual obliteration of the valley. It appears to me that the conditions which are said to have resulted in the formation of the "Stone Runs" of the Falklands here exist in equal if not greater force. There is a thick spongy vegetable mass covering the hillsides, and acted on by varying conditions of extreme moisture and comparative dryness; there are the loose blocks of disintegrating syenite to be transported; and there are mountain torrents, lakes, and sea-channels to remove the soil. That motion of the soilcap does actually take place we have at least strong presumptive evidence; but anything resembling a "stone run" remains yet to be discovered. It would naturally suggest itself to the reader that the above phenomenon attributed to soil motion might be accounted for by a slow and gradual depression of the land, and I have carefully sought for evidence favouring this view, but have found no reliable sign whatever of subsidence; while on the other hand one sees raised beaches and stones testifying to the ravages of stone-boring molluscs at heights above the present high-water marks, which indicate that even elevation of the land has taken place.

On May 6th, the winter season having then fairly set in, we bade adieu for a while to our surveying ground, and commenced our northern voyage to Valparaiso. Our course lay first through the sheltered channels which separate Wellington Island from the mainland. As we rounded Topar Island and entered Wide Channel, the heavy mist which had been hanging around us all the morning, almost concealing the land from sight, lifted at intervals like a veil, and exposed to view the noble cliffs of bare greenstone rock which hemmed us in on either side,—here and there streaked down their faces by long slender cascades of water, extending from summit to base, and seeming to hang over us like glistening threads of silver. On passing the southern outlet of Icy Reach, we saw shining in the distance the sloping tongue-shaped extremity of one of the Eyre Sound glaciers, whose bergs float out through Icy Reach in the winter time and sometimes prove a serious obstruction to navigation in these gloomy and mysterious channels. In Chasm Reach, which we next traversed, the hills on either side rose nearly perpendicularly to a height of 1,500 feet, their snow-capped summits contrasting grandly with the sombre tints of their rocky sides; so scantily clad with vegetation as to seem at a distance mere sloping walls of rock.

In the narrowest part of this "reach," where the width was only about half-a-mile, three native huts were seen established on low projecting shelves of rock, and situated about a mile apart. To these our attention was attracted by the long curling wreaths of grey smoke ascending from their fires. As darkness was coming on, we did not stop to examine them, but steamed on towards Port Grappler, where we anchored for the night.

We got under way early in the morning of the following day, and proceeded through the channel as far as Hoskyn Cove, an anchorage just to the northward of the famous English Narrows. The morning had been hazy and showery, but towards noon the mist cleared away, and as we passed the English Narrows, a burst of sunshine completed the dispersion of the hazy vapour and lighted up a scene of surpassing splendour. The scenery here contrasted strangely with that of Chasm Reach, for the steep hillsides now were richly clothed with a luxuriant growth of primeval forest, and rising to a greater altitude, had their summits capped with a broad mantle of snow, which showed to great advantage against the deep blue of the sky. In the narrowest part of the channel, where the flood tide was making southward in a rapid stream, numbers of fur seals were gambolling in the water, and the energetic movements of the cormorants testified to the abundance of the fish.

Formerly the vessels of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company were in the habit of running through these "Narrows," but of late years the practice has been discontinued, on account of the difficulty of managing the long vessels which are now in vogue. Therefore, excepting an occasional man-of-war, the only vessels which at the present day make use of the channels leading to the Gulf of Peñas are the steamers of the German "Kosmos" line. The deciduous beech (Fagus antarctica) here formed a great proportion of the forest growth, and as its leaves were now withering, their autumn tints gave a variegated character to the wooded scenery, a feature not observed farther south, where the evergreen beech (Fagus betuloides) predominates. The Campsidium chilense, a large trailing plant, was abundant and in full bloom, its flowering branches usually depending in rather inaccessible places from the upper parts of the trees to which it clung; and here we obtained for the first time specimens of the loveliest of South American ferns, the Hymenophyllum cruentum.

The morning of the 8th May broke wet and gloomy as we got under way and initiated the next stage on our journey. All day long the rain fell in torrents, and a fresh northerly breeze, blowing right in our teeth, raised a heavy, chopping sea, which made the old ship heave uneasily, and gave us a sort of foretaste of what we should have to encounter next day on emerging from the Gulf of Peñas into the troubled waters of the Pacific. Steaming thus against wind and sea, we made such slow progress that night had fairly come on us when we crept under shelter of the lofty hills which overshadow Island Harbour.

On the following morning we entered the open sea, and steered for Valparaiso.

CHAPTER IV.
ON THE COAST OF CHILI.

On anchoring at Valparaiso on the 16th May, the first news we heard was that the country was in a great state of excitement, anent the war in which Chili was then engaged with Peru and Bolivia. All the available troops and men-of-war had been despatched to the seat of war in the north, leaving the capital in almost a defenceless condition, so that great fears were entertained lest one of the Peruvian cruisers should take advantage of this to bombard the town. The last detachment sent off consisted of the town police, and at the time of our visit the maintenance of order in the streets, and the manning of the guns of the forts, had been entrusted to the corps of "Bomberos" (fire brigade).

The principal part of the town is built on a plateau about ten feet above high-water mark, which forms a margin to the curving shore of the bay, and reaches inland for a few hundred yards. Beyond this the outskirts of the town are disposed irregularly over a number of steep ridges, which converge radially on the town from the mountain range behind. There was one principal street running more or less parallel with the shore, and containing fine-looking shops well supplied with everything needful, but the second-rate ones were very dingy in comparison. Owing to the great stagnation of trade brought about by the war, and the consequent scarcity of money amongst consumers, the prices of provisions were very moderate, although under normal conditions Valparaiso is famous among Europeans for its high prices. Fruit also and vegetables were in great abundance, and large bunches of delicious grapes were to be had for almost a nominal price.

One remarkable feature of Valparaiso is that within the precincts of the town a considerable number of people of the very lowest grade live in a sort of gipsy encampment. The buildings which they here occupy are filthy nondescript hovels, constructed out of a patchwork of mud, bits of tin, old planks, discarded doors, pieces of sackcloth, etc., all stuck up together anyhow. Even in the respectable quarter of the town these filthy dens were sometimes to be seen occupying blind alleys, or the site of razed buildings.

Sir George Nares left us here to return home by mail-steamer, on appointment to the Marine and Harbour Department of the Board of Trade, and was relieved in command of the Alert by Captain J. F. L. P. Maclear.

After wishing him good-bye on the 18th of May, we got under way and steered for Coquimbo. On gaining an offing of about ten miles, and looking in towards the Chilian coast, to which we were then pursuing a parallel course, we saw the lowlands partially veiled in a thin stratum of mist, above which towered magnificently the snowy summit of Aconcagua, 23,220 feet in height. As we approached the Bay of Coquimbo, we passed through immense shoals of fishes, which sheered off in great confusion to either side of our bows with the parting waves. On subsequently hauling in the "patent log," it was found that the revolving blades had disappeared, the towing-line having been chopped in two just above its attachment. This was probably the work of some hungry and indiscriminating shark, whose stomach must have been put to a severe trial in endeavouring to digest this angular and unwholesome piece of metal.

The port of Coquimbo, where we stayed from the 19th of May to the 16th of July, derives whatever importance it has got from being one of the best (if not the very best) of the anchorages on the Chilian coast, and from its connection with the copper trade. It is brought into communication with the mines and smelting works by means of a line of railway, which, independently of its collateral branches, pierces the copper-producing country to a distance of sixty miles. The copper, either in the form of ingots, bars, or regulus, is shipped to Europe—principally to England—in steamers or sailing vessels. The country, as far as the eye can reach from the anchorage, is a mere sandy desert, dotted here and there with an odd oasis of cultivated land, which has been rendered productive by means of artificial irrigation. Trees are rare; but within the last few years the eucalyptus has been introduced, and with great success. In properly irrigated localities it thrives and grows with great rapidity,—in half-a-dozen years rising to a height of sixty feet,—and forming masses of foliage, which, by the shade it affords, increases the productiveness of the neighbouring soil.

Coquimbo has been rendered celebrated for its shell terraces by the writings of Darwin, Basil Hall, and others. These are long plateaux of variable size, sometimes a couple of hundred yards, sometimes a mile in width, with their sharply-defined free margins running more or less parallel to the curved outline of the sea beach, and extending inland by a series of gradations, like the tiers of boxes in a theatre. There are five or six of these terraces; that furthest inland being about 250 feet above the sea-level, and its free margin being about six miles from the beach. They are of entirely marine origin, and abound in shells of existing species, and they testify to the different periods of elevation to which this part of the continent has been subjected.

On the night of the 2nd of June we felt a slight shock of earthquake. The cable rattled in the hawse-pipe as if it were being violently shaken below by some giant who had got hold of the other end; and the ship vibrated and surged up and down as if she had been struck by a wave coming vertically from the bottom of the sea. The shock lasted about ten seconds, and then all was again silent. Earthquakes of this magnitude are of common occurrence in Chili.

One day a large party of us went on a shooting excursion to Las Cardas, an estate occupying a mountain valley thirty-six miles from Coquimbo, and belonging to Mr. Lambert, an English gentleman. For this trip we were indebted to Mr. Weir, the courteous manager of Mr. Lambert's mines, smelting works, and estate, who not only provided a special train to convey us to the shooting ground, but entertained us there most sumptuously. The estate of "Las Cardas" lies at the termination of the southernmost part of the two valleys which open into the Bay of Coquimbo, and beyond this station the railway pursues its further course over the brow of a hill called the "Cuesta," which it ascends by a series of zigzags. Although its route here appears, at first sight, circuitous enough, the gradient of the incline is an average of one in thirty feet, ranging as high as one in twenty-five. We found it interesting to stop for a while at the station and watch our departing train trailing along its zigzag course up the hillside, as it steamed on towards the inland terminus of the line, viz., "Rio Grande," which was some thirty miles further on. The "Rio Grande" station is 2,000 feet above the level of the Coquimbo terminus at the other end.

In the bed of a broad valley, and in the gullies communicating with it laterally from the hills, we expected to get a good many partridges; but owing to the thickness of the brushwood, and the absence of dogs, we saw very few, and shot fewer still. However, we were assured that the birds were there, and only wanted proper stirring up to make them visible; so that as we were every minute expecting that the next moment a great covey would start up from the bushes, and consequently kept our guns ready for action, we managed to keep up the requisite amount of excitement for several hours without materially violating the spirit of the regulations of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Society.

In the evening we assembled at a clump of trees, which seemed to be a favourite roosting-place for doves; and as the birds came down from the hills to take up their quarters for the night, they afforded us some very nice shooting while the daylight lasted. The most interesting birds which I noticed in the valley were two species of Pteroptochus, the smaller of which was almost identical in general character with the Tapaculo of Coquimbo, where it inhabits the low rocky hills, and attracts attention by its barking noise, and by the odd manner in which it erects its tail. Although the barking noise is heard frequently, and sometimes within a few yards of one, yet the bird itself is seen comparatively rarely. The bird of Las Cardas, however, might with a little care be seen, whilst uttering its odd programme of noises, as it stood under the overhanging branches of some large bush. On being startled it makes off in a peculiar manner, taking long strides rather than hops, and moving in a series of sharp curves in and out among the bushes. In adapting itself to these curves, the body of the bird is inclined considerably to the inner side, so that in this position, with its long legs and great clumsy tail, it forms a truly grotesque object. Examples of the larger species of Pteroptochus (P. albicollis) were generally to be seen in pairs, perched on the summit of a tall bush, the white throat and white stripes over the eye showing conspicuously.

We sailed from Coquimbo on the 16th of July, and shaped our course for the Islands Felix and Ambrose, which lie about five hundred miles to the north-west of Coquimbo. The object of this cruise was to take some deep-sea soundings between the mainland and the above-mentioned islands. The weather was, for the most part, very unfavourable, the ship rolling and kicking diabolically, and making our lives very miserable. On the afternoon of the 20th, St. Ambrose, the eastward island of the two, hove in sight, but as the day was too far advanced to admit of our landing, we "lay-to" about six miles to windward of it. Viewing the island at this distance from the eastward, it presented the appearance of a roughly cubical flat-topped mass of rock, leaning slightly to the northward, and bounded—so far as one could see—by perpendicular cliffs of a gloomy and forbidding aspect, which rose to an altitude of 1,500 feet. As we approached the island on the following morning its appearance by no means improved, and nowhere could be seen any break in the rampart of lofty cliffs, which seemed to forbid our disturbing their solitude. We looked in vain for the "sheltered cove," where, as the sailing instructions say, "there is good landing for boats at all times of the year." After making the circuit of the island, we "lay-to" about a mile from the N.E. cliff, and two boats were sent to reconnoitre, in one of which I took passage. After pulling a considerable distance along the foot of the cliffs, we at length succeeded, though with great difficulty, in landing at the foot of a spur of basaltic rock, which sloped down from the cliffs at a high angle. The first thing that attracted our attention was a grotesque-looking crab (Grapsus variegatus), of a reddish-brown colour, mottled on the carapace with yellow spots. It scuttled about in a most independent way, and seemed quite indifferent as to whether it trotted over the bottoms of the rock pools, or ran up the steep face of the rock to a height of forty feet above the water-line. Sea-birds innumerable flew about us in all directions, but on careful inspection we could only muster up three different species; viz., a large white-winged gannet (Sula), a plump dark-coloured petrel (Œstrelata defilippiana), and a slender white and grey tern (Anous).[1] The petrels were nesting in the rock crevices. The nest consisted of a few withered twigs and dirty feathers, forming a very scanty bed on the hard rock, and containing a solitary white egg. The birds stuck bravely to their nests, and would not relinquish their charge until, with bill and claws, they had given an account of themselves, calculated to rather astonish an incautious intruder. Nevertheless, I subsequently ascertained, by dissection of specimens taken from the nests, that both male and female birds take part in the duty of hatching. The rock in this locality was almost completely sterile; only three or four plants (stunted undershrubs) were found, which eked out a miserable existence among fragments of crumbling rock.

[1] These and other birds collected during the cruise have been described and determined by Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe, the distinguished ornithologist of the British Museum.

The island is of volcanic formation. The cliffs which we examined displayed a section, fully 1,000 feet deep, of various layers of tuff, laterite, and scoriæ, which, for the most part, stretched out horizontally, and were intersected in every conceivable direction by dykes of basalt. In some places ridges or spurs of rock projected like buttresses from the vertical cliff; and where we landed the spur was composed of a vertical dyke of basalt flanked by a crumbling scoriaceous rock, which latter was being worn away by the action of waves and weather much more rapidly than its core of basalt. The columnar blocks of which the basalt was composed were bedded horizontally; i.e., at right angles to the plane of the dyke, so that the appearance of the whole was strikingly suggestive of an immense stone staircase. After a stay of an hour and a half we were signalled to return on board, as Captain Maclear was obliged to get under way, and accordingly at half-past twelve we were sailing away to the southward, leaving this comparatively unknown island as a prize for future explorers.

In the course of this cruise we were followed by great numbers of petrels, among which were the giant petrel (Ossifraga gigantea), the Cape pigeon (Daption capensis), and two species of Thalassidroma (I think T. leucogaster and T. wilsoni). I noticed on this, as on several subsequent occasions, that the little storm petrel is in the habit of kicking the water with one leg when it is skimming the surface in searching for its food. This movement is usually seen most clearly when the sea presents a slightly undulating surface; and when the bird strikes the water in performing a slight curve in its flight, one can see that it is invariably the outer leg that is used. The object of this manœuvre seems to be to give the body sufficient upward impulse to prevent the wings from becoming wetted in rising from near the surface. I have often observed the Atlantic storm petrels steady themselves on the water with both legs together, but have never seen them perform this one-legged "kick," like their congeners of the Pacific. There are contradictory statements in natural history works as to whether petrels do or do not follow ships during the night time. Those who adopt the negative view of the question maintain that the birds rest on the waves during the night and pick up the ship next morning by following her wake. For a long time I was in doubt as to which was the correct view to take, although I had often on dark nights, when sitting on the taffrail of the ship, fancied I had heard the chirp of the small petrels. At length I became provoked that after having spent so many years at sea I should still be in doubt about such a matter as this, so I began to make systematic observations, in which I was assisted by the officers of watches and quartermasters, who were also interested in the matter. The result is that I am now quite certain that the storm petrel and Cape pigeon do follow the ship by night as well as by day, and that, moreover, the night is the best time for catching them. Every night, for a time, I used to tow a long light thread from the stern of the ship; it was about sixty yards long, and fitted at the end with an anchor-shaped piece of bottle wire, which just skimmed along the surface of the water and yet allowed the thread to float freely in the air. I found this device a great improvement on the old-fashioned method of using several unarmed threads, and in this way I caught at night-time, and even on the darkest nights, both storm petrels and Cape pigeons; the latter, however, usually breaking my thread and escaping. If I sat down quietly and held the line lightly between my finger and thumb, I would feel every now and then a vibration as a bird collided with it. On moonlight nights, moreover, one could always, by watching carefully, see the big Cape pigeons flitting about the stern of the ship.

My experience of petrels and albatrosses is that whenever they are having a really good meal, they invariably sit down on the water. This is especially noticeable about noon, when mess garbage is thrown overboard, and in perfectly calm weather I have even seen a flock of storm petrels settle down on the surface as if meaning to rest themselves, and remain as still as ducks on a pond, basking in the sunshine. One day also in moderately fine weather I thought I saw a Cape pigeon dive. This surprised me so that I watched, and saw the manœuvre repeated again and again. Some refuse had been cast overboard which scarcely floated, and this petrel, being desirous of possessing some morsels of food which were submerged, dived bodily down, apparently without the least inconvenience.

Before quitting this subject, I shall say a few words on a somewhat hackneyed but still open question, viz.,—"the flight of the albatross." I have had many opportunities of watching the yellow-billed species (D. melanophrys), and I have noticed that it sometimes uses its wings to raise or propel itself in such a manner that to a superficial observer it would then appear to be only soaring with wings stationary. It does not "flap" them, but depresses them rapidly towards the breast, so that it seems as if the body were being raised at the expense of the wings, whereas, in reality, the entire bird is elevated. The movement does not resemble a flap, simply because the return of the wings to the horizontal position is accomplished by a comparatively slow movement. By resorting to this manœuvre occasionally, it is able to maintain a soaring flight for periods which, without its aid, might be considered extraordinarily long. Of course, when it wants to gain a fresh stock of buoyancy and momentum, it gives three or four flaps like any other bird.

During our return stay at Valparaiso from the 1st to the 21st of August, I made a trip to Santiago, the capital of Chili. Santiago is built on the great plateau which lies between the coast range of hills and the Cordillera, and is 1,500 feet above the sea level. The distance by rail from Valparaiso is about 120 miles, but as the railroad makes the greater part of the ascent within a distance of 50 miles, the average gradient of the incline is considerable. The train follows the line of the seashore for a distance of about 3 miles to the northward of Valparaiso, when it reaches the mouth of a wide valley running inland, the windings of whose right bank it follows until a station called Llallai (pronounced "Yayai") is reached. It then makes a steep ascent along the side of a mountain, and here on one side a precipitous wall of conglomerate rock faces the carriage windows, while on the other the eye gazes into the depths of an ever-receding valley, above which the train seems poised as if by magic. While one is still lost in contemplation of this abyss, a short tunnel in a buttress of the mountain is traversed, and the train suddenly sweeps round a sharp corner, and crossing the valley by a light iron bridge which here spans a part of it, constricted to a narrow chasm, enters a highland defile on the opposite side. This place is known as the "Mequin Paso." The train now pursues a meandering track among the hills of Montenegro, where the summit level of the railway is reached, and then inclines gradually downwards to the great plain of Santiago.

After establishing ourselves in the Oddo Hotel, which is situated in the middle of the city, close to the "Plaza De Armas," we commenced our explorations, and first proceeded to the Natural History Museum. It lies on the outskirts of the town and occupies a spacious building which was originally constructed for the Exhibition of 1875, and to which the Natural History collections were transferred in 1877. Favoured by a letter of introduction, we were here fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Dr. Phillipi, the distinguished naturalist, who has for many years had charge of the museum; and to whose courtesy and good nature we were much indebted. The collections illustrative of South American ornithology and ethnology were particularly fine. The herbarium seemed to be very extensive, and was so excellently arranged as to afford ready access to any groups of specimens. In the spacious hall devoted to this department, we saw a section of a beech tree from Magellan which was more than seven feet in diameter, and the silicified trunk of a tree fifty centimetres in diameter, which had been found near Santa Barbara. The mammalian collection included two specimens of the Huemul (Cervus chilensis), one of which was said to be the original figured by Gay in his "Historia Physica y Politica de Chilé." Among the human crania were some very curious specimens illustrating the extremes of dolichocephaly and brachycephaly. It is to be regretted that the subsidy voted by the Chilian government for the maintenance of this admirable museum does not exceed £100 a year, and Dr. Phillipi may well be congratulated on the results of his self-sacrificing labours.

About the centre of the town of Santiago is a remarkable hill called Santa Lucia, whose summit affords a very extended view. It is a mass of columnar basalt rising abruptly from the plain to a height of about 300 feet, and presenting on all sides boldly scarped faces in which several flights of stone steps have been ingeniously cut, so as to lead by various labyrinthine routes to the summit. We made the ascent towards the close of day, and were well repaid for our trouble by the really magnificent view. The town lay extended at our feet with its various buildings and monuments standing up in bold relief. As we raised our eyes, its outskirts dwindled into the broad plain of Santiago valley, which here seemed to form an immense amphitheatre, surrounded in the distance by a chain of lofty hills whose snow-capped summits were at this hour illumined with the lovely roseate colours so characteristic of sunset in the Cordilleras.

On the following day we visited the site of the church of La Compania, where the fire took place in the year 1863, when some 2,000 people, mostly women, were burnt to death. The church was never rebuilt, but in its place now stands a handsome bronze monument to commemorate the victims of this dreadful calamity. Immediately adjoining are the splendid buildings in which the sittings of congress are held.

The morning of our return was cold and frosty, and the plain of Santiago was enveloped in a dense mist, from which we did not emerge until the train had entered the mountain valleys, through which it wound towards the heights of Montenegro. Here we rose above the gloomy mists, and were gladdened by the bright and warm rays of a sun whose beams were as yet screened from the lowlands. Wild ducks were to be seen in the marshes near the railways, scarcely disturbed by the passage of the train; flocks of doves rose from the bushes here and there; owls hovered about in a scared sort of way, as if ashamed of being seen out in the honest sunlight; and on many a tree top was perched a solitary buzzard or vulture. Later in the forenoon small flocks of the military starlings were frequently sighted, their brilliant scarlet plumage showing to great advantage against the pale green bushes of the hill sides. After passing the summit level we rattled down the incline towards Llallai, at what seemed to me to be a very high speed. I kept looking out of the window at first, watching the engine disappearing from sight as it suddenly swept round an abrupt curve and entered a cutting, and admiring the wriggling of the train as it swiftly threaded its way in and out among the hills. Sometimes our route would seem to lead us into a cul-de-sac of the hills, and when apparently almost at the end of it, the engine would abruptly alter her course and sweep away in a direction nearly at right angles to its former course, dragging the docile and flexible chain of carriages away with it. I had missed all this on the upward journey—I suppose because our slower speed then made curves and cuttings look less alarming. After a while, I began to reflect on the probable consequences of our suddenly coming upon a flock of heavy cattle in one of these nasty cuttings, and the more I pondered the more I became convinced that although the cow-catcher of our engine was well able to cope with a single bullock or even two, yet that in the case of our colliding with a flock of half-a-dozen or so, something unpleasant must surely happen. This was not a cheering subject of thought, so I turned away from the window and tried to interest myself in the contents of a Chilian newspaper. A few days previously, I heard that a single bullock had been met with on this same incline, and had been satisfactorily accounted for by the "cow-catcher." The body was smashed to pieces and thrown off the track, but the people in the train (one of whom was my informant) experienced only a very slight shock. At Llallai station we stopped for breakfast, for which the cold air of the morning had sufficiently prepared us, and in the afternoon we arrived comfortably at Valparaiso.

We again stayed at Coquimbo from the 23rd to the 30th of August, having been obliged to return there on account of a court-martial. The appearance of the country had changed very much since our previous visit. Bare tracts of sand had given place to an uniform coating of verdure, and a great variety of flowering plants were visible in full bloom. There was a species of Aristolochia very common on the rocky hills, whose large pitcher-shaped perianth frequently imprisoned a number of flies of different species, and I found that I could add materially to my entomological collection by examining these plants, and despoiling them of their living prey, for most of the pitchers contained living flies, and some of them the remains of insects apparently in a half-digested state. This flower constitutes a very effectual fly-trap; and I once noticed a great bluebottle-fly endeavouring in vain to work his way over the "chevaux-de-frise" of white hairs, which, with their ends pointing inwards, studded the interior of the tube.

During this stay I made a trip to the copper mines of Brillador, which are worked in connection with the smelting houses at Compañia. Both establishments are the property of Mr. Lambert, an English gentleman residing at Swansea, whose Chilian manager is Mr. Weir, to whom I have already alluded. I went by train to Compañia, which is the terminus of that branch of the line, and spent the night at the residence of Mr. Weir, by whose kind invitation I was enabled to make this interesting excursion. On the following morning we started on horseback, and rode over the hills to Brillador. The mines are eight miles distant from Compañia, and are situated at an elevation of 1,500 feet above the sea level. Here we put ourselves under the guidance of Mr. Richards, the courteous engineer, who clothed us in canvas mining suits, and supplied each of us with an oil lamp hung on gimbals at the extremity of a long stick; and thus equipped we entered one of the adit levels opening on to a steep hillside, and bade adieu for some hours to the friendly daylight. One of the peculiarities of a Chilian mine is that the ordinary ladder of civilization is replaced by a notched pole, and that, by means of a succession of these poles, the descent and ascent of the shaft of the mine is accomplished. Another is that the ore is conveyed from the works at the bottom of the shaft in sacks of hide, each man thus carrying on his shoulders the enormous weight of 200 lbs. The miners whom I saw employed in this work were naked to the waist, and exhibited splendid muscular development of chest and arm. I examined one of the sacks of ore, and found that I could barely raise it off the ground. These fine athletic fellows are fed principally upon maize, figs, and bread, few of them eating meat. Three kinds of copper ore are found in this mine. Near the surface is a light green carbonate of copper which is easily smelted, and when rich in metal (i.e., free from extraneous mineral matter) is in much request; but even when of low percentage it can be advantageously used for the manufacture of sulphate of copper. Next in order of depth is found a purple ore, which is a double sulphide of copper and iron; and at the bottom of the lode is the yellow sulphide of copper, commonly known in Chili as "bronce." Here we saw a most ingenious "rock drill," working at the end of a new level cutting. The apparatus, which is simple and most effective, consists of a solid piston working in a very strong cylinder and driven to and fro by compressed air, whose action is regulated by a slide valve. The drill is fitted directly into the end of the piston rod, and by an ingenious arrangement it is made to perform a partial movement of rotation during each backward motion, so that it may strike the rock in a new direction each time. The working pressure of air was 50 lbs. per square inch. We noted the time while a boring was being made, and found that it took exactly nine minutes to make a hole nine inches deep, through the hard rock. The power is originated by a double-acting steam-engine, situated at the inner extremity of the main adit level, from whence a supply of compressed air is conveyed in flexible pipes along the various tunnels in which boring is being done. In subsequently blasting the rock, gunpowder is used in preference to dynamite or other explosives, I believe on account of the toughness of the ore, which therefore yields more satisfactorily to a comparatively gradual explosive. In the evening we rode back to Mr. Weir's residence at Compañia, and on the following day I returned on board the ship, which weighed anchor the same afternoon, and proceeded southward towards Talcahuano.

Talcahuano, where we lay from the 4th of September to the 4th of October, is the most important seaport in southern Chili, and possesses an excellent and roomy anchorage. It is situated in a fertile and picturesque country; and it is in direct communication by rail, not only with Concepcion and all the more important towns of the south and central provinces, but also by branch line with an extensive grain-producing territory bordering on Araucania, whose produce it receives. Concepcion, which takes rank as the third city in the Republic, is nine miles from Talcahuano, and lies on the bank of the Bio Bio, a broad, shallow, and sluggish river. The houses and public buildings there have the appearance of considerable antiquity, although in reality the greater number must have been rebuilt since the great earthquake of 1835, when the city was reduced to ruins. Penco, the old Spanish capital of the province of Concepcion, was situated in the eastern extremity of the Bay of Concepcion; but when it was destroyed by a tidal wave in 1730, the people moved inland and established themselves near the site of the present city. However, by the cataclysm of 1751, the newly-founded city of Concepcion shared the fate of Penco, but was soon rebuilt, as it was again, in great part, after the earthquake of 1835.

We had intended to make only a short stay at Talcahuano, but on the day preceding our arrival there, a case of small-pox appeared among the crew, followed by a second and third, and we were therefore obliged to remain in this harbour until our patients should be sufficiently well to return on board.

There was a long, low, sandy island (Isla de los Reyes) lying across the head of Talcahuano Bay, and inhabited only by a couple of shepherds who were looking after a herd of cattle and horses. There being no available hospital to which our patients could be sent, we obtained leave from the Chilian authorities to establish a temporary quarantine station on the island. Accordingly, on the day of our arrival we set up tents on an unfrequented and particularly airy part of the island, and having supplied them with provisions and all the necessary appliances, we installed our patients in their new quarters. They made good recoveries. My medical duties required me to make frequent visits to this little establishment, and I found it convenient to make it the centre of my afternoon rambles. On the mainland immediately adjoining the island, I found a great marshy plain of many miles in extent, and intersected in various directions by deep muddy ditches which communicated with the sea, and at high tide brought supplies of sea-water to a chain of broad, shallow lagoons, the home of multitudes of waterfowl. Pintail ducks, widgeon, herons, curlew, flamingoes, turkey-buzzards, gulls, lapwings, and sandpipers found here a congenial home. The shrill, harsh cry of the spur-winged lapwing (the "terutero" of the Pampas so graphically described by Darwin) was for ever scaring the other peacefully-disposed birds, and at the same time invoking maledictions from the sportsman. The plumage of this bird is very handsome, and the bright crimson colour of the iris and eyelid during life gave it a strange fascinating appearance, which can hardly be realized from a stuffed specimen.

When the first ebb of the tide left bare the mudbanks in the lagoons, the gulls and curlews collected in vast numbers for their diurnal meal. Of the gulls only three kinds were seen, viz., L. dominicanus, L. glaucoides, and L. maculipennis. The latter were in various conditions of plumage; some birds having a deep black hood, and others with a head almost entirely white, while between these two extremes, there was every gradation. The turkey-buzzards derived a plentiful supply of food from the bodies of fish stranded on the beach. For some reason or other dogfish were constantly coming to grief in this way, bodies of fish, two and three feet long, being met with sometimes, all along the beach, at average distances of about one hundred yards apart.

One day we made an excursion up the river Andalien, which flows into Talcahuano Bay, near the village of Penco, and which at high tide is navigable for boats to a distance of seven miles from its mouth. Our main object was to see something of the nutria—a large rodent (Myopotamus coypu), which is common in some of the rivers of southern Chili, and which the natives call "Coypo." In a deep, narrow, ditch-like tributary of the Andalien, we came across several of these animals, swimming and diving about, some half-immersed clumps of bushes. At first sight their manner of swimming and diving would lead one to imagine that they were otters, but on closer inspection the broad muzzle with its long bristly whiskers, and foxy-red hair, reveal their true character. The "coypo" is distinguished from its northern ally, the beaver, in having the scaly tail round instead of flat, and from the Chilian river otter, the "huillin" (Lutra huidobrio), it is easily known by its dental characters as well as by its tail and feet. The hind feet are webbed as in the beaver. I dissected one which we shot, and found the stomach full of green vegetable matter, and in the abdominal cavity, which was a good deal injured by the shot, were fragments of a large tapeworm. This specimen weighed 10 lbs., and measured 2 ft. 10 in. from snout to extremity of tail.

Some days subsequently I accompanied Captain Maclear on a railway trip up the country, Mr. Lawrence, the superintendent of the line, having, with the courtesy so characteristic of English residents in Chili, invited the captain and one other officer to join him in a tour of inspection which he was about to make along the Angol branch of the South Chilian railway. We started from Concepcion at 9 a.m., on a small locomotive which was set apart for the use of the superintendent. It was a lightly built affair, partly "housed in" and partly open, and was fitted to accommodate two or three passengers besides the driver and fireman, so that it afforded us an exceedingly pleasant method of seeing something of the country. This swift little vehicle was called the "Quillapan," in commemoration of a distinguished native chief of that name. Our driver was a most intelligent and well-informed Englishman named Clark, who had lost his foot about three years previously in a railway accident, at which I understood that Lady Brassey, of the Sunbeam, had been present; and he spoke gratefully of the kind attention which she paid to him. His wooden leg did not seem to be much impediment to his engine-driving, for he rattled us along round curves and down inclines at a speed which, while possessing all the charms of novelty, had also in no small degree the excitement of danger. However, we soon got used to this, as well as to the jumping and jolting of the light little engine.

For the first ten miles after leaving Concepcion, our route lay along the right or northerly bank of the Bio Bio river. Here most of the railway cuttings were through a clay-slate rock, which alternated with bands of black shale, and occasionally exhibited thin seams of coal. Further on, and throughout the rest of the journey to Angol, the cuttings were through banks of sand exhibiting horizontal stratification, and being apparently of fluviatile origin. A run of two hours brought us to the junction station of San Rosendo, from whence the northerly line to Chillan, Talca, and Santiago, and the S.E. line to Angol diverge. Here we breakfasted, and stretched our legs by a stroll. Immediately on resuming our journey we crossed the Lara,—a tributary of the Bio Bio,—and then continued our course along the right bank of the main river, until we had just passed the station of Santa Fé. Here the line made a short semicircular sweep, and crossed the Bio Bio by a low wooden bridge of about two hundred yards in length. Clark, the driver, told us that during freshets the water rose about fifteen feet above this bridge, completely stopping the traffic. On asking him why they did not build a strong high level bridge, he replied that a rude wooden structure such as the present one cost little, and when swept away could be readily and cheaply replaced; but that a bridge of durable style would take too long to pay the cost of its own construction. This explanation may not at first sight seem very lucid, but it is worthy of consideration, for the principle which it involves is, I fancy, applicable to many of the affairs of Chili.

We had now entered the great central valley of the country, a broad plateau interposed between the coast range and the Cordillera, and extending in one unbroken sheet of fertile land from here to Santiago. Before us now, as far as the eye could penetrate, lay a straight level track, so Mr. Clark turned the steam full on, and the "Quillapan" responded to the tune of forty-five miles an hour. When about a mile or two from a desolate station called "Robleria," we were rapidly approaching a long wooden bridge, when we saw a man appear on the track just on our side of the bridge, and step leisurely from sleeper to sleeper. On hearing our whistle he looked round in a startled attitude; but to our astonishment, instead of jumping to one side of the line, he lost his head, and passing on to the bridge made frantic efforts to cross before our engine came up. The bridge was an open framework, consisting simply of wooden piles, span-beams, and sleepers, and was so narrow that there was no room for a foot-passenger at either side of a passing train. The wretched man's misery must have been extreme, for as he crossed the bridge he had to jump continually from sleeper to sleeper, and could not of course look back again behind him to see how things were going on. It was a moment of intense suspense to us also, for it was now too late to stop the engine, Clark not having calculated on the man attempting to cross before us. However, he gained the off buttress of the bridge just in time to throw himself down a bank on one side of the line, while the "Quillapan" sped on like a whirlwind.

We reached the Angol terminus at 1.30 p.m., and on coming to a standstill, found ourselves the centre of a small admiring crowd, consisting of Chilian peasants and Araucanian Indians. The latter wore very scanty clothing, in which the only distinctive feature which I noticed was a band of red cloth tied round the forehead and occiput. In stature and regular features they somewhat resembled the Chilians, but their distinctly coppery colour marked them out at once. Angol is now one of the frontier settlements established recently by the Chilian Government in Araucanian territory, and it is fortified against the marauding expeditions of these hardy warriors by a chain of forts which overlook the settlement, and are garrisoned by regular Chilian troops. The district is of great value, on account of the richness of the soil and its suitability for the cultivation of wheat, which has now become the staple article of commerce in the southern provinces of the Republic. Our stay at Angol was, unfortunately, very short, as the station-master told us that a train due at Angol that afternoon was even then telegraphed as waiting at one of the upper stations until our return, when the line would be clear for it to move on.

On our journey back we narrowly escaped colliding seriously with a herd of bullocks. We had just passed Robleria, when we noticed some distance ahead of us a solitary bullock standing quietly on the line. On the whistle being sounded he at once left the track, so that the steam, which had been momentarily turned off, was again put on, and the engine resumed her usual speed. We had now approached to within forty yards of the place where the animal had been, when suddenly from a dense clump of bushes to the light there emerged a herd of half-a-dozen bullocks, who with one accord began leisurely to cross the line. Quick as thought Clark with one hand turned on the whistle, while with the other he reversed the engine, leaving the steam valve wide open; and immediately there was a great rattle of machinery below the platform, and the engine checked her way considerably. And now at the last moment, and when the cattle seemed to be almost under the buffers of the engine, they, suddenly coming to a sense of their danger, scattered, and sheered off; but not quickly enough to prevent one unlucky animal being caught by the hind quarters and chucked off like a football, its body rolling down the embankment to the left in a cloud of dust as we whirled by. Clark coolly replaced the reversing lever, and let the engine rush ahead again as if nothing had happened. He remarked that if he had been on one of the regular big engines he would not have bothered himself about the beasts at all, but that half-a-dozen bullocks were rather too much for the little "Quillapan."

Another trip which we made was to the Island of Quiriquina, which lies in the entrance of the bay at about five miles' distance from the anchorage of Talcahuano. An hour's run in the steam-cutter brought us near the northern extremity of the island, where we landed with difficulty in the Bay of Las Tablas. This name has reference to the tabular form of the blocks of sandstone which have fallen from the face of the cliffs and lie strewn on the beach, in which position they resembled the blocks of concrete which one often sees near a pier or breakwater in course of construction. Close to where we landed we found portions of the silicified trunk of a tree, resting on the débris at the foot of the cliff, its fractured ends exhibiting a jagged appearance, as if the fragment had not long previously been broken from the parent stem. It was two and a half feet long by a foot in diameter, and presented well-marked sections of the concentric rings of growth. In one of the rock pools closely adjoining we found also a smaller water-worn fragment, which we were able to annex as a specimen. The sandstone cliff above us exhibited well-marked lines of stratification, dipping to the southward at an angle of about 15°, and in the talus at its base were several large globular masses, which consisted almost entirely of fossil shells, bound together by a matrix of soft clayey sandstone. Conspicuous among these shells were examples of the genera Baculites and Cardium. While the lowest rock in the series of strata was a hard grey sandstone, full of fossil shells, and forming a kind of level terrace skirting the beach, and a wash at high tide, on the north side of the bay this last-mentioned rock was continuous with another horizontal terrace, which ran at a somewhat higher level, as if introduced there by a fault in the strata. It was a coarse, unfossiliferous conglomerate, composed of angular pieces of shingle bound together by a hard but very scanty matrix.

CHAPTER V.
OUR SECOND SEASON IN PATAGONIAN WATERS.

On the evening of the 4th October, our small-pox patients being then sufficiently well to return on board, we sailed from Talcahuano, and proceeded to the southward in order to resume our surveying work in the Trinidad and Concepcion channels.

We entered the Gulf of Peñas on the afternoon of the 9th October, and as it was a clear, bright, sunshiny day, we had a good view of Cape Tres Montes, which forms the northern horn of the gulf, while ahead of us, and towards the S.E. bight, lay the Sombrero, Wager, and Byron Islands, the first of which marks the entrance of the Messier Channel. When we had got fairly inside this channel, a Fuegian canoe of the customary pattern was seen approaching from the western shore. We stopped to allow her to communicate with us, and, of course, the usual bartering of skins for knives and tobacco took place between the natives and our seamen. There were about twelve persons in the canoe, all of whom looked more than usually plump in regard to their bodies, but had the characteristically stunted legs of this wandering race. On leaving us they appeared to be quite sold out, and were almost entirely naked, some of them completely so; however, they seemed well pleased with the bit of traffic which they had accomplished.

We anchored for the night in Island Harbour. On the following morning we got under way at an early hour, and steamed down the Messier Channel and through the English Narrows, reaching Eden Harbour about dusk.

We passed several small icebergs, which had probably reached the channels from a glacier in Iceberg Sound. The largest was about twenty yards across, and projected about six feet above the surface. Most of the hills in this latitude were snow-clad as far as the 1,000 feet line.

On the evening of the next day, the 11th October, we reached the Trinidad Channel, and established ourselves for a time at Cockle Cove, an anchorage on the south shore of this channel, of which the survey was as yet incomplete.

It was now spring time on the west coast of Patagonia, but the weather was as chilly and wet as it had been in the autumn of the previous year, when we were moving north towards our winter quarters; indeed, from the accounts furnished to us by the sealers, as well as from our own experience, I am inclined to think that there are no marked seasonal changes in the weather on the west coast, whither the constant westerly winds are continually delivering the burden of aqueous vapour which they accumulate in their passage over the Southern Ocean. On the other hand, the condition of the fauna and flora indicate the natural two-fold division of the year as decisively as it is observed in the same latitude in the northern hemisphere.

In the month of October at Cockle Cove the kelp geese and steamer-ducks were preparing their nests, and the cormorants were assembling at their rookeries; the holly-leaved berberry (Berberis ilicifolia) was already displaying its gorgeous clusters of globular orange flowers, and the giant creeper (Campsidium chilense) was also in bloom, its scarlet bell-shaped flowers peeping from aloft among the branches of the beech-trees, where they appear to seek a position in which they may flourish safe from intrusion. Many of the mosses and Jungermanniæ were also now in full fruit.

OUR FUEGIAN FRIENDS AT TILLY BAY, STRAITS OF MAGELLAN (p. [118]).

We dredged several times at Cockle Cove. The bottom was muddy, and abounded in a species of Mactra, which the men were fond of eating; and as they commonly called these shells "cockles," the anchorage was given a name which would recall the memory of these much-esteemed comestibles.

We also obtained numbers of a pale rose-coloured Gephyrean. On placing one of these creatures in a globe of fresh sea-water it seemed to feel quite at home, protruding its tentacles and puffing out its worm-like body until it looked like a tiny jam-roll with a star-fish attached to one end. These tentacles, which are eight in number and surround the mouth, are each one provided with from eight to ten finger-like processes. When there is only the former number, the organ looks remarkably like a hand, and the resemblance is rendered more striking when the tentacle is extended, and grasps some minute particles in the water, which to all appearance it conveys to its mouth. The usual shape assumed by this protean animal is that of a long cylinder with rounded ends, but it sometimes shows an annular construction about the middle of the body, and sometimes the whole anterior half of the body is retracted so as to give the animal a telescopic appearance. These changes of shape are produced by the action of two distinct systems of contractile fibres, transverse and longitudinal, the fibres of the former being disposed closely together like minute hoops, and girding the body from end to end, while the longitudinal fibres are arranged in five broad and well-marked equidistant bands, which extend uninterruptedly from one end of the cylindrical body to the other.

One night a small petrel flew on board, into one of the hoisted-up boats, where it was found by one of the seamen in the usual apparently helpless state. It is odd that some species of the family of petrels should find such difficulty about rising on the wing from a ship's deck. A freshly-caught Cape pigeon, placed on its legs on the deck, seems to forget utterly that it possesses the power of flight, and does not even attempt to use its wings, but waddles about like an old farmyard duck. The petrel above referred to was the little diver (Pelecanoides urinatrix), a bird not uncommon in the channels, but yet very difficult to obtain. During the previous season on the surveying ground, Sir George Nares, who was the first to notice it, reported one day that he had seen one of his old arctic friends, the "little auk," which indeed in its habits it strongly resembles. It usually (at all events during the day-time) sits on the surface of the water, and on the least sign of danger takes a long dive like a grebe, and on rising to the surface again flies away some few hundred yards, keeping all the while close to the surface. Its flight is like that of the grebe, but more feeble. In the Falkland Islands the habits of this bird are somewhat different. The bill is peculiarly broad and of a dark horn colour, the breast and belly of a dull grey, and the upper parts black; the tarsi and feet lavender. The body is short and plump, and is provided with disproportionately short wings. Speaking of this bird, Mr. Darwin says that it "offers an example of those extraordinary cases of a bird evidently belonging to one well-marked family, yet both in its habits and its structure allied to a very distant tribe."

There was a "rookery" of the red-cered cormorant (Phalacrocorax magellanicus) near Cockle Cove, but the nests were placed on almost inaccessible ledges in the face of the rocky cliff, which was streaked all over with vertical white lines from the droppings of the birds. This species of cormorant is very abundant throughout all the channels. A second species, a jet black bird (Phalacrocorax imperialis), builds its nest in trees; and there was a characteristic "rookery" of this tree cormorant at Port Bermejo, where we anchored in the month of November. It was in a quiet sequestered place, where two old and leafless beech trees overhung the margin of an inland pond. The nests were constructed of dried grass, and were placed among the terminal branches of the trees. These funereal-looking birds, sitting on or perching by their scraggy nests on the bare superannuated trees, formed a truly dismal spectacle. They uttered, too, a peculiar cawing sound, which was not cheerful, and so remarkably like the grunting of a pig, that before I saw the rookery I was for some time peeping through the bushes and looking for tracks, imagining myself in the neighbourhood of some new pachydermatous animal. It seemed as if the birds took the grunting business by turns, only one at a time giving tongue.

I was surprised to see how neatly they alighted on the branches. There was none of the awkward shuffling motion of wings and feet which they exhibit when alighting on the ground or on the water; but, on the contrary, each fresh arrival soared on to its perching place as smoothly and cleverly as a hawk, and grasped the branch firmly with its claws. At another tree rookery in Swallow Bay I noticed that when some of the birds on flying in observed my presence, they would rise high above the tree, and remain soaring around in circles till I had gone away. The method of soaring was to all appearance as smooth, steady, and devoid of effort as that of a vulture. And yet the cormorant is a heavy short-winged bird, that rises from the ground with difficulty, and whose ordinary method of flight is most laborious.

The handsomest bird in this region is the kingfisher (Ceryle stellata). It is commonly to be seen perched on some withered branches overhanging the water, where it will remain in a huddled-up sleeping attitude, its head turned sideways, but with an eye all the time fixed intently on the water beneath, until it espies a fish, when it drops like a stone, cleaving the water with a short sharp splash, and a moment afterwards emerges with an upward impulse, which raises it clear of the water, and enables it to fly away at once without any preliminary shaking or fluttering. It is an exceedingly unsuspicious and fearless bird, and when perched on its place of observation, will often allow one in a boat to approach within arm's reach of it. Mossy banks overhanging low sea cliffs are its usual nesting places, and there it excavates a tunnel through the soft moss and turfy soil, and at a distance of more than two feet from the aperture forms its nest.

There is a very peculiar and constant feature in the scenery of the woodlands about the summits of the low hills, which has given rise to much speculation amongst us. It is that many of the rounded bosses of syenite rock, which project for a few feet above the level of the swampy land, exhibit on their highest parts isolated mossy tufts, which look at a little distance like small piles of rubbish placed artificially in prominent places as landmarks, or like the marks which mountain climbers are so fond of setting up on rocky pinnacles as records of their feats. The usual shape is that of a cylinder about eighteen inches high and ten inches in diameter, with a rounded top; and it adheres to the rock by a well-defined base of matted fibres. It is composed of a very compact moss (Tetraplodon mnioides), which is of a rich green colour on the summit of the tuft when it is in a flourishing condition, and whose decaying remains, converted into a peaty mould entangled in a fibrous network of roots, form the body and base of the tuft. When this moss is in fruit, its long spore-bearing stalks, which rise to a height of three inches above its surface, are of a dark-red colour where they emerge from the green surface, this colour gradually changing into a beautiful golden-yellow above, where the spore-cases are supported. It is then an exceedingly pretty object. If one of these tufts be torn away from its rocky foundation, which is very easily done, and is a most tempting work of destruction, a white scar is left on the rock which will catch the eye at the distance of a mile, and which strongly resembles the small white-washed marks set up on the coasts by our surveyors for shooting theodolite angles at. Now the question is, why does the moss establish itself in this peculiar position, on the otherwise bare and exposed rock? It is all the same whether the rock be dome-shaped, as it most commonly is on the low hill-tops, or pyramidal, or wedge-shaped, the tuft—if there is one present—is invariably to be found perched on the highest part of it. I can only attribute this to the peculiar habit of growth of the moss, adapting it specially to this shape and this situation; a situation to which moreover it gives a decided preference, for I have not observed it growing elsewhere. Sometimes on climbing a rocky mountain hereabouts, one sees from afar off one of these tufts perched on a commanding pinnacle at the summit; then one thinks that surely this must be a cairn erected by some desolate traveller, and it is only on approaching closely that the delusion vanishes. It will then, perhaps, be found that the tuft stands alone, surrounded in all directions by a sloping surface of bare rock which isolates it by a radius of forty yards from all other vegetation; the little tuft bearing itself up bravely as if in obstinate defiance of the wind and rain, which one is at first inclined to think must have swept away an old uniform mantle of vegetation from the rocky surface, leaving the mossy tuft on the summit the sole survivor.

There is another peculiar form of vegetable growth which is a characteristic of the landscape in certain parts of this region, and which I have not noticed to the same extent elsewhere. It is this. Whenever a mass of bushes happens to be exposed to the prevailing westerly wind, as in the case of promontories which receive the unbroken blast on one of their sides, or of exposed islets in mid-channel, it will be seen that the bushes not only lean away permanently from the direction of the prevailing wind (as is usual everywhere), but that their summits are cut off evenly to a common plane which slopes gently upwards, and thus presents as trim an appearance as if the bushes had been carefully clipped to that shape with a gardening shears. Our surveying parties have sometimes been disappointed at finding that a headland, which seemed from a short distance to be covered with an inviting mantle of short grass, and which therefore looked a convenient place on which to establish an observing station, was in reality defended by a dense growth of bushes, which exhibited the phenomenon in question, and over, under, or through which it was almost impossible to get. Sometimes one could get over these bushes by lying down at full length and rolling sideways down the incline; but this method was objectionable, for it was sometimes ten or fifteen feet from the surface to the hard ground beneath. The reason of this curious growth is obvious enough. Each aspiring leafy twig that happens by a too luxuriant growth to shoot above its fellows, is cut down by the relentless blast before it can acquire strength enough to make good its footing; and those branches alone survive in the struggle which grow uniformly with their neighbours, and which thus present a sufficiently compact surface to withstand the blighting influence of the westerly gales.

One day, when we were lying at our old anchorage in Tom Bay, I saw a cormorant rise to the surface with a large fish in its mouth, which, for several minutes, it vainly attempted to swallow. I noticed it chucking the fish about until it had got hold of it by the head, but even then it seemed unable to "strike down" the savoury morsel. A flock of dominican gulls now appeared on the scene, and seeing the state of affairs at once swooped down on the unlucky cormorant, but the wily bird discomfited them by diving and carrying the fish with it. It was now most ludicrous to witness the disappointed appearance of the gulls, as they sat in a group on the water looking foolishly about, and apparently overcome with grief at their inability to follow up the chase by diving. After an interval of about half-a-minute the cormorant reappeared some distance off with the fish still in its mouth, and now one of the gulls succeeded at last in snatching the fish from its grasp, and flew away with it rapidly up a long winding arm of the sea. At this critical moment a skua (Stercorarius chilensis), hove in sight, and gave chase to the fugitive gull, until, unfortunately, a turn in the creek concealed both birds from our sight, but left us to safely conjecture that the last comer had ultimately the satisfaction of consuming the wretched fish.

I have often wondered at the apparently stupid manner in which long files of cormorants will continue on their course over the surface of the water without deviating so as to avoid a dangerous locality until they are close to the place or object to be avoided. Many persons are doubtless familiar with the appearance of these birds as they fly towards a boat which happens to lie in their route, and may remember the startled way in which, when about twenty or thirty yards off, they will alter their course with a vigorous swish of the tail and sheer off confusedly from the danger. Again, how eager they are to take advantage of the (probably) acuter vision of terns and gulls, when they observe that either of the latter have discovered a shoal of fish. Is it not therefore probable that cormorants are naturally short-sighted?—a disadvantage for which they are amply compensated by their superior diving powers.

The required survey of the Trinidad Channel was completed by the middle of the month of December; but before leaving this part of the coast, one day was devoted to an exploration of the "Brazo del Norte," a sound running in a northerly direction from the Trinidad Channel, and piercing the so-called Wellington Island. We got under way from Tom Bay early in the morning, and steaming across the Trinidad Channel, entered "Brazo del Norte," and explored it to a distance of twenty-six miles from the entrance. We were then obliged to turn back in order to reach Tom Bay before nightfall. It was a great pity that time did not permit us to trace this magnificent Sound to its northern extremity; for so far as we could judge there seemed every probability of its communicating directly with the Fallos Channel, which is known to extend southwards from the Gulf of Peñas to within a few miles of the place where we turned back. In this event it would prove a good sheltered route for vessels using the Straits of Magellan, and if free from the objectionable restrictions which close the Messier Channel route to large steamers, would be used not only in preference to it but to Trinidad Channel itself, whose approach from seaward is at least uninviting, if not hazardous.

On leaving Tom Bay we moved gradually down the Concepcion and Inocentes Channels, always anchoring for the night, and sometimes stopping for a day or two in order to examine some new port.

At Latitude Cove a black-necked swan (Cygnus nigricollis)—besides which only one other was ever seen by us in the western channels—was shot. It proved to be a male bird, weighing only seven pounds, and was in poor condition, having strayed far from its own happy hunting grounds among the lagoons of central Patagonia.

We anchored at Sandy Point in the Strait of Magellan on the 2nd January, and remained there eleven days in order to provision the ship, and to give the crew a change of air.

Here I made the acquaintance of the master of a sealing schooner, an intelligent man named John Stole—a Norwegian by birth—from whom we obtained much interesting information about the natives of Tierra del Fuego. At the time of our visit he was laid up with a bad leg, on account of which he had had to relinquish the command of his vessel the Rescue for this season's cruise. His favourite sealing ground was among the rocky islets about the S.W. parts of Tierra del Fuego; but in the course of his wanderings he had visited most of the islets and coasts extending from the mouth of the river Plate on the eastern coast to the Gulf of Peñas in the westward. During his last cruise, he had the misfortune to be attacked by a party of natives in the Beagle Channel, at a place not far from the missionary station of Ushuwia. He gave us a most graphic description of the affair. His schooner had been lying quietly at anchor in a rather desolate part of the channel, having at the time only five men, including himself, on board, when a canoe containing ten Fuegians—eight men and two women—came alongside. Not suspecting any treachery, he went below to have his tea, leaving one man on the forecastle to look after the vessel. Presently hearing a scuffle on deck, he put up his head through the small hatch of his cabin, when a native standing above made a blow at him with a canoe paddle. The blow failed to take effect, as he had just time to duck his head under the boom of the mainsail which was secured amidships over the hatchway. He now retreated to his cabin, snatched up a revolver which was lying ready loaded, and returning to the hatch quietly shot the native who was waiting to strike another blow at his head. Two others now followed up the attack, armed with heavy stones, but they were shot in quick succession, one of them falling overboard and capsizing the canoe. As Stole now raised himself through the hatch, a fourth native attacked him from behind, but he turned half round, rested the barrel of the revolver on his left arm, and fired into his assailant's eye, the entire charge passing through the wretched creature's head. In the meantime the crew were successful in expelling the four natives who had attacked the fore part of the vessel, and all of whom were killed. The two women in the boat had been passing up stones as ammunition for their male companions, and when the canoe capsized one of them was drowned. When the fight was over, the deck presented a ghastly sight, being sloppy all over with blood in which were lying the bodies of the dead and dying savages, as well as quantities of stones which before the attack began had been passed up from the canoe to be expended in storming the hold of the vessel. Of the ten natives, eight men had been killed, and one woman drowned, the surviving woman being taken prisoner. The sealers now got under way, and proceeded to the mission of Ushuwia, where they reported the matter to Mr. Bridges, the manager of the station. He investigated the case, and on finding that the account given by the sealers was corroborated by the evidence of the surviving woman, exonerated the former of any misconduct in the energetic measures which they had taken to defend their lives, and to defeat the object of the natives, which of course was to obtain the possession of the schooner.

The first of the small sealing fleet to arrive at Sandy Point this season was the Felis, of Stanley, a small rakish schooner, commanded by an Irishman named Buckley. He had a cargo of 500 sealskins, which he sold to a German dealer on shore, at the rate of 30s. a skin, this being considered a good price for Sandy Point, and generally only given for the first arrivals in port; cargoes arriving late in the season not realizing more than 25s. a skin. In the present state of the home market, furs being in request, these skins, on being landed in England, whither they are conveyed by the mail-steamers, are bought by the furriers for about £4 apiece; so that the dealers at Sandy Point make a large profit by their share in the trade. Sealers fitting out at Sandy Point also usually get their stores and provisions on credit, and at an exorbitant valuation, from the same dealer to whom they subsequently sell their skins. The produce of the skins, moreover, as they are sold to the dealers at Sandy Point, is divided into three equal lots, of which one is divided among the crew, while the remaining two go to the owner, out of which he has to pay for the provisions and stores consumed on the cruise. It is calculated that the outlay on the stores swallows up about one-third of the entire sum, so that eventually about one-third of the value of the skins remains as the profit of the owner. In a very good season, the master and owner of a sealing schooner of thirty tons will make a clear profit of as much as £2,000, while each man of the crew (usually twelve in number) would get a share amounting to £80, on which to spend the blank eleven months of the off-season in idleness and debauchery.

The Magellan sealing season extends over the months of December and January. In or about the last week of November, the fur seal (Arctocephalus falklandicus) and the sea lion (Otaria jubata) "haul up" on the rocks of the outer coasts, and bring forth their young. The breeding places, or "rookeries," which they usually select, are small, low-lying, rocky islets, which are exposed to the swell of the great ocean, and over which, in heavy weather, the sea makes a more or less clean sweep. Situated as these rocks are, it is often a very difficult and dangerous matter to effect a landing, so that, to make sure of it, a sealing master usually arranges his cruise so that he may reach the vicinity of the rookery about a month before the breeding time. He then takes advantage of the first fine day to land a party of men on the rock with fuel, camping arrangements, and a large supply of provisions. The latter is essential, for it may be two or three months after the season is over before he can get a favourable day for embarking the men and the stock of skins. Cases have occurred where men have been weather-bound on the rocks for months, and reduced to the brink of starvation, although making use of seal-flesh and shell-fish as long as they could get them. The different sealing captains are, of course, very careful to conceal from each other the position of the "rookeries" of which they know; and they have got so much into the habit of deceiving each other in this respect, that it may be laid down as a safe rule, that if a sealing master says he has landed his men on some rocks to the northward, it is more than probable that the real locality is somewhere in a southerly direction. After the camping parties have been established at the "rookeries," the sealing vessel with the crew, now reduced to a very small number, is employed for the next month or two in cruising in search of new hunting-grounds. In this pursuit they sometimes wander for hundreds of miles from the place where the men have been landed, traversing unsurveyed channels and islets, trusting confidently that at night time they can always find some sheltered place where they can either anchor close in shore, or, if the water be too deep, as it generally is, make fast to a tree. When cruising in this way, they kill numbers of the Magellan sea-otter (Lutra felina), an animal which they include in their line of business, although not at all to the same extent as the fur seal. The fur of the otter when dressed is of great beauty; but as it is not now in fashion in Europe, it commands a very small price in the market, the salted skins, on delivery in England, only realizing about 2s. apiece. When the long brown hairs which form the animal's apparent coat have been removed, the underlying fur is seen to be of a beautiful golden-yellow colour. The otters are obtained by sealers in a great measure by bartering with native canoes (the Fuegians catching them with dogs), and also by shooting them, as they swim through the kelp close to the beach. Both the otter and sealskin are salted dry,—that is to say, each skin is spread out flat, salt is sprinkled plentifully over the inside, and the skin is then rolled up with the hair outside, and tied up into a round bundle. The old fur seals are killed just as they are met with, and without any regard to the preservation of the stock. The sealers commonly call the females "claphatches," and the males "wigs;" the skin of the former is much the more valuable of the two. The sea lions (another species of seal) are seldom meddled with; but occasionally a sealer, in default of the regular article, will kill them for the sake of the oil, and take some of the hides, for which there is a certain demand for making "machine belting."

Buckley, the master of the Felis, told us that he had observed that in the case of the fur seal there was an interval of only one or two weeks between the date of parturition and that of coupling, and that, in the case of the "hair seal," coupling took place almost immediately after the young were brought forth. If this be true, the period of gestation cannot be less than eleven months.

Buckley presented the captain with a young fur seal—a male, six weeks old—which had been caught on the rocks, and nursed carefully by one of his crew, an Italian seaman, who had been "bottle-feeding" it with milk, and had taught it to answer to the call of a whistle. It trotted about our decks in a most lively manner, its hind feet, when trotting or walking, being turned forwards and outwards in the manner peculiar to seals of its genus. On whistling to it, it uttered a strange cry—half wail, half bark—and came to the call like a dog. When taken up in the arms and petted like a child, it lay quite still, closed its eyes and seemed to go off into a gentle sleep. It, unfortunately, died on the following day—perhaps through fretting for its Italian nurse—and its body then came into my hands as a zoological specimen.

Dr. Fenton, whose acquaintance we had made on our first visit just a year previously, was still residing at Sandy Point as medical officer of the settlement, and, with great good nature, put his house and horses at our disposal. He told me of an experiment he had been trying on the flying powers of a condor, which had been caught alive. He perforated the quills of the wing and tail feathers, so as to allow the ingress and egress of air, and on then throwing the bird up in the air found that it could neither fly nor soar. The inference is that the bird derives its buoyancy in a great measure from the formation of a vacuum in the quills of these feathers, and consequently, on air being admitted, the flapping of the wings, unaided by the buoyancy derived from the rarefied air, was insufficient either to raise or support the bird's weight. If this theory be correct, it is probable that the mechanism by which this vacuum is produced is actuated by the wing muscles, which thus discharge a two-fold office.

From the 13th of January to the 25th of March, after leaving Sandy Point, we proceeded to the western part of Magellan Straits, where we were for about nine weeks, occupied in making additions to the old surveys, principally in the narrow and tortuous part of the Strait which is called the "Crooked Reach." The scenery here is remarkably fine, and on a dry clear day—an event, however, of rare occurrence—one can fully realize the truth of old Pigafetta's remark, that "there is not in the world a more beautiful country, or better strait, than this one."

We made several stays, each of a day's duration, at Tilly Bay, a small land-locked anchorage on the north shore of Santa Ines Island, and immediately opposite to the mouth of the Jerome Channel, which leads into the Otway Water. At the head of the bay a stretch of open moorland, dotted here and there with clumps of cedar trees, led by a gentle ascent to a sort of upland plateau, formed of moss-covered undulating land with sheets of still water occupying the hollows. Not a trace of a bird was to be seen, and I was never more struck with the extreme paucity of animal life in the interior of these islands than when standing on the shore of one of these desolate lakes in Santa Ines Island.

We frequently noticed, in the deep spongy moss over which we walked, the nests of a Trap-door Spider. They appeared externally as round apertures in the surface of the moss, about an inch and a half in diameter, which were covered over with a closely woven disc of web. On removing the cover from one of them, and clearing away the surrounding moss, I found that the burrow descended vertically for a distance of about eight inches, and was lined throughout with a silky network of spider web, so that the entire web structure, i.e., the tube and lid combined, resembled in general shape some of the commoner forms of Aspergillum. At the bottom of the hole lay a great spider, embracing with its legs a spherical cocoon, three-eighths of an inch in diameter, which it seemed resolved on defending to the last extremity. I examined other nests with similar results.

While we were at Tilly Bay, a small party of Fuegians came in and took up their quarters in an old camping place close to the ship. They were a comparatively friendly lot, and had no hesitation about coming on board, especially about our meal hours, which they very soon got to understand. The party consisted of one adult man, a boy aged about seventeen, a woman about nineteen, with four small children, and two or three dogs of the usual kind. The canoe was made of planks, and was of the same build as those which we had seen about the Trinidad Channel. Lying in the bottom of the canoe were the putrid remains of two seals, a sea lion, and a fur-seal, whose heads I obtained. We got on such intimate terms with this family, that little by little we induced them to show us all their properties, even to the much-cherished materials for producing fire. These were kept in a wooden box somewhat of the shape of a small band-box, and made of Winter's bark sewn together roughly with strips of hide. The tinder, which seemed to consist of dried moss, was stowed away carefully in little bags formed of dried seal's intestines tied up at the ends.