A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World

ruit-trees and productions of the southern coasts-Height of snow-line on the Cordillera-Descent of glaciers to the sea-Icebergs

N.-CLIMATE OF THE

e within the second Narrows, may be considered as the point where the land begins to assume the marked features of Tierra del Fuego. On the east coast, south of the Strait, broken park-like scenery in a like manner connects the

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are drenched with the rain brought by an endless succession of gales; while at Cape Gregory there is a clear and bright blue sky over the dry and sterile plains. The

ht appears greater than it really is, from their large guanaco mantles, their long flowing hair, and general figure: on an average their height is about six feet, with

umuli; temperature 57°, dew-point 36°,-difference 21°. On January 15th, at Port St. Julian: in the morning light winds with much rain, followed by a very heavy s

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ke any three of them on board, and all seemed determined to be of the three. It was long before we could clear the boat; at last we got on board with our three giants, who dined with the Captain, and behaved quite like gentlemen, helping themselves with

fused, tobacco was in greatest request, far more so than axes or tools. The whole population of the toldos

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egro, 750 miles to the north. They are well stocked with horses, each man having, according to Mr. Low, six or seven, and all the women, and even children, their one own horse. In the time of Sarmiento (1580) these Indians had bows and arrows, now long since disused; they then also possessed some horses. This is a very curious fact, showing the extraordinarily rapid multiplication of horses in South America. The horse w

800 feet high, presented a very noble spectacle. I was frequently surprised, in the scenery of Tierra del Fuego, at the little apparent elevation of mountains really lofty. I suspect it is owing to a cause which would not at first be imagined, namely, that the whole mass, from the summit to the water's edge, is generally in full view. I rem

re seen running along the shore and hai

der Saugethiere v

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and were then proceeding to Port Famine in hopes of finding some ship. I daresay they were worthless vagabonds, but I never saw more miserable-looking ones. They had been living for some days on mussel-shells and berries,

lf distant! A boat was then sent with orders to fire a few musket-shots wide of them. The Fuegians hid themselves behind the trees, and for every discharge of the muskets they fired their arrows; all, however, fell short of the boat, and the officer as he pointed at them laughed. This made the Fuegians frantic with passion, and they shook their mantles in vain rage. At last, seeing the balls cut and strike the trees, they ran away, and we were

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pass; for every landmark, though in a mountainous country, was completely shut out. In the deep ravines the death-like scene of desolation exceeded all description; outside it was blowing a gale, but in these hollows not even a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the tallest trees. So gloomy, cold, and wet was every part, that not even the fungi, mosses, or ferns could flourish. In the valleys it was scarcely possible to crawl along, they were so completely barricaded by great mouldering trunks, which had falle

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ngly cold, and the atmosphere rather hazy, so that we did not stay long on the top of the mountain. Our descent was not quite s

se alliance with the species growing on the mountains of Europe, though so many thousand miles distant. The central part of Tierra del Fuego, where the clay-slate formation occurs, is most favourable to the growth of trees; on the outer coast the poorer granitic soil, and a situation more exposed to the violent winds, do not a

grows in vast numbers on the beech-trees. When young it is elastic and turgid, with a smooth surface; but when mature, it shrinks, becomes tougher, and ha

member having read some observations, showing that in England the leaves fall earlier in a warm and fine autumn than in a late and cold one. The change in the colour being here retarded in

he Linnean Transactions (vol. xix, p. 37), under the name of Cyttaria Darwin

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! In Tierra del Fuego the fungus in its tough and mature state is collected in large quantities by the women and children, and is eaten un-cooked. It has a mucilaginous, slightly sweet taste, with a faint smell like that of a mushroom. With the exception of a few berries, chiefly of a dwarf arbutu

ry; and the deer has never been seen south of the Strait of Magellan. Observing the general correspondence of the cliffs of soft sandstone, mud, and shingle, on the opposite sides of the Strait, and on some intervening islands, one is strongly tempted to believe that the land was once joined, and thus allowed animals so delicate and helpless as the tucutuco and Reithrodon to pass over. The correspondence of the cliffs is far from proving any

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es and guanacos occur; but in the latter, Hoste Island, although similar in every respect, and only separated by a channe

But the creeper (Oxyurus tupinieri) is the commonest bird in the country. Throughout the beech forests, high up and low down, in the most gloomy, wet, and impenetrable ravines, it may be met with. This little bird no doubt appears more numerous than it really is, from its habit of following with seeming curiosity any person who enters these silent woods: continually uttering a harsh twitter, it flutters from tree to tree, within a few

I heard it from the Spanish inhabitants of the latter place, and from Jemmy Button with regard to Tierra del Fuego. On the banks of the Santa Cruz, in 50 degrees south, I saw a frog; and it is not improbable that these animals,

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ds, might have been foreseen; but with r

e Tropics, are here almost entirely absent;1 I saw very few flies, butterflies, or bees, and no crickets or Orthoptera. In the pools of water I found but few aquatic beetles, and not any fresh-water shells: Succinea at first appears an exception; but here it must be called a terrestrial shell, for it lives on the damp herbage far from water. Land-shells could

otected shore perhaps supports, in a given space, a greater number of individual animals than any other station. There is one marine production which, from its importance, is worthy of

uliar; of Heteromera, four or five species; of Rhyncophora, six or seven; and of the following families one species in each: Staphylinid?, Elaterid?, Cebrionid?, Melolonthid?. The species in the other orders are

iven me by Mr. Stokes) as lat. 43°,-but on the western coast, as Dr. Hooker tells me, it extends to the R. San Francisco in California, and perhaps even to Kamtschatka.

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n together are sufficiently strong to support the weight of the large loose stones, to which in the inland channels they grow attached; and yet some of these stones were so heavy that when drawn to the surface, they could scarcely be lifted into a boat by one person. Captain Cook, in his second voyage, says that this plant at Kerguelen Land rises from a greater depth than twenty-four fathoms; "and as it does not grow in a perpendicular direction, but makes a very acute angle with the bottom, and much of it afterwards spreads many fathoms on the surface of the sea, I am well warr

ful. A great volume might be written, describing the inhabitants of one of these beds of seaweed. Almos

age round Scotland vol. ii, p. 228) that a rock uncovered only at spring-tides, which had been chiselled smooth in November, on the follo

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ften as I recurred to a branch of the kelp, I never failed to discover animals of new and curious structures. In Chiloe, where the kelp does not thrive very well, the numerous shells, corallines, and crustacea are absent; but there yet remain a few of the Flustrace?, and some compound Ascidi?; the latter, however, are of different species from those in Tierra del Fuego; we see here the fucus possessing a wider range than the animals which use it as an abode. I can only compare these great aquatic forests of the southern hemisphere with the terrestrial ones in the in

e which I have before alluded to as appearing to lead to another and worse world. The wind was fair, but the atmosphere was very thick; so that we missed much curious scenery. The dark ragged clouds were rapidly driven over the mountains, fr

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little cove there was one deserted wigwam, and it alone reminded us that man sometimes wandered into these desolate regions. But it would be difficult to imagine a scene where he seemed to h

long as the world holds together, present a noble and even sublime spectacle. The outline of the mountain was admirably clear and defined. Owing to the abundance of light reflected from the white and glittering surface, no shadows were cast on any part; and those lines which intersected the sky could alone be distinguished: hence the mass stood out in the boldest relief. Several glaciers descended in a winding course from th

e and greenstone. Sir J. Narborough called one part South Desolation, because it is "so desolate a land to behold:" and well indeed might he say so. Outside th

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Way. One sight of such a coast is enough to make a landsman dream for a week about shipwr

glaciers, and on the zone of perpetual congelation in the antarctic islands, may be passed over by any one not interested in these curious subjects, or the final recapitulat

est Coast.-The following table gives the mean temperature of Tierra d

ude.

. Wi

Mean o

Wi

o 53° 38' S. 50

lands 51° 3

1' N. 59.54°

t Saltenfiord in Norway, is as high as 57.8°, and this place is actually 13° nearer the pole than Port Famine!1 Inhospitable as this climate appears to our feelings, evergreen trees flourish luxuriantly under it. Hummin

d the Beagle. For the Falkland Islands, I am indebted to Captain Sulivan for the mean of the mean temperature (reduced from careful observation at mid

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most abundant shells were three species of Oliva (one of large size), one or two Volutas, and a Terebra. Now these are amongst the best characterised tropical forms. It is doubtful whether even one small species of Oliva exists on the southern shores of Europe, and there are no species of the two other genera. If a geol

es thrive to perfection. Even the crops of barley and wheat1 are often brought into the houses to be dried and ripened. At Valdivia (in the same latitude of 40° with Madrid) grapes and figs ripen, but are not common; olives seldom ripen even partially, and oranges not at all. These fruits, in corresponding latitudes in Europe, are well known to succeed to perfection; and even in this continent, at the Rio Negro, under nearly the same parallel with Valdivia, sweet potato

Hist. de la Prov. de

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height of thirty or forty feet above the ground. Palm-trees grow in latitude 37°; an arborescent grass, very like a b

s thrive luxuriantly in Van Diemen's Land (lat. 45°), and I measured one trunk no less than six feet in circumference. An arborescent fern was found by Forster in New Zealand in 46°, where orchideous plants are parasitical on the tree

Glaciers, in South America.-For the detailed authorities f

. Height

-line O

on: mean result

16° to 18° S.

° S. 14,500 to 15,000

o 43° S. 6000 Offi

he Au

go, 54° S. 350

t in the Strait of Magellan, where the summer is so cool, to only 3500 or 4000 feet above the level of the sea; although in Norway, we must travel to between lat. 67° and 70° N., that is, about 14° near

Journal; and for the other facts Mr.

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Europe succeed. In central Chile, on the other hand, a little northward of Concepcion, the sky is generally clear, rain does not fall for the seven summer months, and southern European fruits succeed admirably; and even the sugar-cane has been cultivated.2 No doubt the plane of perpetual sno

range, only from 3000 to 4000 feet in height, in the latitude of Cumberland, with every valley filled with streams of ice descending to the sea-coast. Almost every arm of the sea, which penetrates to the interior higher chain, not only in Tierra del Fuego, but on the coast for 650 miles northwards, is terminated by "tremendous and astonishing glaciers," as described by one of the offic

ssured that during one very dry and long summer, all the snow disappeared from Aconcagua, although it attains the prodigi

lat. 32° to 33°, but not in sufficient quantity to make the manufacture profitab

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force, would whirl about huge masses of rock like so much chaff. In Eyre's Sound, in the latitude of Paris, there are immense glaciers, and yet the loftiest neighbouring mountain is only 6200 feet high. In this Sound, about fifty icebergs were seen at

and in one part 7 broad, and descends to the sea-coast. But even a few miles northward of this glacier, in the Laguna de San Rafael, some Spanish missionari

arrative of the Loss of the Wager. Th

sc. Hist. de C

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corresponding with tha

is place and in the Gulf of Penas may be put even in a more striking point of view, for they descend to the sea-coast within 7?° degrees of latitude, or 450 miles, of a harbour, where three species of Oliva, a Voluta, and a Terebra, are the commonest shells, within less tha

f old sea-channels, now converted into dry valleys by the elevation of the land. They are associated with a great unstratified formation of mud and sand, containing rounded and angular fragments of all sizes, which has originated1 in the repeated ploughing up of the sea-bottom by the stranding of icebergs, and by the matter transported on them. Few geologists now doubt that those erratic boulders which lie near lofty mountains have been pushed forward by

Transactions,

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han 40° of latitude, measured from the same point. On the other hand, in the intertropical parts of Ame

ht of summer, is in a manner wholly covered with frozen snow." It can boast only of moss, some tufts of grass, and wild burnet; it has only one land-bird (Anthus correndera), yet Iceland, which is 10° nearer the pole, has, according to Mackenzie, fifteen land-birds. The South Shetland Islands, in the same latitude as the southern half of Norway, possess only some lichens, moss, and a little grass; and Lieut. Kendall2 found the bay in which he was at anchor, beginning to freeze at a period corresponding with our 8th of September. The soil here

to it. I have there shown that the apparent exceptions to the absence of erratic boulders in certain hot countries

l Journal, 183

ack's Exped. and Humboldt's

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of the sea; the short summer, on the other hand, is hot. In the Southern Ocean the winter is not so excessively cold, but the summer is far less hot, for the clouded sky seldom allows the sun to warm the ocean, itself a bad absorbent of heat: and hence the mean temperature of the year, which regulates the zone of perpetua

Shetland Islands a frozen under-soil within 360 miles of the forest-clad islands near Cape Horn, where, as far as the bulk of vegetation is concerned, any number of great quadrupeds might be supported. The perfect preservation of the carcasses of the Siberian elephants and rhinoceroses is certainly one of the most wonderful facts in geology; but independently of the imagined difficulty of supplying them with food from the adjoining countries, the whole case is

n, in Geographical Journal

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d beyond the shallow parts near an arctic coast, would have only their skeletons preserved: now in the extreme northern parts of Siberia bones are infinitely numerous, so that even islets are said to be almost composed of them;1 and those islets lie no less than ten degrees of latitude north of the place where Pallas found the frozen rhinoceros. On the other hand, a carcass was

siles, tome i, p. 151),

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e seen fluttering about delicate flowers, and parrots feeding amidst the evergreen woods; and in the sea there we should have a Voluta, and all the shells of large size and vigorous growth. Nevertheless, on some islands only 360 miles northward of our new Cape Horn in Denmark, a carcass buried in the soil (or if washed into a shallow sea, and covered up with mud) would be preserved perpetually frozen. If some bold navigator attempted to penetrate northward of these islands, he would run a thousand dangers amidst gigantic icebergs, on some of which he would see great blocks of rock borne far away from their original site. Another island of large size in the latitude of southern Scotland, but twice as far to the west, would be "almost wholly covered with everlasting snow," and would have each bay terminated by ic

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icy streams to the sea-coast, and their progress in the boats would be checked by the innumerable floating icebergs, some sma

lmost certainly one hundred miles distant from any land, and perhaps much more distant. In the Appendix I have discussed at length the probability (at that time hardly thought of) of icebergs, when stranded, grooving and polishing rocks, like glaciers. This is now a very commonly received opinion; and I cannot still avoid the suspicion that it is applicable even to such cases as that of the Jura. Dr. Richardso

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