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CHAPTER VIII

BANDA ORIENTAL AND PATAGONIA

Excursion to Colonia del Sacramiento -- Value of an Estancia --
Cattle, how counted -- Singular Breed of Oxen -- Perforated
Pebbles  --  Shepherd Dogs -- Horses broken-in, Gauchos
riding -- Character of Inhabitants -- Rio Plata -- Flocks of
Butterflies  --  Aeronaut Spiders --  Phosphorescence of the
Sea -- Port Desire -- Guanaco -- Port St. Julian -- Geology
of Patagonia -- Fossil gigantic Animal -- Types of Organization
constant -- Change in the Zoology of America -- Causes of
Extinction.


HAVING been delayed for nearly a fortnight in the
city, I was glad to escape on board a packet bound
for Monte Video.  A town in a state of blockade
must always be a disagreeable place of residence; in this case
moreover there were constant apprehensions from robbers
within.  The sentinels were the worst of all; for, from
their office and from having arms in their hands, they robbed
with a degree of authority which other men could not
imitate.

Our passage was a very long and tedious one.  The Plata
looks like a noble estuary on the map; but is in truth a poor
affair.  A wide expanse of muddy water has neither grandeur
nor beauty.  At one time of the day, the two shores,
both of which are extremely low, could just be distinguished
from the deck.  On arriving at Monte Video I found that
the Beagle would not sail for some time, so I prepared for a
short excursion in this part of Banda Oriental.  Everything
which I have said about the country near Maldonado is applicable
to Monte Video; but the land, with the one exception
of the Green Mount 450 feet high, from which it takes
its name, is far more level.  Very little of the undulating
grassy plain is enclosed; but near the town there are a few
hedge-banks, covered with agaves, cacti, and fennel.

November 14th. -- We left Monte Video in the afternoon.
I intended to proceed to Colonia del Sacramiento, situated
on the northern bank of the Plata and opposite to Buenos
Ayres, and thence, following up the Uruguay, to the village
of Mercedes on the Rio Negro (one of the many rivers of
this name in South America), and from this point to return
direct to Monte Video.  We slept at the house of my guide
at Canelones.  In the morning we rose early, in the hopes
of being able to ride a good distance; but it was a vain
attempt, for all the rivers were flooded.  We passed in boats
the streams of Canelones, St. Lucia, and San Jose, and thus
lost much time.  On a former excursion I crossed the Lucia
near its mouth, and I was surprised to observe how easily
our horses, although not used to swim, passed over a width
of at least six hundred yards.  On mentioning this at Monte
Video, I was told that a vessel containing some mountebanks
and their horses, being wrecked in the Plata, one horse
swam seven miles to the shore.  In the course of the day I
was amused by the dexterity with which a Gaucho forced
a restive horse to swim a river.  He stripped off his clothes,
and jumping on its back, rode into the water till it was out
of its depth; then slipping off over the crupper, he caught
hold of the tail, and as often as the horse turned round
the man frightened it back by splashing water in its face.
As soon as the horse touched the bottom on the other side,
the man pulled himself on, and was firmly seated, bridle
in hand, before the horse gained the bank.  A naked man
on a naked horse is a fine spectacle; I had no idea how well
the two animals suited each other.  The tail of a horse is a
very useful appendage; I have passed a river in a boat with
four people in it, which was ferried across in the same way
as the Gaucho.  If a man and horse have to cross a broad
river, the best plan is for the man to catch hold of the pommel
or mane, and help himself with the other arm.

We slept and stayed the following day at the post of
Cufre.  In the evening the postman or letter-carrier arrived.
He was a day after his time, owing to the Rio Rozario being
flooded.  It would not, however, be of much consequence;
for, although he had passed through some of the principal
towns in Banda Oriental, his luggage consisted of two letters!
The view from the house was pleasing; an undulating
green surface, with distant glimpses of the Plata.  I find
that I look at this province with very different eyes from
what I did upon my first arrival.  I recollect I then thought
it singularly level; but now, after galloping over the Pampas,
my only surprise is, what could have induced me ever
to call it level.  The country is a series of undulations, in
themselves perhaps not absolutely great, but, as compared
to the plains of St. Fe, real mountains.  From these
inequalities there is an abundance of small rivulets, and
the turf is green and luxuriant.

November 17th. -- We crossed the Rozario, which was
deep and rapid, and passing the village of Colla, arrived
at midday at Colonia del Sacramiento.  The distance is
twenty leagues, through a country covered with fine grass,
but poorly stocked with cattle or inhabitants.  I was invited
to sleep at Colonia, and to accompany on the following
day a gentleman to his estancia, where there were some
limestone rocks.  The town is built on a stony promontory
something in the same manner as at Monte Video.  It is
strongly fortified, but both fortifications and town suffered
much in the Brazilian war.  It is very ancient; and the
irregularity of the streets, and the surrounding groves of
old orange and peach trees, gave it a pretty appearance.
The church is a curious ruin; it was used as a powder-
magazine, and was struck by lightning in one of the ten
thousand thunder-storms of the Rio Plata.  Two-thirds of
the building were blown away to the very foundation; and
the rest stands a shattered and curious monument of the
united powers of lightning and gunpowder.  In the evening
I wandered about the half-demolished walls of the town.  It
was the chief seat of the Brazilian war; -- a war most injurious
to this country, not so much in its immediate effects,
as in being the origin of a multitude of generals and all
other grades of officers.  More generals are numbered (but
not paid) in the United Provinces of La Plata than in the
United Kingdom of Great Britain.  These gentlemen have
learned to like power, and do not object to a little
skirmishing.  Hence there are many always on the watch to
create disturbance and to overturn a government which as yet
has never rested on any staple foundation.  I noticed, however,
both here and in other places, a very general interest
in the ensuing election for the President; and this appears
a good sign for the prosperity of this little country.  The
inhabitants do not require much education in their
representatives; I heard some men discussing the merits of those
for Colonia; and it was said that, "although they were not
men of business, they could all sign their names:" with this
they seemed to think every reasonable man ought to be
satisfied.

18th. -- Rode with my host to his estancia, at the Arroyo
de San Juan.  In the evening we took a ride round the
estate: it contained two square leagues and a half, and was
situated in what is called a rincon; that is, one side was
fronted by the Plata, and the two others guarded by impassable
brooks.  There was an excellent port for little vessels,
and an abundance of small wood, which is valuable
as supplying fuel to Buenos Ayres.  I was curious to know
the value of so complete an estancia.  Of cattle there were
3000, and it would well support three or four times that
number; of mares 800, together with 150 broken-in horses,
and 600 sheep.  There was plenty of water and limestone,
a rough house, excellent corrals, and a peach orchard.  For
all this he had been offered 2000 Pounds, and he only wanted
500 Pounds additional, and probably would sell it for less.  The
chief trouble with an estancia is driving the cattle twice a
week to a central spot, in order to make them tame, and to count
them.  This latter operation would be thought difficult,
where there are ten or fifteen thousand head together.  It
is managed on the principle that the cattle invariably divide
themselves into little troops of from forty to one hundred.
Each troop is recognized by a few peculiarly marked
animals, and its number is known: so that, one being lost
out of ten thousand, it is perceived by its absence from one
of the tropillas.  During a stormy night the cattle all mingle
together; but the next morning the tropillas separate as
before; so that each animal must know its fellow out of ten
thousand others.

On two occasions I met with in this province some oxen
of a very curious breed, called nata or niata.  They appear
externally to hold nearly the same relation to other cattle,
which bull or pug dogs do to other dogs.  Their forehead
is very short and broad, with the nasal end turned up, and
the upper lip much drawn back; their lower jaws project
beyond the upper, and have a corresponding upward curve;
hence their teeth are always exposed.  Their nostrils are
seated high up and are very open; their eyes project outwards.
When walking they carry their heads low, on a short
neck; and their hinder legs are rather longer compared
with the front legs than is usual.  Their bare teeth, their
short heads, and upturned nostrils give them the most ludicrous
self-confident air of defiance imaginable.

Since my return, I have procured a skeleton head,
through the kindness of my friend Captain Sulivan, R. N.,
which is now deposited in the College of Surgeons. [1] Don
F. Muniz, of Luxan, has kindly collected for me all the
information which he could respecting this breed.  From his
account it seems that about eighty or ninety years ago, they
were rare and kept as curiosities at Buenos Ayres.  The
breed is universally believed to have originated amongst
the Indians southward of the Plata; and that it was with
them the commonest kind.  Even to this day, those reared
in the provinces near the Plata show their less civilized
origin, in being fiercer than common cattle, and in the cow
easily deserting her first calf, if visited too often or
molested.  It is a singular fact that an almost similar structure
to the abnormal [2] one of the niata breed, characterizes, as I
am informed by Dr. Falconer, that great extinct ruminant
of India, the Sivatherium.  The breed is very _true_; and a
niata bull and cow invariably produce niata calves.  A niata
bull with a common cow, or the reverse cross, produces offspring
having an intermediate character, but with the niata
characters strongly displayed: according to Senor Muniz,
there is the clearest evidence, contrary to the common belief
of agriculturists in analogous cases, that the niata cow when
crossed with a common bull transmits her peculiarities more
strongly than the niata bull when crossed with a common
cow.  When the pasture is tolerably long, the niata cattle
feed with the tongue and palate as well as common cattle;
but during the great droughts, when so many animals perish,
the niata breed is under a great disadvantage, and would
be exterminated if not attended to; for the common cattle,
like horses, are able just to keep alive, by browsing with
their lips on twigs of trees and reeds; this the niatas cannot
so well do, as their lips do not join, and hence they are found
to perish before the common cattle.  This strikes me as a
good illustration of how little we are able to judge from the
ordinary habits of life, on what circumstances, occurring
only at long intervals, the rarity or extinction of a species
may be determined.

November 19th.  --  Passing the valley of Las Vacas, we
slept at a house of a North American, who worked a lime-
kiln on the Arroyo de las Vivoras.  In the morning we rode
to a protecting headland on the banks of the river, called
Punta Gorda.  On the way we tried to find a jaguar.  There
were plenty of fresh tracks, and we visited the trees, on
which they are said to sharpen their claws; but we did not
succeed in disturbing one.  From this point the Rio Uruguay
presented to our view a noble volume of water.  From
the clearness and rapidity of the stream, its appearance was
far superior to that of its neighbour the Parana.  On the
opposite coast, several branches from the latter river entered
the Uruguay.  As the sun was shining, the two colours of
the waters could be seen quite distinct.

In the evening we proceeded on our road towards Mercedes
on the Rio Negro.  At night we asked permission to
sleep at an estancia at which we happened to arrive.  It was
a very large estate, being ten leagues square, and the owner
is one of the greatest landowners in the country.  His nephew
had charge of it, and with him there was a captain in
the army, who the other day ran away from Buenos Ayres.
Considering their station, their conversation was rather
amusing.  They expressed, as was usual, unbounded astonishment
at the globe being round, and could scarcely credit
that a hole would, if deep enough, come out on the other
side.  They had, however, heard of a country where there
were six months of light and six of darkness, and where
the inhabitants were very tall and thin!  They were curious
about the price and condition of horses and cattle in England.
Upon finding out we did not catch our animals with
the lazo, they cried out, "Ah, then, you use nothing but
the bolas:" the idea of an enclosed country was quite new
to them.  The captain at last said, he had one question to
ask me, which he should be very much obliged if I would
answer with all truth.  I trembled to think how deeply scientific
it would be: it was, "Whether the ladies of Buenos
Ayres were not the handsomest in the world." I replied, like
a renegade, "Charmingly so." He added, "I have one other
question: Do ladies in any other part of the world wear
such large combs?" I solemnly assured him that they did
not.  They were absolutely delighted.  The captain exclaimed,
"Look there! a man who has seen half the world
says it is the case; we always thought so, but now we know
it." My excellent judgment in combs and beauty procured
me a most hospitable reception; the captain forced me to
take his bed, and he would sleep on his recado.

21st. -- Started at sunrise, and rode slowly during the
whole day.  The geological nature of this part of the province
was different from the rest, and closely resembled that
of the Pampas.  In consequence, there were immense beds
of the thistle, as well as of the cardoon: the whole country,
indeed, may be called one great bed of these plants.  The
two sorts grow separate, each plant in company with its
own kind.  The cardoon is as high as a horse's back, but the
Pampas thistle is often higher than the crown of the rider's
head.  To leave the road for a yard is out of the question;
and the road itself is partly, and in some cases entirely
closed.  Pasture, of course there is none; if cattle or horses
once enter the bed, they are for the time completely lost.
Hence it is very hazardous to attempt to drive cattle at
this season of the year; for when jaded enough to face the
thistles, they rush among them, and are seen no more.  In
these districts there are very few estancias, and these few
are situated in the neighbourhood of damp valleys, where
fortunately neither of these overwhelming plants can exist.
As night came on before we arrived at our journey's end,
we slept at a miserable little hovel inhabited by the poorest
people.  The extreme though rather formal courtesy of our
host and hostess, considering their grade of life, was quite
delightful.

November 22nd. -- Arrived at an estancia on the Berquelo
belonging to a very hospitable Englishman, to whom I had
a letter of introduction from my friend Mr. Lumb.  I stayed
here three days.  One morning I rode with my host to the
Sierra del Pedro Flaco, about twenty miles up the Rio
Negro.  Nearly the whole country was covered with good
though coarse grass, which was as high as a horse's belly;
yet there were square leagues without a single head of cattle.
The province of Banda Oriental, if well stocked, would support
an astonishing number of animals, at present the annual
export of hides from Monte Video amounts to three
hundred thousand; and the home consumption, from waste,
is very considerable.  An "estanciero" told me that he often
had to send large herds of cattle a long journey to a salting
establishment, and that the tired beasts were frequently
obliged to be killed and skinned; but that he could never
persuade the Gauchos to eat of them, and every evening
a fresh beast was slaughtered for their suppers!  The view
of the Rio Negro from the Sierra was more picturesque than
any other which I saw in this province.  The river, broad,
deep, and rapid, wound at the foot of a rocky precipitous
cliff: a belt of wood followed its course, and the horizon
terminated in the distant undulations of the turf-plain.

When in this neighbourhood, I several times heard of
the Sierra de las Cuentas: a hill distant many miles to the
northward.  The name signifies hill of beads.  I was assured
that vast numbers of little round stones, of various colours,
each with a small cylindrical hole, are found there.  Formerly
the Indians used to collect them, for the purpose of
making necklaces and bracelets -- a taste, I may observe,
which is common to all savage nations, as well as to the most
polished.  I did not know what to understand from this
story, but upon mentioning it at the Cape of Good Hope
to Dr. Andrew Smith, he told me that he recollected finding
on the south-eastern coast of Africa, about one hundred
miles to the eastward of St.  John's river, some quartz crystals
with their edges blunted from attrition, and mixed with
gravel on the sea-beach.  Each crystal was about five lines
in diameter, and from an inch to an inch and a half in
length.  Many of them had a small canal extending from
one extremity to the other, perfectly cylindrical, and of a
size that readily admitted a coarse thread or a piece of fine
catgut.  Their colour was red or dull white.  The natives
were acquainted with this structure in crystals.  I have
mentioned these circumstances because, although no crystallized
body is at present known to assume this form, it may
lead some future traveller to investigate the real nature of
such stones.


While staying at this estancia, I was amused with what
I saw and heard of the shepherd-dogs of the country. [3] When
riding, it is a common thing to meet a large flock of sheep
guarded by one or two dogs, at the distance of some miles
from any house or man.  I often wondered how so firm a
friendship had been established.  The method of education
consists in separating the puppy, while very young, from
the bitch, and in accustoming it to its future companions.
An ewe is held three or four times a day for the little thing
to suck, and a nest of wool is made for it in the sheep-pen;
at no time is it allowed to associate with other dogs, or with
the children of the family.  The puppy is, moreover, generally
castrated; so that, when grown up, it can scarcely
have any feelings in common with the rest of its kind.  From
this education it has no wish to leave the flock, and just
as another dog will defend its master, man, so will these
the sheep.  It is amusing to observe, when approaching a
flock, how the dog immediately advances barking, and the
sheep all close in his rear, as if round the oldest ram.  These
dogs are also easily taught to bring home the flock, at a
certain hour in the evening.  Their most troublesome fault,
when young, is their desire of playing with the sheep; for
in their sport they sometimes gallop their poor subjects most
unmercifully.

The shepherd-dog comes to the house every day for some
meat, and as soon as it is given him, he skulks away as if
ashamed of himself.  On these occasions the house-dogs are
very tyrannical, and the least of them will attack and pursue
the stranger.  The minute, however, the latter has reached
the flock, he turns round and begins to bark, and then all
the house-dogs take very quickly to their heels.  In a similar
manner a whole pack of the hungry wild dogs will scarcely
ever (and I was told by some never) venture to attack a
flock guarded by even one of these faithful shepherds.  The
whole account appears to me a curious instance of the pliability
of the affections in the dog; and yet, whether wild or
however educated, he has a feeling of respect or fear for
those that are fulfilling their instinct of association.  For
we can understand on no principle the wild dogs being
driven away by the single one with its flock, except that they
consider, from some confused notion, that the one thus
associated gains power, as if in company with its own kind.
F. Cuvier has observed that all animals that readily enter
into domestication, consider man as a member of their own
society, and thus fulfil their instinct of association.  In
the above case the shepherd-dog ranks the sheep as its fellow-
brethren, and thus gains confidence; and the wild dogs,
though knowing that the individual sheep are not dogs, but
are good to eat, yet partly consent to this view when seeing
them in a flock with a shepherd-dog at their head.

One evening a "domidor" (a subduer of horses) came
for the purpose of breaking-in some colts.  I will describe
the preparatory steps, for I believe they have not been
mentioned by other travellers.  A troop of wild young horses
is driven into the corral, or large enclosure of stakes, and
the door is shut.  We will suppose that one man alone has
to catch and mount a horse, which as yet had never felt
bridle or saddle.  I conceive, except by a Gaucho, such a feat
would be utterly impracticable.  The Gaucho picks out a
full-grown colt; and as the beast rushes round the circus
he throws his lazo so as to catch both the front legs.  Instantly
the horse rolls over with a heavy shock, and whilst
struggling on the ground, the Gaucho, holding the lazo
tight, makes a circle, so as to catch one of the hind legs
just beneath the fetlock, and draws it close to the two front
legs: he then hitches the lazo, so that the three are bound
together.  Then sitting on the horse's neck, he fixes a strong
bridle, without a bit, to the lower jaw: this he does by passing
a narrow thong through the eye-holes at the end of the
reins, and several times round both jaw and tongue.  The
two front legs are now tied closely together with a strong
leathern thong, fastened by a slip-knot.  The lazo, which
bound the three together, being then loosed, the horse rises
with difficulty.  The Gaucho now holding fast the bridle
fixed to the lower jaw, leads the horse outside the corral.  If
a second man is present (otherwise the trouble is much
greater) he holds the animal's head, whilst the first puts on
the horsecloths and saddle, and girths the whole together.
During this operation, the horse, from dread and astonishment
at thus being bound round the waist, throws himself
over and over again on the ground, and, till beaten, is
unwilling to rise.  At last, when the saddling is finished, the
poor animal can hardly breathe from fear, and is white with
foam and sweat.  The man now prepares to mount by pressing
heavily on the stirrup, so that the horse may not lose
its balance; and at the moment that he throws his leg over
the animal's back, he pulls the slip-knot binding the front
legs, and the beast is free.  Some "domidors" pull the knot
while the animal is lying on the ground, and, standing over
the saddle, allow him to rise beneath them.  The horse, wild
with dread, gives a few most violent bounds, and then starts
off at full gallop: when quite exhausted, the man, by patience,
brings him back to the corral, where, reeking hot and
scarcely alive, the poor beast is let free.  Those animals
which will not gallop away, but obstinately throw themselves
on the ground, are by far the most troublesome.  This process
is tremendously severe, but in two or three trials the horse
is tamed.  It is not, however, for some weeks that the animal
is ridden with the iron bit and solid ring, for it must learn
to associate the will of its rider with the feel of the rein,
before the most powerful bridle can be of any service.

Animals are so abundant in these countries, that humanity
and self-interest are not closely united; therefore I
fear it is that the former is here scarcely known.  One day,
riding in the Pampas with a very respectable "estanciero,"
my horse, being tired, lagged behind.  The man often shouted
to me to spur him.  When I remonstrated that it was a pity,
for the horse was quite exhausted, he cried out, "Why not?
-- never mind -- spur him -- it is my horse." I had then some
difficulty in making him comprehend that it was for the
horse's sake, and not on his account, that I did not choose
to use my spurs.  He exclaimed, with a look of great surprise,
"Ah, Don Carlos, que cosa!" It was clear that such
an idea had never before entered his head.

The Gauchos are well known to be perfect riders The
idea of being thrown, let the horse do what it likes; never
enters their head.  Their criterion of a good rider is, a man
who can manage an untamed colt, or who, if his horse falls,
alights on his own feet, or can perform other such exploits.
I have heard of a man betting that he would throw his horse
down twenty times, and that nineteen times he would not
fall himself.  I recollect seeing a Gaucho riding a very
stubborn horse, which three times successively reared so
high as to fall backwards with great violence.  The man
judged with uncommon coolness the proper moment for
slipping off, not an instant before or after the right time;
and as soon as the horse got up, the man jumped on his back,
and at last they started at a gallop.  The Gaucho never appears
to exert any muscular force.  I was one day watching
a good rider, as we were galloping along at a rapid pace,
and thought to myself, "Surely if the horse starts, you
appear so careless on your seat, you must fall." At this moment,
a male ostrich sprang from its nest right beneath the
horse's nose: the young colt bounded on one side like a stag;
but as for the man, all that could be said was, that he started
and took fright with his horse.

In Chile and Peru more pains are taken with the mouth
of the horse than in La Plata, and this is evidently a
consequence of the more intricate nature of the country.  In
Chile a horse is not considered perfectly broken, till he can
be brought up standing, in the midst of his full speed, on
any particular spot, -- for instance, on a cloak thrown on
the ground: or, again, he will charge a wall, and rearing,
scrape the surface with his hoofs.  I have seen an animal
bounding with spirit, yet merely reined by a fore-finger and
thumb, taken at full gallop across a courtyard, and then
made to wheel round the post of a veranda with great speed,
but at so equal a distance, that the rider, with outstretched
arm, all the while kept one finger rubbing the post.  Then
making a demi-volte in the air, with the other arm outstretched
in a like manner, he wheeled round, with astonishing
force, in an opposite direction.

Such a horse is well broken; and although this at first
may appear useless, it is far otherwise.  It is only carrying
that which is daily necessary into perfection.  When a bullock
is checked and caught by the lazo, it will sometimes
gallop round and round in a circle, and the horse being
alarmed at the great strain, if not well broken, will not
readily turn like the pivot of a wheel.  In consequence many
men have been killed; for if the lazo once takes a twist
round a man's body, it will instantly, from the power of the
two opposed animals, almost cut him in twain.  On the
same principle the races are managed; the course is only
two or three hundred yards long, the wish being to have
horses that can make a rapid dash.  The racehorses are
trained not only to stand with their hoofs touching a line,
but to draw all four feet together, so as at the first spring
to bring into play the full action of the hind-quarters.  In
Chile I was told an anecdote, which I believe was true; and
it offers a good illustration of the use of a well-broken
animal.  A respectable man riding one day met two others, one
of whom was mounted on a horse, which he knew to have
been stolen from himself.  He challenged them; they answered
him by drawing their sabres and giving chase.  The
man, on his good and fleet beast, kept just ahead: as he
passed a thick bush he wheeled round it, and brought up
his horse to a dead check.  The pursuers were obliged to
shoot on one side and ahead.  Then instantly dashing on,
right behind them, he buried his knife in the back of one,
wounded the other, recovered his horse from the dying
robber, and rode home.  For these feats of horsemanship
two things are necessary: a most severe bit, like the Mameluke,
the power of which, though seldom used, the horse
knows full well; and large blunt spurs, that can be applied
either as a mere touch, or as an instrument of extreme pain.
I conceive that with English spurs, the slightest touch of
which pricks the skin, it would be impossible to break in a
horse after the South American fashion

At an estancia near Las Vacas large numbers of mares
are weekly slaughtered for the sake of their hides, although
worth only five paper dollars, or about half a crown apiece.
It seems at first strange that it can answer to kill mares
for such a trifle; but as it is thought ridiculous in this
country ever to break in or ride a mare, they are of no value
except for breeding.  The only thing for which I ever saw
mares used, was to tread out wheat from the ear, for which
purpose they were driven round a circular enclosure, where
the wheat-sheaves were strewed.  The man employed for
slaughtering the mares happened to be celebrated for his
dexterity with the lazo.  Standing at the distance of twelve
yards from the mouth of the corral, he has laid a wager
that he would catch by the legs every animal, without missing
one, as it rushed past him.  There was another man
who said he would enter the corral on foot, catch a mare,
fasten her front legs together, drive her out, throw her down,
kill, skin, and stake the hide for drying (which latter is a
tedious job); and he engaged that he would perform this
whole operation on twenty-two animals in one day.  Or he
would kill and take the skin off fifty in the same time.  This
would have been a prodigious task, for it is considered a
good day's work to skin and stake the hides of fifteen or
sixteen animals.

November 26th. -- I set out on my return in a direct line
for Monte Video.  Having heard of some giant's bones at
a neighbouring farm-house on the Sarandis, a small stream
entering the Rio Negro, I rode there accompanied by my
host, and purchased for the value of eighteen pence the head
of the Toxodon. [4] When found it was quite perfect; but
the boys knocked out some of the teeth with stones, and then
set up the head as a mark to throw at.  By a most fortunate
chance I found a perfect tooth, which exactly fitted one of
the sockets in this skull, embedded by itself on the banks
of the Rio Tercero, at the distance of about 180 miles from
this place.  I found remains of this extraordinary animal
at two other places, so that it must formerly have been common.
I found here, also, some large portions of the armour
of a gigantic armadillo-like animal, and part of the great
head of a Mylodon.  The bones of this head are so fresh,
that they contain, according to the analysis by Mr. T. Reeks,
seven per cent of animal matter; and when placed in a
spirit-lamp, they burn with a small flame.  The number
of the remains embedded in the grand estuary deposit which
forms the Pampas and covers the granitic rocks of Banda
Oriental, must be extraordinarily great.  I believe a straight
line drawn in any direction through the Pampas would cut
through some skeleton or bones.  Besides those which I
found during my short excursions, I heard of many others,
and the origin of such names as "the stream of the animal,"
"the hill of the giant," is obvious.  At other times I heard
of the marvellous property of certain rivers, which had the
power of changing small bones into large; or, as some
maintained, the bones themselves grew.  As far as I am aware,
not one of these animals perished, as was formerly supposed,
in the marshes or muddy river-beds of the present land, but
their bones have been exposed by the streams intersecting the
subaqueous deposit in which they were originally embedded.
We may conclude that the whole area of the Pampas is one
wide sepulchre of these extinct gigantic quadrupeds.

By the middle of the day, on the 28th, we arrived at
Monte Video, having been two days and a half on the road.
The country for the whole way was of a very uniform character,
some parts being rather more rocky and hilly than
near the Plata.  Not far from Monte Video we passed
through the village of Las Pietras, so named from some
large rounded masses of syenite.  Its appearance was rather
pretty.  In this country a few fig-trees round a group of
houses, and a site elevated a hundred feet above the general
level, ought always to be called picturesque.


During the last six months I have had an opportunity of
seeing a little of the character of the inhabitants of these
provinces.  The Gauchos, or countryrmen, are very superior
to those who reside in the towns.  The Gaucho is invariably
most obliging, polite, and hospitable: I did not meet with
even one instance of rudeness or inhospitality.  He is modest,
both respecting himself and country, but at the same
time a spirited, bold fellow.  On the other hand, many robberies
are committed, and there is much bloodshed: the
habit of constantly wearing the knife is the chief cause
of the latter.  It is lamentable to hear how many lives are
lost in trifling quarrels.  In fighting, each party tries to
mark the face of his adversary by slashing his nose or eyes;
as is often attested by deep and horrid-looking scars.  Robberies
are a natural consequence of universal gambling,
much drinking, and extreme indolence.  At Mercedes I asked
two men why they did not work.  One gravely said the days
were too long; the other that he was too poor.  The number
of horses and the profusion of food are the destruction of
all industry.  Moreover, there are so many feast-days; and
again, nothing can succeed without it be begun when the
moon is on the increase; so that half the month is lost from
these two causes.

Police and justice are quite inefficient.  If a man who is
poor commits murder and is taken, he will be imprisoned,
and perhaps even shot; but if he is rich and has friends,
he may rely on it no very severe consequence will ensue.
It is curious that the most respectable inhabitants of the
country invariably assist a murderer to escape: they seem
to think that the individual sins against the government,
and not against the people.  A traveller has no protection
besides his fire-arms; and the constant habit of carrying
them is the main check to more frequent robberies.
The character of the higher and more educated classes
who reside in the towns, partakes, but perhaps in a lesser
degree, of the good parts of the Gaucho, but is, I fear, stained
by many vices of which he is free.  Sensuality, mockery of
all religion, and the grossest corruption, are far from
uncommon.  Nearly every public officer can be bribed.  The
head man in the post-office sold forged government franks.
The governor and prime minister openly combined to plunder
the state.  Justice, where gold came into play, was
hardly expected by any one.  I knew an Englishman, who
went to the Chief Justice (he told me, that not then
understanding the ways of the place, he trembled as he entered
the room), and said, "Sir, I have come to offer you two hundred
(paper) dollars (value about five pounds sterling) if
you will arrest before a certain time a man who has cheated
me.  I know it is against the law, but my lawyer (naming
him) recommended me to take this step." The Chief Justice
smiled acquiescence, thanked him, and the man before
night was safe in prison.  With this entire want of principle
in many of the leading men, with the country full of
ill-paid turbulent officers, the people yet hope that a
democratic form of government can succeed!

On first entering society in these countries, two or three
features strike one as particularly remarkable.  The polite
and dignified manners pervading every rank of life, the
excellent taste displayed by the women in their dresses, and
the equality amongst all ranks.  At the Rio Colorado some
men who kept the humblest shops used to dine with General
Rosas.  A son of a major at Bahia Blanca gained his
livelihood by making paper cigars, and he wished to accompany
me, as guide or servant, to Buenos Ayres, but his
father objected on the score of the danger alone.  Many
officers in the army can neither read nor write, yet all meet
in society as equals.  In Entre Rios, the Sala consisted of
only six representatives.  One of them kept a common shop,
and evidently was not degraded by the office.  All this is
what would be expected in a new country; nevertheless the
absence of gentlemen by profession appears to an Englishman
something strange.

When speaking of these countries, the manner in which
they have been brought up by their unnatural parent, Spain,
should always be borne in mind.  On the whole, perhaps,
more credit is due for what has been done, than blame for
that which may be deficient.  It is impossible to doubt but
that the extreme liberalism of these countries must ultimately
lead to good results.  The very general toleration of
foreign religions, the regard paid to the means of education,
the freedom of the press, the facilities offered to all
foreigners, and especially, as I am bound to add, to every one
professing the humblest pretensions to science, should be
recollected with gratitude by those who have visited Spanish
South America.

December 6th. -- The Beagle sailed from the Rio Plata,
never again to enter its muddy stream.  Our course was
directed to Port Desire, on the coast of Patagonia.  Before
proceeding any further, I will here put together a few
observations made at sea.

Several times when the ship has been some miles off the
mouth of the Plata, and at other times when off the shores
of Northern Patagonia, we have been surrounded by insects.
One evening, when we were about ten miles from the Bay
of San Blas, vast numbers of butterflies, in bands or flocks
of countless myriads, extended as far as the eye could range.
Even by the aid of a telescope it was not possible to see a
space free from butterflies.  The seamen cried out "it was
snowing butterflies," and such in fact was the appearance.
More species than one were present, but the main part belonged
to a kind very similar to, but not identical with, the
common English Colias edusa.  Some moths and hymenoptera
accompanied the butterflies; and a fine beetle (Calosoma)
flew on board.  Other instances are known of this
beetle having been caught far out at sea; and this is the
more remarkable, as the greater number of the Carabidae
seldom or never take wing.  The day had been fine and calm,
and the one previous to it equally so, with light and variable
airs.  Hence we cannot suppose that the insects were blown
off the land, but we must conclude that they voluntarily took
flight.  The great bands of the Colias seem at first to afford
an instance like those on record of the migrations of another
butterfly, Vanessa cardui; [5] but the presence of other insects
makes the case distinct, and even less intelligible.  Before
sunset a strong breeze sprung up from the north, and this
must have caused tens of thousands of the butterflies and
other insects to have perished.

On another occasion, when seventeen miles off Cape Corrientes,
I had a net overboard to catch pelagic animals.
Upon drawing it up, to my surprise, I found a considerable
number of beetles in it, and although in the open sea, they
did not appear much injured by the salt water.  I lost some
of the specimens, but those which I preserved belonged
to the genera Colymbetes, Hydroporus, Hydrobius (two species),
Notaphus, Cynucus, Adimonia, and Scarabaeus.  At
first I thought that these insects had been blown from the
shore; but upon reflecting that out of the eight species four
were aquatic, and two others partly so in their habits, it
appeared to me most probable that they were floated into the
sea by a small stream which drains a lake near Cape Corrientes.
On any supposition it is an interesting circumstance
to find live insects swimming in the open ocean seventeen
miles from the nearest point of land.  There are several
accounts of insects having been blown off the Patagonian
shore.  Captain Cook observed it, as did more lately Captain
King of the Adventure.  The cause probably is due to the
want of shelter, both of trees and hills, so that an insect on
the wing with an off-shore breeze, would be very apt to
be blown out to sea.  The most remarkable instance I have
known of an insect being caught far from the land, was that
of a large grasshopper (Acrydium), which flew on board,
when the Beagle was to windward of the Cape de Verd
Islands, and when the nearest point of land, not directly
opposed to the trade-wind, was Cape Blanco on the coast of
Africa, 370 miles distant. [6]

On several occasions, when the Beagle has been within
the mouth of the Plata, the rigging has been coated with
the web of the Gossamer Spider.  One day (November 1st,
1832) I paid particular attention to this subject.  The weather
had been fine and clear, and in the morning the air was full
of patches of the flocculent web, as on an autumnal day in
England.  The ship was sixty miles distant from the land, in
the direction of a steady though light breeze.  Vast numbers
of a small spider, about one-tenth of an inch in length, and of
a dusky red colour, were attached to the webs.  There must
have been, I should suppose, some thousands on the ship.  The
little spider, when first coming in contact with the rigging,
was always seated on a single thread, and not on the flocculent
mass.  This latter seems merely to be produced by the
entanglement of the single threads.  The spiders were all of
one species, but of both sexes, together with young ones.
These latter were distinguished by their smaller size and
more dusky colour.  I will not give the description of this
spider, but merely state that it does not appear to me to be
included in any of Latreille's genera.  The little aeronaut as
soon as it arrived on board was very active, running about,
sometimes letting itself fall, and then reascending the same
thread; sometimes employing itself in making a small and
very irregular mesh in the corners between the ropes.  It
could run with facility on the surface of the water.  When
disturbed it lifted up its front legs, in the attitude of
attention.  On its first arrival it appeared very thirsty, and
with exserted maxillae drank eagerly of drops of water, this
same circumstance has been observed by Strack: may it not be in
consequence of the little insect having passed through a dry
and rarefied atmosphere?  Its stock of web seemed inexhaustible.
While watching some that were suspended by a
single thread, I several times observed that the slightest
breath of air bore them away out of sight, in a horizontal
line.

On another occasion (25th) under similar circumstances,
I repeatedly observed the same kind of small spider,
either when placed or having crawled on some little eminence,
elevate its abdomen, send forth a thread, and then
sail away horizontally, but with a rapidity which was quite
unaccountable.  I thought I could perceive that the spider,
before performing the above preparatory steps, connected
its legs together with the most delicate threads, but I am not
sure whether this observation was correct.

One day, at St. Fe, I had a better opportunity of observing
some similar facts.  A spider which was about three-tenths
of an inch in length, and which in its general appearance
resembled a Citigrade (therefore quite different from the
gossamer), while standing on the summit of a post, darted
forth four or five threads from its spinners.  These, glittering
in the sunshine, might be compared to diverging rays of
light; they were not, however, straight, but in undulations
like films of silk blown by the wind.  They were more than a
yard in length, and diverged in an ascending direction from
the orifices.  The spider then suddenly let go its hold of the
post, and was quickly borne out of sight.  The day was hot
and apparently calm; yet under such circumstances, the
atmosphere can never be so tranquil as not to affect a vane so
delicate as the thread of a spider's web.  If during a warm
day we look either at the shadow of any object cast on a
bank, or over a level plain at a distant landmark, the effect
of an ascending current of heated air is almost always evident:
such upward currents, it has been remarked, are also
shown by the ascent of soap-bubbles, which will not rise in
an in-doors room.  Hence I think there is not much difficulty
in understanding the ascent of the fine lines projected from
a spider's spinners, and afterwards of the spider itself; the
divergence of the lines has been attempted to be explained, I
believe by Mr. Murray, by their similar electrical condition.
The circumstance of spiders of the same species, but of
different sexes and ages, being found on several occasions at
the distance of many leagues from the land, attached in vast
numbers to the lines, renders it probable that the habit of
sailing through the air is as characteristic of this tribe, as
that of diving is of the Argyroneta.  We may then reject
Latreille's supposition, that the gossamer owes its origin
indifferently to the young of several genera of spiders:
although, as we have seen, the young of other spiders do
possess the power of performing aerial voyages. [7]

During our different passages south of the Plata, I often
towed astern a net made of bunting, and thus caught many
curious animals.  Of Crustacea there were many strange
and undescribed genera.  One, which in some respects is
allied to the Notopods (or those crabs which have their
posterior legs placed almost on their backs, for the purpose
of adhering to the under side of rocks), is very remarkable
from the structure of its hind pair of legs.  The penultimate
joint, instead of terminating in a simple claw, ends in three
bristle-like appendages of dissimilar lengths -- the longest
equalling that of the entire leg.  These claws are very thin,
and are serrated with the finest teeth, directed backwards:
their curved extremities are flattened, and on this part five
most minute cups are placed which seem to act in the same
manner as the suckers on the arms of the cuttle-fish.  As
the animal lives in the open sea, and probably wants a place
of rest, I suppose this beautiful and most anomalous structure
is adapted to take hold of floating marine animals.

In deep water, far from the land, the number of living
creatures is extremely small: south of the latitude 35 degs.,
I never succeeded in catching anything besides some beroe,
and a few species of minute entomostracous crustacea.
In shoaler water, at the distance of a few miles from the
coast, very many kinds of crustacea and some other animals
are numerous, but only during the night.  Between latitudes
56 and 57 degs. south of Cape Horn, the net was put
astern several times; it never, however, brought up anything
besides a few of two extremely minute species of Entomostraca.
Yet whales and seals, petrels and albatross, are exceedingly
abundant throughout this part of the ocean.  It has always
been a mystery to me on what the albatross, which lives far
from the shore, can subsist; I presume that, like the condor,
it is able to fast long; and that one good feast on the carcass
of a putrid whale lasts for a long time.  The central and
intertropical parts of the Atlantic swarm with Pteropoda,
Crustacea, and Radiata, and with their devourers the flying-
fish, and again with their devourers the bonitos and albicores;
I presume that the numerous lower pelagic animals
feed on the Infusoria, which are now known, from the
researches of Ehrenberg, to abound in the open ocean: but
on what, in the clear blue water, do these Infusoria subsist?

While sailing a little south of the Plata on one very dark
night, the sea presented a wonderful and most beautiful
spectacle.  There was a fresh breeze, and every part of the
surface, which during the day is seen as foam, now glowed
with a pale light.  The vessel drove before her bows two
billows of liquid phosphorus, and in her wake she was followed
by a milky train.  As far as the eye reached, the crest
of every wave was bright, and the sky above the horizon,
from the reflected glare of these livid flames, was not so
utterly obscure as over the vault of the heavens.

As we proceed further southward the sea is seldom
phosphorescent; and off Cape Horn I do not recollect more than
once having seen it so, and then it was far from being
brilliant.  This circumstance probably has a close connection
with the scarcity of organic beings in that part of the ocean.
After the elaborate paper, [8] by Ehrenberg, on the
phosphorescence of the sea, it is almost superfluous on my part
to make any observations on the subject.  I may however
add, that the same torn and irregular particles of gelatinous
matter, described by Ehrenberg, seem in the southern as
well as in the northern hemisphere, to be the common cause
of this phenomenon.  The particles were so minute as easily
to pass through fine gauze; yet many were distinctly visible
by the naked eye.  The water when placed in a tumbler and
agitated, gave out sparks, but a small portion in a watch-
glass scarcely ever was luminous.  Ehrenberg states that
these particles all retain a certain degree of irritability.  My
observations, some of which were made directly after taking
up the water, gave a different result.  I may also mention,
that having used the net during one night, I allowed it to
become partially dry, and having occasion twelve hours
afterwards to employ it again, I found the whole surface
sparkled as brightly as when first taken out of the water.
It does not appear probable in this case, that the particles
could have remained so long alive.  On one occasion having
kept a jelly-fish of the genus Dianaea till it was dead, the
water in which it was placed became luminous.  When the
waves scintillate with bright green sparks, I believe it is
generally owing to minute crustacea.  But there can be no
doubt that very many other pelagic animals, when alive, are
phosphorescent.

On two occasions I have observed the sea luminous at
considerable depths beneath the surface.  Near the mouth
of the Plata some circular and oval patches, from two to
four yards in diameter, and with defined outlines, shone with
a steady but pale light; while the surrounding water only
gave out a few sparks.  The appearance resembled the reflection
of the moon, or some luminous body; for the edges were
sinuous from the undulations of the surface.  The ship,
which drew thirteen feet of water, passed over, without
disturbing these patches.  Therefore we must suppose that some
animals were congregated together at a greater depth than
the bottom of the vessel.

Near Fernando Noronha the sea gave out light in flashes.
The appearance was very similar to that which might be
expected from a large fish moving rapidly through a luminous
fluid.  To this cause the sailors attributed it; at the
time, however, I entertained some doubts, on account of the
frequency and rapidity of the flashes.  I have already
remarked that the phenomenon is very much more common
in warm than in cold countries; and I have sometimes imagined
that a disturbed electrical condition of the atmosphere
was most favourable to its production.  Certainly I
think the sea is most luminous after a few days of more
calm weather than ordinary, during which time it has
swarmed with various animals.  Observing that the water
charged with gelatinous particles is in an impure state, and
that the luminous appearance in all common cases is produced
by the agitation of the fluid in contact with the atmosphere,
I am inclined to consider that the phosphorescence is
the result of the decomposition of the organic particles, by
which process (one is tempted almost to call it a kind of
respiration) the ocean becomes purified.

December 23rd. -- We arrived at Port Desire, situated in
lat. 47 degs., on the coast of Patagonia.  The creek runs for
about twenty miles inland, with an irregular width.  The
Beagle anchored a few miles within the entrance, in front of
the ruins of an old Spanish settlement.

The same evening I went on shore.  The first landing in
any new country is very interesting, and especially when, as in
this case, the whole aspect bears the stamp of a marked and
individual character.  At the height of between two and
three hundred feet above some masses of porphyry a wide
plain extends, which is truly characteristic of Patagonia.
The surface is quite level, and is composed of well-rounded
shingle mixed with a whitish earth.  Here and there scattered
tufts of brown wiry grass are supported, and still more
rarely, some low thorny bushes.  The weather is dry and
pleasant, and the fine blue sky is but seldom obscured.  When
standing in the middle of one of these desert plains and
looking towards the interior, the view is generally bounded
by the escarpment of another plain, rather higher, but equally
level and desolate; and in every other direction the horizon
is indistinct from the trembling mirage which seems to rise
from the heated surface.

In such a country the fate of the Spanish settlement was
soon decided; the dryness of the climate during the greater
part of the year, and the occasional hostile attacks of the
wandering Indians, compelled the colonists to desert their
half-finished buildings.  The style, however, in which they
were commenced shows the strong and liberal hand of Spain
in the old time.  The result of all the attempts to colonize this
side of America south of 41 degs., has been miserable.  Port
Famine expresses by its name the lingering and extreme
sufferings of several hundred wretched people, of whom one
alone survived to relate their misfortunes.  At St. Joseph's
Bay, on the coast of Patagonia, a small settlement was made;
but during one Sunday the Indians made an attack and massacred
the whole party, excepting two men, who remained
captives during many years.  At the Rio Negro I conversed
with one of these men, now in extreme old age.

The zoology of Patagonia is as limited as its flora. [9] On
the arid plains a few black beetles (Heteromera) might be
seen slowly crawling about, and occasionally a lizard darted
from side to side.  Of birds we have three carrion hawks
and in the valleys a few finches and insect-feeders.  An ibis
(Theristicus melanops -- a species said to be found in central
Africa) is not uncommon on the most desert parts: in
their stomachs I found grasshoppers, cicadae, small lizards,
and even scorpions. [10] At one time of the year these birds
go in flocks, at another in pairs, their cry is very loud and
singular, like the neighing of the guanaco.

The guanaco, or wild llama, is the characteristic quadruped
of the plains of Patagonia; it is the South American
representative of the camel of the East.  It is an elegant
animal in a state of nature, with a long slender neck and
fine legs.  It is very common over the whole of the temperate
parts of the continent, as far south as the islands near Cape
Horn.  It generally lives in small herds of from half a dozen
to thirty in each; but on the banks of the St. Cruz we saw
one herd which must have contained at least five hundred.

They are generally wild and extremely wary.  Mr. Stokes
told me, that he one day saw through a glass a herd of these
animals which evidently had been frightened, and were running
away at full speed, although their distance was so great
that he could not distinguish them with his naked eye.  The
sportsman frequently receives the first notice of their
presence, by hearing from a long distance their peculiar shrill
neighing note of alarm.  If he then looks attentively, he will
probably see the herd standing in a line on the side of some
distant hill.  On approaching nearer, a few more squeals are
given, and off they set at an apparently slow, but really quick
canter, along some narrow beaten track to a neighbouring
hill.  If, however, by chance he abruptly meets a single animal,
or several together, they will generally stand motionless
and intently gaze at him; then perhaps move on a few yards,
turn round, and look again.  What is the cause of this difference
in their shyness?  Do they mistake a man in the distance
for their chief enemy the puma?  Or does curiosity
overcome their timidity?  That they are curious is certain;
for if a person lies on the ground, and plays strange antics,
such as throwing up his feet in the air, they will almost
always approach by degrees to reconnoitre him.  It was an
artifice that was repeatedly practised by our sportsmen with
success, and it had moreover the advantage of allowing several
shots to be fired, which were all taken as parts of the
performance.  On the mountains of Tierra del Fuego, I have
more than once seen a guanaco, on being approached, not
only neigh and squeal, but prance and leap about in the most
ridiculous manner, apparently in defiance as a challenge.
These animals are very easily domesticated, and I have seen
some thus kept in northern Patagonia near a house, though
not under any restraint.  They are in this state very bold, and
readily attack a man by striking him from behind with both
knees.  It is asserted that the motive for these attacks is
jealousy on account of their females.  The wild guanacos,
however, have no idea of defence; even a single dog will
secure one of these large animals, till the huntsman can come
up.  In many of their habits they are like sheep in a flock.
Thus when they see men approaching in several directions
on horseback, they soon become bewildered, and know not
which way to run.  This greatly facilitates the Indian method
of hunting, for they are thus easily driven to a central point,
and are encompassed.

The guanacos readily take to the water: several times at
Port Valdes they were seen swimming from island to island.
Byron, in his voyage says he saw them drinking salt water.
Some of our officers likewise saw a herd apparently drinking
the briny fluid from a salina near Cape Blanco.  I imagine
in several parts of the country, if they do not drink salt
water, they drink none at all.  In the middle of the day they
frequently roll in the dust, in saucer-shaped hollows.  The
males fight together; two one day passed quite close to me,
squealing and trying to bite each other; and several were
shot with their hides deeply scored.  Herds sometimes appear
to set out on exploring parties: at Bahia Blanca, where,
within thirty miles of the coast, these animals are extremely
unfrequent, I one day saw the tracks of thirty or forty, which
had come in a direct line to a muddy salt-water creek.  They
then must have perceived that they were approaching the
sea, for they had wheeled with the regularity of cavalry, and
had returned back in as straight a line as they had advanced.
The guanacos have one singular habit, which is to me quite
inexplicable; namely, that on successive days they drop their
dung in the same defined heap.  I saw one of these heaps
which was eight feet in diameter, and was composed of a
large quantity.  This habit, according to M. A. d'Orbigny, is
common to all the species of the genus; it is very useful to
the Peruvian Indians, who use the dung for fuel, and are
thus saved the trouble of collecting it.

The guanacos appear to have favourite spots for lying
down to die.  On the banks of the St. Cruz, in certain
circumscribed spaces, which were generally bushy and all near
the river, the ground was actually white with bones.  On one
such spot I counted between ten and twenty heads.  I particularly
examined the bones; they did not appear, as some
scattered ones which I had seen, gnawed or broken, as if
dragged together by beasts of prey.  The animals in most
cases must have crawled, before dying, beneath and amongst
the bushes.  Mr. Bynoe informs me that during a former
voyage he observed the same circumstance on the banks of
the Rio Gallegos.  I do not at all understand the reason of
this, but I may observe, that the wounded guanacos at the
St. Cruz invariably walked towards the river.  At St. Jago
in the Cape de Verd Islands, I remember having seen in a
ravine a retired corner covered with bones of the goat; we
at the time exclaimed that it was the burial ground of all the
goats in the island.  I mention these trifling circumstances,
because in certain cases they might explain the occurrence
of a number of uninjured bones in a cave, or buried under
alluvial accumulations; and likewise the cause why certain
animals are more commonly embedded than others in sedimentary
deposits.

One day the yawl was sent under the command of Mr.
Chaffers with three days' provisions to survey the upper part
of the harbour.  In the morning we searched for some
watering-places mentioned in an old Spanish chart.  We found one
creek, at the head of which there was a trickling rill (the
first we had seen) of brackish water.  Here the tide compelled
us to wait several hours; and in the interval I walked
some miles into the interior.  The plain as usual consisted
of gravel, mingled with soil resembling chalk in appearance,
but very different from it in nature.  From the softness of
these materials it was worn into many gulleys.  There was
not a tree, and, excepting the guanaco, which stood on the
hill-top a watchful sentinel over its herd, scarcely an animal
or a bird.  All was stillness and desolation.  Yet in passing
over these scenes, without one bright object near, an
ill-defined but strong sense of pleasure is vividly excited.
One asked how many ages the plain had thus lasted, and how
many more it was doomed thus to continue.

"None can reply -- all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue,
Which teaches awful doubt." [11]

In the evening we sailed a few miles further up, and then
pitched the tents for the night.  By the middle of the next
day the yawl was aground, and from the shoalness of the
water could not proceed any higher.  The water being found
partly fresh, Mr. Chaffers took the dingey and went up two
or three miles further, where she also grounded, but in a
fresh-water river.  The water was muddy, and though the
stream was most insignificant in size, it would be difficult to
account for its origin, except from the melting snow on the
Cordillera.  At the spot where we bivouacked, we were surrounded
by bold cliffs and steep pinnacles of porphyry.  I do
not think I ever saw a spot which appeared more secluded
from the rest of the world, than this rocky crevice in the
wide plain.

The second day after our return to the anchorage, a party
of officers and myself went to ransack an old Indian grave,
which I had found on the summit of a neighbouring hill.
Two immense stones, each probably weighing at least a
couple of tons, had been placed in front of a ledge of rock
about six feet high.  At the bottom of the grave on the hard
rock there was a layer of earth about a foot deep, which
must have been brought up from the plain below.  Above it a
pavement of flat stones was placed, on which others were
piled, so as to fill up the space between the ledge and the two
great blocks.  To complete the grave, the Indians had contrived
to detach from the ledge a huge fragment, and to
throw it over the pile so as to rest on the two blocks.  We
undermined the grave on both sides, but could not find any
relics, or even bones.  The latter probably had decayed long
since (in which case the grave must have been of extreme
antiquity), for I found in another place some smaller heaps
beneath which a very few crumbling fragments could yet be
distinguished as having belonged to a man.  Falconer states,
that where an Indian dies he is buried, but that subsequently
his bones are carefully taken up and carried, let the distance
be ever so great, to be deposited near the sea-coast.  This
custom, I think, may be accounted for by recollecting, that
before the introduction of horses, these Indians must have
led nearly the same life as the Fuegians now do, and therefore
generally have resided in the neighbourhood of the sea.
The common prejudice of lying where one's ancestors have
lain, would make the now roaming Indians bring the less
perishable part of their dead to their ancient burial-ground
on the coast.

January 9th, 1834. -- Before it was dark the Beagle anchored
in the fine spacious harbour of Port St. Julian, situated
about one hundred and ten miles to the south of Port Desire.
We remained here eight days.  The country is nearly similar
to that of Port Desire, but perhaps rather more sterile.  One
day a party accompanied Captain Fitz Roy on a long walk
round the head of the harbour.  We were eleven hours without
tasting any water, and some of the party were quite
exhausted.  From the summit of a hill (since well named
Thirsty Hill) a fine lake was spied, and two of the party
proceeded with concerted signals to show whether it was fresh
water.  What was our disappointment to find a snow-white
expanse of salt, crystallized in great cubes!  We attributed
our extreme thirst to the dryness of the atmosphere; but
whatever the cause might be, we were exceedingly glad late
in the evening to get back to the boats.  Although we could
nowhere find, during our whole visit, a single drop of fresh
water, yet some must exist; for by an odd chance I found on
the surface of the salt water, near the head of the bay, a
Colymbetes not quite dead, which must have lived in some
not far distant pool.  Three other insects (a Cincindela, like
hybrida, a Cymindis, and a Harpalus, which all live on muddy
flats occasionally overflowed by the sea), and one other
found dead on the plain, complete the list of the beetles.  A
good-sized fly (Tabanus) was extremely numerous, and tormented
us by its painful bite.  The common horsefly, which
is so troublesome in the shady lanes of England, belongs to
this same genus.  We here have the puzzle that so frequently
occurs in the case of musquitoes -- on the blood of what
animals do these insects commonly feed?  The guanaco is
nearly the only warm-blooded quadruped, and it is found in
quite inconsiderable numbers compared with the multitude
of flies.

The geology of Patagonia is interesting.  Differently from
Europe, where the tertiary formations appear to have accumulated
in bays, here along hundreds of miles of coast we
have one great deposit, including many tertiary shells, all
apparently extinct.  The most common shell is a massive
gigantic oyster, sometimes even a foot in diameter.  These
beds are covered by others of a peculiar soft white stone,
including much gypsum, and resembling chalk, but really of
a pumiceous nature.  It is highly remarkable, from being
composed, to at least one-tenth of its bulk, of Infusoria.
Professor Ehrenberg has already ascertained in it thirty
oceanic forms.  This bed extends for 500 miles along the coast,
and probably for a considerably greater distance.  At Port
St. Julian its thickness is more than 800 feet!  These white
beds are everywhere capped by a mass of gravel, forming
probably one of the largest beds of shingle in the world: it
certainly extends from near the Rio Colorado to between 600
and 700 nautical miles southward, at Santa Cruz (a river a
little south of St. Julian), it reaches to the foot of the
Cordillera; half way up the river, its thickness is more than
200 feet; it probably everywhere extends to this great chain,
whence the well-rounded pebbles of porphyry have been
derived: we may consider its average breadth as 200 miles,
and its average thickness as about 50 feet.  If this great bed
of pebbles, without including the mud necessarily derived
from their attrition, was piled into a mound, it would form a
great mountain chain!  When we consider that all these
pebbles, countless as the grains of sand in the desert, have
been derived from the slow falling of masses of rock on the
old coast-lines and banks of rivers, and that these fragments
have been dashed into smaller pieces, and that each of them
has since been slowly rolled, rounded, and far transported
the mind is stupefied in thinking over the long, absolutely
necessary, lapse of years.  Yet all this gravel has been
transported, and probably rounded, subsequently to the
deposition of the white beds, and long subsequently to the
underlying beds with the tertiary shells.

Everything in this southern continent has been effected
on a grand scale: the land, from the Rio Plata to Tierra del
Fuego, a distance of 1200 miles, has been raised in mass (and
in Patagonia to a height of between 300 and 400 feet), within
the period of the now existing sea-shells.  The old and
weathered shells left on the surface of the upraised plain still
partially retain their colours.  The uprising movement has
been interrupted by at least eight long periods of rest, during
which the sea ate, deeply back into the land, forming at
successive levels the long lines of cliffs, or escarpments,
which separate the different plains as they rise like steps one
behind the other.  The elevatory movement, and the eating-back
power of the sea during the periods of rest, have been
equable over long lines of coast; for I was astonished to
find that the step-like plains stand at nearly corresponding
heights at far distant points.  The lowest plain is 90 feet
high; and the highest, which I ascended near the coast, is
950 feet; and of this, only relics are left in the form of flat
gravel-capped hills.  The upper plain of Santa Cruz slopes
up to a height of 3000 feet at the foot of the Cordillera.  I
have said that within the period of existing sea-shells,
Patagonia has been upraised 300 to 400 feet: I may add, that
within the period when icebergs transported boulders over
the upper plain of Santa Cruz, the elevation has been at least
1500 feet.  Nor has Patagonia been affected only by upward
movements: the extinct tertiary shells from Port St. Julian
and Santa Cruz cannot have lived, according to Professor E.
Forbes, in a greater depth of water than from 40 to 250 feet;
but they are now covered with sea-deposited strata from 800
to 1000 feet in thickness: hence the bed of the sea, on which
these shells once lived, must have sunk downwards several
hundred feet, to allow of the accumulation of the superincumbent
strata.  What a history of geological changes does the
simply-constructed coast of Patagonia reveal!

At Port St. Julian, [12] in some red mud capping the gravel
on the 90-feet plain, I found half the skeleton of the
Macrauchenia Patachonica, a remarkable quadruped, full as large
as a camel.  It belongs to the same division of the Pachydermata
with the rhinoceros, tapir, and palaeotherium; but
in the structure of the bones of its long neck it shows a clear
relation to the camel, or rather to the guanaco and llama.
From recent sea-shells being found on two of the higher
step-formed plains, which must have been modelled and
upraised before the mud was deposited in which the Macrauchenia
was entombed, it is certain that this curious quadruped
lived long after the sea was inhabited by its present
shells.  I was at first much surprised how a large quadruped
could so lately have subsisted, in lat. 49 degs. 15', on these
wretched gravel plains, with their stunted vegetation; but
the relationship of the Macrauchenia to the Guanaco, now
an inhabitant of the most sterile parts, partly explains this
difficulty.

The relationship, though distant, between the Macrauchenia
and the Guanaco, between the Toxodon and the
Capybara, -- the closer relationship between the many extinct
Edentata and the living sloths, ant-eaters, and armadillos,
now so eminently characteristic of South American zoology,
-- and the still closer relationship between the fossil and
living species of Ctenomys and Hydrochaerus, are most
interesting facts.  This relationship is shown wonderfully -- as
wonderfully as between the fossil and extinct Marsupial
animals of Australia -- by the great collection lately brought
to Europe from the caves of Brazil by MM. Lund and Clausen.
In this collection there are extinct species of all the
thirty-two genera, excepting four, of the terrestrial quadrupeds
now inhabiting the provinces in which the caves occur;
and the extinct species are much more numerous than those
now living: there are fossil ant-eaters, armadillos, tapirs,
peccaries, guanacos, opossums, and numerous South American
gnawers and monkeys, and other animals.  This wonderful
relationship in the same continent between the dead and
the living, will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light
on the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their
disappearance from it, than any other class of facts.

It is impossible to reflect on the changed state of the
American continent without the deepest astonishment.  Formerly
it must have swarmed with great monsters: now we
find mere pigmies, compared with the antecedent, allied
races.  If Buffon had known of the gigantic sloth and
armadillo-like animals, and of the lost Pachydermata, he might
have said with a greater semblance of truth that the creative
force in America had lost its power, rather than that it had
never possessed great vigour.  The greater number, if not all,
of these extinct quadrupeds lived at a late period, and were
the contemporaries of most of the existing sea-shells.  Since
they lived, no very great change in the form of the land can
have taken place.  What, then, has exterminated so many
species and whole genera?  The mind at first is irresistibly
hurried into the belief of some great catastrophe; but thus
to destroy animals, both large and small, in Southern Patagonia,
in Brazil, on the Cordillera of Peru, in North America
up to Behring's Straits, we must shake the entire framework
of the globe.  An examination, moreover, of the geology of
La Plata and Patagonia, leads to the belief that all the
features of the land result from slow and gradual changes.  It
appears from the character of the fossils in Europe, Asia,
Australia, and in North and South America, that those conditions
which favour the life of the _larger_ quadrupeds were
lately co-extensive with the world: what those conditions
were, no one has yet even conjectured.  It could hardly have
been a change of temperature, which at about the same time
destroyed the inhabitants of tropical, temperate, and arctic
latitudes on both sides of the globe.  In North America we
positively know from Mr. Lyell, that the large quadrupeds
lived subsequently to that period, when boulders were
brought into latitudes at which icebergs now never arrive:
from conclusive but indirect reasons we may feel sure, that
in the southern hemisphere the Macrauchenia, also, lived
long subsequently to the ice-transporting boulder-period.  Did
man, after his first inroad into South America, destroy, as
has been suggested, the unwieldy Megatherium and the
other Edentata?  We must at least look to some other cause
for the destruction of the little tucutuco at Bahia Blanca, and
of the many fossil mice and other small quadrupeds in
Brazil.  No one will imagine that a drought, even far severer
than those which cause such losses in the provinces of La
Plata, could destroy every individual of every species from
Southern Patagonia to Behring's Straits.  What shall we say
of the extinction of the horse?  Did those plains fail of
pasture, which have since been overrun by thousands and hundreds
of thousands of the descendants of the stock introduced
by the Spaniards?  Have the subsequently introduced
species consumed the food of the great antecedent races?
Can we believe that the Capybara has taken the food of the
Toxodon, the Guanaco of the Macrauchenia, the existing
small Edentata of their numerous gigantic prototypes?  Certainly,
no fact in the long history of the world is so startling
as the wide and repeated exterminations of its inhabitants.

Nevertheless, if we consider the subject under another
point of view, it will appear less perplexing.  We do not
steadily bear in mind, how profoundly ignorant we are of the
conditions of existence of every animal; nor do we always
remember, that some check is constantly preventing the too
rapid increase of every organized being left in a state of
nature.  The supply of food, on an average, remains constant, yet
the tendency in every animal to increase by propagation is
geometrical; and its surprising effects have nowhere been
more astonishingly shown, than in the case of the European
animals run wild during the last few centuries in America.
Every animal in a state of nature regularly breeds; yet in a
species long established, any _great_ increase in numbers is
obviously impossible, and must be checked by some means.
We are, nevertheless, seldom able with certainty to tell in
any given species, at what period of life, or at what period
of the year, or whether only at long intervals, the check
falls; or, again, what is the precise nature of the check.
Hence probably it is, that we feel so little surprise at one, of
two species closely allied in habits, being rare and the other
abundant in the same district; or, again, that one should be
abundant in one district, and another, filling the same place
in the economy of nature, should be abundant in a neighbouring
district, differing very little in its conditions.  If asked
how this is, one immediately replies that it is determined by
some slight difference, in climate, food, or the number of
enemies: yet how rarely, if ever, we can point out the precise
cause and manner of action of the check!  We are
therefore, driven to the conclusion, that causes generally
quite inappreciable by us, determine whether a given species
shall be abundant or scanty in numbers.

In the cases where we can trace the extinction of a
species through man, either wholly or in one limited district,
we know that it becomes rarer and rarer, and is then lost:
it would be difficult to point out any just distinction [13]
between a species destroyed by man or by the increase of its
natural enemies.  The evidence of rarity preceding extinction,
is more striking in the successive tertiary strata, as remarked
by several able observers; it has often been found that a shell
very common in a tertiary stratum is now most rare, and has
even long been thought extinct.  If then, as appears probable,
species first become rare and then extinct -- if the too rapid
increase of every species, even the most favoured, is steadily
checked, as we must admit, though how and when it is hard to
say -- and if we see, without the smallest surprise, though
unable to assign the precise reason, one species abundant
and another closely allied species rare in the same district --
why should we feel such great astonishment at the rarity being
carried one step further to extinction?  An action going on,
on every side of us, and yet barely appreciable, might surely
be carried a little further, without exciting our observation.
Who would feel any great surprise at hearing that the Magalonyx
was formerly rare compared with the Megatherium, or that one of
the fossil monkeys was few in number compared with one of the
now living monkeys? and yet in this comparative rarity, we
should have the plainest evidence of less favourable conditions
for their existence.  To admit that species generally become
rare before they become extinct -- to feel no surprise at the
comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to
call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when
a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as
to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude to
death -- to feel no surprise at sickness -- but when the
sick man dies to wonder, and to believe that he died through
violence.

[1] Mr. Waterhouse has drawn up a detailed description of this
head, which I hope he will publish in some Journal.

[2] A nearly similar abnormal, but I do not know whether
hereditary, structure has been observed in the carp, and
likewise in the crocodile of the Ganges: Histoire des Anomalies,
par M. Isid. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, tom. i. p. 244.

[3] M. A. d'Orbigny has given nearly a similar account of these
dogs, tom. i. p. 175.

[4] I must express my obligations to Mr. Keane, at whose house
I was staying on the Berquelo, and to Mr. Lumb at Buenos Ayres,
for without their assistance these valuable remains would never
have reached England.

[5] Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. iii. p. 63.

[6] The flies which frequently accompany a ship for some days
on its passage from harbour to harbour, wandering from the
vessel, are soon lost, and all disappear.

[7] Mr. Blackwall, in his Researches in Zoology, has many
excellent observations on the habits of spiders.

[8] An abstract is given in No. IV. of the Magazine of Zoology
and Botany.

[9] I found here a species of cactus, described by Professor
Henslow, under the name of Opuntia Darwinii (Magazine of
Zoology and Botany, vol. i. p. 466), which was remarkable
for the irritability of the stamens, when I inserted either a
piece of stick or the end of my finger in the flower.  The
segments of the perianth also closed on the pistil, but more
slowly than the stamens.  Plants of this family, generally
considered as tropical, occur in North America (Lewis and
Clarke's Travels, p. 221), in the same high latitude as here,
namely, in both cases, in 47 degs.

[10] These insects were not uncommon beneath stones.  I found
one cannibal scorpion quietly devouring another.

[11] Shelley, Lines on Mt. Blanc.

[12] I have lately heard that Capt. Sulivan, R.N., has found
numerous fossil bones, embedded in regular strata, on the banks
of the R. Gallegos, in lat. 51 degs. 4'. Some of the bones
are large; others are small, and appear to have belonged to
an armadillo.  This is a most interesting and important
discovery.

[13] See the excellent remarks on this subject by Mr. Lyell,
in his Principles of Geology.



CHAPTER IX

SANTA CRUZ, PATAGONIA, AND THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

Santa Cruz -- Expedition up the River -- Indians -- Immense
Streams of Basaltic Lava -- Fragments not transported by the
River -- Excavations of the Valley -- Condor, Habits of --
Cordillera -- Erratic Boulders of great size -- Indian Relics --
Return to the Ship -- Falkland Islands -- Wild Horses, Cattle,
Rabbits -- Wolf-like Fox -- Fire made of Bones -- Manner of
Hunting Wild Cattle -- Geology -- Streams of Stones -- Scenes
of Violence -- Penguins -- Geese -- Eggs of Doris -- Compound
Animals.


APRIL 13, 1834. -- The Beagle anchored within the mouth of the
Santa Cruz.  This river is situated about sixty miles south of
Port St. Julian.  During the last voyage Captain Stokes proceeded
thirty miles up it, but then, from the want of provisions, was
obliged to return.  Excepting what was discovered at that time,
scarcely anything was known about this large river.  Captain Fitz
Roy now determined to follow its course as far as time would
allow.  On the 18th three whale-boats started, carrying three
weeks' provisions; and the party consisted of twenty-five
souls -- a force which would have been sufficient to have
defied a host of Indians.  With a strong flood-tide and a fine
day we made a good run, soon drank some of the fresh water,
and were at night nearly above the tidal influence.

The river here assumed a size and appearance which, even at
the highest point we ultimately reached, was scarcely
diminished.  It was generally from three to four hundred yards
broad, and in the middle about seventeen feet deep.  The
rapidity of the current, which in its whole course runs at
the rate of from four to six knots an hour, is perhaps its
most remarkable feature.  The water is of a fine blue colour,
but with a slight milky tinge, and not so transparent as at
first sight would have been expected.  It flows over a bed of
pebbles, like those which compose the beach and the surrounding
plains.  It runs in a winding course through
valley, which extends in a direct line westward.  This valle
varies from five to ten miles in breadth; it is bounded b
step-formed terraces, which rise in most parts, one above th
other, to the height of five hundred feet, and have on th
opposite sides a remarkable correspondence.

April 19th. -- Against so strong a current it was, o
course, quite impossible to row or sail: consequently th
three boats were fastened together head and stern, two hand
left in each, and the rest came on shore to track.  As th
general arrangements made by Captain Fitz Roy were ver
good for facilitating the work of all, and as all had a shar
in it, I will describe the system.  The party including ever
one, was divided into two spells, each of which hauled at th
tracking line alternately for an hour and a half.  The officers
of each boat lived with, ate the same food, and slep
in the same tent with their crew, so that each boat wa
quite independent of the others.  After sunset the first leve
spot where any bushes were growing, was chosen for ou
night's lodging.  Each of the crew took it in turns to b
cook.  Immediately the boat was hauled up, the cook mad
his fire; two others pitched the tent; the coxswain hande
the things out of the boat; the rest carried them up to th
tents and collected firewood.  By this order, in half an hou
everything was ready for the night.  A watch of two me
and an officer was always kept, whose duty it was to loo
after the boats, keep up the fire, and guard against Indians
Each in the party had his one hour every night.

During this day we tracked but a short distance, for ther
were many islets, covered by thorny bushes, and the channels
between them were shallow.

April 20th. -- We passed the islands and set to work.  Ou
regular day's march, although it was hard enough, carrie
us on an average only ten miles in a straight line, and perhaps
fifteen or twenty altogether.  Beyond the place wher
we slept last night, the country is completely _terra incognita_
for it was there that Captain Stokes turned back.  We sa
in the distance a great smoke, and found the skeleton of
horse, so we knew that Indians were in the neighbourhood
On the next morning (21st) tracks of a party of horse
and marks left by the trailing of the chuzos, or long spears
were observed on the ground.  It was generally though
that the Indians had reconnoitred us during the night
Shortly afterwards we came to a spot where, from the fres
footsteps of men, children, and horses, it was evident tha
the party had crossed the river.

April 22nd. -- The country remained the same, and wa
extremely uninteresting.  The complete similarity of th
productions throughout Patagonia is one of its most striking
characters.  The level plains of arid shingle suppor
the same stunted and dwarf plants; and in the valleys th
same thorn-bearing bushes grow.  Everywhere we see th
same birds and insects.  Even the very banks of the rive
and of the clear streamlets which entered it, were scarcel
enlivened by a brighter tint of green.  The curse of sterilit
is on the land, and the water flowing over a bed of pebble
partakes of the same curse.  Hence the number of waterfowl
is very scanty; for there is nothing to support life i
the stream of this barren river.

Patagonia, poor as she is in some respects, can howeve
boast of a greater stock of small rodents [1] than perhaps an
other country in the world.  Several species of mice ar
externally characterized by large thin ears and a very fin
fur.  These little animals swarm amongst the thickets in th
valleys, where they cannot for months together taste a dro
of water excepting the dew.  They all seem to be cannibals
for no sooner was a mouse caught in one of my traps tha
it was devoured by others.  A small and delicately shape
fox, which is likewise very abundant, probably derives it
entire support from these small animals.  The guanaco i
also in his proper district, herds of fifty or a hundred wer
common; and, as I have stated, we saw one which mus
have contained at least five hundred.  The puma, with th
condor and other carrion-hawks in its train, follows an
preys upon these animals.  The footsteps of the puma wer
to be seen almost everywhere on the banks of the river
and the remains of several guanacos, with their neck
dislocated and bones broken, showed how they had met thei
death.

April 24th. -- Like the navigators of old when approachin
an unknown land, we examined and watched for the mos
trivial sign of a change.  The drifted trunk of a tree, or
boulder of primitive rock, was hailed with joy, as if we ha
seen a forest growing on the flanks of the Cordillera.  Th
top, however, of a heavy bank of clouds, which remaine
almost constantly in one position, was the most promisin
sign, and eventually turned out a true harbinger.  At first th
clouds were mistaken for the mountains themselves, instea
of the masses of vapour condensed by their icy summits.

April 26th. -- We this day met with a marked change i
the geological structure of the plains.  From the first starting
I had carefully examined the gravel in the river, an
for the two last days had noticed the presence of a few smal
pebbles of a very cellular basalt.  These gradually increase
in number and in size, but none were as large as a man'
head.  This morning, however, pebbles of the same rock
but more compact, suddenly became abundant, and in th
course of half an hour we saw, at the distance of five o
six miles, the angular edge of a great basaltic platform
When we arrived at its base we found the stream bubblin
among the fallen blocks.  For the next twenty-eight mile
the river-course was encumbered with these basaltic masses
Above that limit immense fragments of primitive rocks
derived from its surrounding boulder-formation, wer
equally numerous.  None of the fragments of any considerable
size had been washed more than three or four mile
down the river below their parent-source: considering th
singular rapidity of the great body of water in the Sant
Cruz, and that no still reaches occur in any part, this example
is a most striking one, of the inefficiency of rivers i
transporting even moderately-sized fragments.

The basalt is only lava, which has flowed beneath the sea
but the eruptions must have been on the grandest scale.  A
the point where we first met this formation it was 120 fee
in thickness; following up the river course, the surfac
imperceptibly rose and the mass became thicker, so that a
forty miles above the first station it was 320 feet thick
What the thickness may be close to the Cordillera, I hav
no means of knowing, but the platform there attains a heigh
of about three thousand feet above the level of the sea
we must therefore look to the mountains of that great chai
for its source; and worthy of such a source are streams tha
have flowed over the gently inclined bed of the sea to
distance of one hundred miles.  At the first glance of th
basaltic cliffs on the opposite sides of the valley, it wa
evident that the strata once were united.  What power, then
has removed along a whole line of country, a solid mass o
very hard rock, which had an average thickness of nearl
three hundred feet, and a breadth varying from rather les
than two miles to four miles?  The river, though it has s
little power in transporting even inconsiderable fragments
yet in the lapse of ages might produce by its gradual erosio
an effect of which it is difficult to judge the amount.  Bu
in this case, independently of the insignificance of such a
agency, good reasons can be assigned for believing that thi
valley was formerly occupied by an arm of the sea.  It i
needless in this work to detail the arguments leading to thi
conclusion, derived from the form and the nature of th
step-formed terraces on both sides of the valley, from th
manner in which the bottom of the valley near the Ande
expands into a great estuary-like plain with sand-hillock
on it, and from the occurrence of a few sea-shells lying i
the bed of the river.  If I had space I could prove tha
South America was formerly here cut off by a strait, joinin
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, like that of Magellan
But it may yet be asked, how has the solid basalt bee
moved?  Geologists formerly would have brought into play
the violent action of some overwhelming debacle; but in thi
case such a supposition would have been quite inadmissible
because, the same step-like plains with existing sea-shell
lying on their surface, which front the long line of the
Patagonian coast, sweep up on each side of the valley of Sant
Cruz.  No possible action of any flood could thus hav
modelled the land, either within the valley or along the ope
coast; and by the formation of such step-like plains or terraces
the valley itself had been hollowed out.  Although w
know that there are tides, which run within the Narrow
of the Strait of Magellan at the rate of eight knots an hour
yet we must confess that it makes the head almost giddy t
reflect on the number of years, century after century, whic
the tides, unaided by a heavy surf, must have required t
have corroded so vast an area and thickness of solid basalti
lava.  Nevertheless, we must believe that the strata undermined
by the waters of this ancient strait, were broken u
into huge fragments, and these lying scattered on the beach
were reduced first to smaller blocks, then to pebbles an
lastly to the most impalpable mud, which the tides drifte
far into the Eastern or Western Ocean.

With the change in the geological structure of the plain
the character of the landscape likewise altered.  While rambling
up some of the narrow and rocky defiles, I could almos
have fancied myself transported back again to the barre
valleys of the island of St. Jago.  Among the basaltic cliffs
I found some plants which I had seen nowhere else, bu
others I recognised as being wanderers from Tierra de
Fuego.  These porous rocks serve as a reservoir for th
scanty rain-water; and consequently on the line where th
igneous and sedimentary formations unite, some smal
springs (most rare occurrences in Patagonia) burst forth
and they could be distinguished at a distance by the
circumscribed patches of bright green herbage.

April 27th. -- The bed of the river became rather narrower
and hence the stream more rapid.  It here ran at the rat
of six knots an hour.  From this cause, and from the man
great angular fragments, tracking the boats became bot
dangerous and laborious


This day I shot a condor.  It measured from tip to ti
of the wings, eight and a half feet, and from beak to tail
four feet.  This bird is known to have a wide geographica
range, being found on the west coast of South America
from the Strait of Magellan along the Cordillera as far a
eight degrees north of the equator.  The steep cliff near th
mouth of the Rio Negro is its northern limit on the Patagonian
coast; and they have there wandered about fou
hundred miles from the great central line of their habitation
in the Andes.  Further south, among the bold precipices
at the head of Port Desire, the condor is not uncommon;
yet only a few stragglers occasionally visit the seacoast.
A line of cliff near the mouth of the Santa Cruz i
frequented by these birds, and about eighty miles up th
river, where the sides of the valley are formed by stee
basaltic precipices, the condor reappears.  From these facts
it seems that the condors require perpendicular cliffs.  I
Chile, they haunt, during the greater part of the year, th
lower country near the shores of the Pacific, and at nigh
several roost together in one tree; but in the early part o
summer, they retire to the most inaccessible parts of th
inner Cordillera, there to breed in peace.

With respect to their propagation, I was told by th
country people in Chile, that the condor makes no sort o
nest, but in the months of November and December lay
two large white eggs on a shelf of bare rock.  It is said tha
the young condors cannot fly for an entire year; and lon
after they are able, they continue to roost by night, an
hunt by day with their parents.  The old birds generally liv
in pairs; but among the inland basaltic cliffs of the Sant
Cruz, I found a spot, where scores must usually haunt.  O
coming suddenly to the brow of the precipice, it was a gran
spectacle to see between twenty and thirty of these grea
birds start heavily from their resting-place, and wheel awa
in majestic circles.  From the quantity of dung on the rocks
they must long have frequented this cliff for roosting an
breeding.  Having gorged themselves with carrion on th
plains below, they retire to these favourite ledges to diges
their food.  From these facts, the condor, like the gallinazo
must to a certain degree be considered as a gregarious bird
In this part of the country they live altogether on the guanacos
which have died a natural death, or as more commonl
happens, have been killed by the pumas.  I believe, fro
what I saw in Patagonia, that they do not on ordinary occasions
extend their daily excursions to any great distanc
from their regular sleeping-places.

The condors may oftentimes be seen at a great height
soaring over a certain spot in the most graceful circles
On some occasions I am sure that they do this only fo
pleasure, but on others, the Chileno countryman tells yo
that they are watching a dying animal, or the puma devouring
its prey.  If the condors glide down, and then suddenl
all rise together, the Chileno knows that it is the pum
which, watching the carcass, has sprung out to drive awa
the robbers.  Besides feeding on carrion, the condors frequently
attack young goats and lambs; and the shepherd-dogs
are trained, whenever they pass over, to run out, an
looking upwards to bark violently.  The Chilenos destro
and catch numbers.  Two methods are used; one is to plac
a carcass on a level piece of ground within an enclosure o
sticks with an opening, and when the condors are gorged
to gallop up on horseback to the entrance, and thus enclos
them: for when this bird has not space to run, it canno
give its body sufficient momentum to rise from the ground
The second method is to mark the trees in which, frequentl
to the number of five or six together, they roost, and the
at night to climb up and noose them.  They are such heav
sleepers, as I have myself witnessed, that this is not a
difficult task.  At Valparaiso, I have seen a living condor sol
for sixpence, but the common price is eight or ten shillings
One which I saw brought in, had been tied with rope, an
was much injured; yet, the moment the line was cut b
which its bill was secured, although surrounded by people
it began ravenously to tear a piece of carrion.  In a garde
at the same place, between twenty and thirty were kept alive
They were fed only once a week, but they appeared in prett
good health. [2] The Chileno countrymen assert that the condor
will live, and retain its vigour, between five and six week
without eating: I cannot answer for the truth of this, bu
it is a cruel experiment, which very likely has been tried.

When an animal is killed in the country, it is well know
that the condors, like other carrion-vultures, soon gain
intelligence of it, and congregate in an inexplicable manner
In most cases it must not be overlooked, that the bird
have discovered their prey, and have picked the skeleto
clean, before the flesh is in the least degree tainted.
Remembering the experiments of M. Audubon, on the littl
smelling powers of carrion-hawks, I tried in the above
mentioned garden the following experiment: the condor
were tied, each by a rope, in a long row at the bottom of
wall; and having folded up a piece of meat in white paper,
walked backwards and forwards, carrying it in my hand a
the distance of about three yards from them, but no notic
whatever was taken.  I then threw it on the ground, withi
one yard of an old male bird; he looked at it for a momen
with attention, but then regarded it no more.  With a stic
I pushed it closer and closer, until at last he touched it wit
his beak; the paper was then instantly torn off with fury
and at the same moment, every bird in the long row bega
struggling and flapping its wings.  Under the same circumstances,
it would have been quite impossible to have deceive
a dog.  The evidence in favour of and against the acut
smelling powers of carrion-vultures is singularly balanced
Professor Owen has demonstrated that the olfactory nerve
of the turkey-buzzard (Cathartes aura) are highly developed,
and on the evening when Mr. Owen's paper was rea
at the Zoological Society, it was mentioned by a gentlema
that he had seen the carrion-hawks in the West Indies o
two occasions collect on the roof of a house, when a corps
had become offensive from not having been buried, in thi
case, the intelligence could hardly have been acquired b
sight.  On the other hand, besides the experiments of Audubon
and that one by myself, Mr. Bachman has tried in th
United States many varied plans, showing that neither th
turkey-buzzard (the species dissected by Professor Owen
nor the gallinazo find their food by smell.  He covered portions
of highly-offensive offal with a thin canvas cloth, an
strewed pieces of meat on it: these the carrion-vultures at
up, and then remained quietly standing, with their beak
within the eighth of an inch of the putrid mass, withou
discovering it.  A small rent was made in the canvas, an
the offal was immediately discovered; the canvas was replaced
by a fresh piece, and meat again put on it, and wa
again devoured by the vultures without their discoverin
the hidden mass on which they were trampling.  These fact
are attested by the signatures of six gentlemen, besides tha
of Mr. Bachman. [3

Often when lying down to rest on the open plains, o
looking upwards, I have seen carrion-hawks sailing throug
the air at a great height.  Where the country is level I d
not believe a space of the heavens, of more than fifteen degrees
above the horizon, is commonly viewed with any attention
by a person either walking or on horseback.  If suc
be the case, and the vulture is on the wing at a height o
between three and four thousand feet, before it could com
within the range of vision, its distance in a straight lin
from the beholder's eye, would be rather more than tw
British miles.  Might it not thus readily be overlooked
When an animal is killed by the sportsman in a lonely valley
may he not all the while be watched from above by th
sharp-sighted bird?  And will not the manner of its descen
proclaim throughout the district to the whole family o
carrion-feeders, that their prey is at hand?

When the condors are wheeling in a flock round an
round any spot, their flight is beautiful.  Except when risin
from the ground, I do not recollect ever having seen on
of these birds flap its wings.  Near Lima, I watched severa
for nearly half an hour, without once taking off my eyes
they moved in large curves, sweeping in circles, descendin
and ascending without giving a single flap.  As they glide
close over my head, I intently watched from an oblique position,
the outlines of the separate and great terminal feather
of each wing; and these separate feathers, if there had bee
the least vibratory movement, would have appeared as i
blended together; but they were seen distinct against th
blue sky.  The head and neck were moved frequently, an
apparently with force; and the extended wings seemed t
form the fulcrum on which the movements of the neck, body
and tail acted.  If the bird wished to descend, the wing
were for a moment collapsed; and when again expande
with an altered inclination, the momentum gained by th
rapid descent seemed to urge the bird upwards with th
even and steady movement of a paper kite.  In the case o
any bird soaring, its motion must be sufficiently rapid s
that the action of the inclined surface of its body on th
atmosphere may counterbalance its gravity.  The force t
keep up the momentum of a body moving in a horizonta
plane in the air (in which there is so little friction) canno
be great, and this force is all that is wanted.  The movement
of the neck and body of the condor, we must suppose
is sufficient for this.  However this may be, it is truly
wonderful and beautiful to see so great a bird, hour after hour
without any apparent exertion, wheeling and gliding ove
mountain and river

April 29th. -- From some high land we hailed with jo
the white summits of the Cordillera, as they were seen
occasionally peeping through their dusky envelope of clouds
During the few succeeding days we continued to get o
slowly, for we found the river-course very tortuous, an
strewed with immense fragments of various ancient slat
rocks, and of granite.  The plain bordering the valley ha
here attained an elevation of about 1100 feet above the river
and its character was much altered.  The well-rounded pebbles
of porphyry were mingled with many immense angula
fragments of basalt and of primary rocks.  The first of thes
erratic boulders which I noticed, was sixty-seven miles distant
from the nearest mountain; another which I measure
was five yards square, and projected five feet above th
gravel.  Its edges were so angular, and its size so great, tha
I at first mistook it for a rock _in situ_, and took out my
compass to observe the direction of its cleavage.  The plain her
was not quite so level as that nearer the coast, but yet i
betrayed no signs of any great violence.  Under these
circumstances it is, I believe, quite impossible to explain th
transportal of these gigantic masses of rock so many mile
from their parent-source, on any theory except by that o
floating icebergs.

During the two last days we met with signs of horses, an
with several small articles which had belonged to the Indian
-- such as parts of a mantle and a bunch of ostrich feathers --
but they appeared to have been lying long on the ground
Between the place where the Indians had so lately crosse
the river and this neighbourhood, though so many mile
apart, the country appears to be quite unfrequented.  At first
considering the abundance of the guanacos, I was surprise
at this; but it is explained by the stony nature of the plains
which would soon disable an unshod horse from taking par
in the chase.  Nevertheless, in two places in this very centra
region, I found small heaps of stones, which I do not thin
could have been accidentally thrown together.  They wer
placed on points, projecting over the edge of the highest lav
cliff, and they resembled, but on a small scale, those nea
Port Desire.

May 4th. -- Captain Fitz Roy determined to take the boat
no higher.  The river had a winding course, and was ver
rapid; and the appearance of the country offered no temptation
to proceed any further.  Everywhere we met with th
same productions, and the same dreary landscape.  We wer
now one hundred and forty miles distant from the Atlantic
and about sixty from the nearest arm of the Pacific.  Th
valley in this upper part expanded into a wide basin, bounde
on the north and south by the basaltic platforms, and fronte
by the long range of the snow-clad Cordillera.  But w
viewed these grand mountains with regret, for we wer
obliged to imagine their nature and productions, instead o
standing, as we had hoped, on their summits.  Besides th
useless loss of time which an attempt to ascend the river an
higher would have cost us, we had already been for som
days on half allowance of bread.  This, although reall
enough for reasonable men, was, after a hard day's march
rather scanty food: a light stomach and an easy digestio
are good things to talk about, but very unpleasant in practice

5th. -- Before sunrise we commenced our descent.  W
shot down the stream with great rapidity, generally at th
rate of ten knots an hour.  In this one day we effected wha
had cost us five-and-a-half hard days' labour in ascending
On the 8th, we reached the Beagle after our twenty-one days
expedition.  Every one, excepting myself, had cause to b
dissatisfied; but to me the ascent afforded a most interestin
section of the great tertiary formation of Patagonia

On March 1st, 1833, and again on March 16th, 1834, th
Beagle anchored in Berkeley Sound, in East Falkland Island
This archipelago is situated in nearly the same latitude wit
the mouth of the Strait of Magellan; it covers a space o
one hundred and twenty by sixty geographical miles, and is
little more than half the size of Ireland.  After the possession
of these miserable islands had been contested by France
Spain, and England, they were left uninhabited.  The government
of Buenos Ayres then sold them to a private individual,
but likewise used them, as old Spain had done before
for a penal settlement.  England claimed her right an
seized them.  The Englishman who was left in charge o
the flag was consequently murdered.  A British officer wa
next sent, unsupported by any power: and when we arrived
we found him in charge of a population, of which rathe
more than half were runaway rebels and murderers.

The theatre is worthy of the scenes acted on it.  An undulating
land, with a desolate and wretched aspect, is everywhere
covered by a peaty soil and wiry grass, of one monotonous
brown colour.  Here and there a peak or ridg
of grey quartz rock breaks through the smooth surface
Every one has heard of the climate of these regions; i
may be compared to that which is experienced at the heigh
of between one and two thousand feet, on the mountains o
North Wales; having however less sunshine and less frost
but more wind and rain. [4]

16th. -- I will now describe a short excursion which
made round a part of this island.  In the morning I starte
with six horses and two Gauchos: the latter were capita
men for the purpose, and well accustomed to living on thei
own resources.  The weather was very boisterous and cold
with heavy hail-storms.  We got on, however, pretty well
but, except the geology, nothing could be less interestin
than our day's ride.  The country is uniformly the sam
undulating moorland; the surface being covered by ligh
brown withered grass and a few very small shrubs, al
springing out of an elastic peaty soil.  In the valleys her
and there might be seen a small flock of wild geese, an
everywhere the ground was so soft that the snipe were abl
to feed.  Besides these two birds there were few others
There is one main range of hills, nearly two thousand fee
in height, and composed of quartz rock, the rugged and barren
crests of which gave us some trouble to cross.  On th
south side we came to the best country for wild cattle; w
met, however, no great number, for they had been latel
much harassed.

In the evening we came across a small herd.  One of m
companions, St. Jago by name, soon separated a fat cow
he threw the bolas, and it struck her legs, but failed in
becoming entangled.  Then dropping his hat to mark the spo
where the balls were left, while at full gallop, he uncoile
his lazo, and after a most severe chase, again came up t
the cow, and caught her round the horns.  The other Gauch
had gone on ahead with the spare horses, so that St. Jag
had some difficulty in killing the furious beast.  He managed
to get her on a level piece of ground, by taking advantage
of her as often as she rushed at him; and when sh
would not move, my horse, from having been trained, woul
canter up, and with his chest give her a violent push.  Bu
when on level ground it does not appear an easy job fo
one man to kill a beast mad with terror.  Nor would it b
so, if the horse, when left to itself without its rider, di
not soon learn, for its own safety, to keep the lazo tight
so that, if the cow or ox moves forward, the horse move
just as quickly forward; otherwise, it stands motionles
leaning on one side.  This horse, however, was a youn
one, and would not stand still, but gave in to the cow as sh
struggled.  It was admirable to see with what dexterity St
Jago dodged behind the beast, till at last he contrived t
give the fatal touch to the main tendon of the hind le
after which, without much difficulty, he drove his knif
into the head of the spinal marrow, and the cow droppe
as if struck by lightning.  He cut off pieces of flesh wit
the skin to it, but without any bones, sufficient for ou
expedition.  We then rode on to our sleeping-place, an
had for supper "carne con cuero," or meat roasted with th
skin on it.  This is as superior to common beef as veniso
is to mutton.  A large circular piece taken from the bac
is roasted on the embers with the hide downwards and i
the form of a saucer, so that none of the gravy is lost
If any worthy alderman had supped with us that evening
"carne con cuero," without doubt, would soon have bee
celebrated in London

During the night it rained, and the next day (17th) wa
very stormy, with much hail and snow.  We rode across th
island to the neck of land which joins the Rincon del Tor
(the great peninsula at the S. W. extremity) to the rest o
the island.  From the great number of cows which hav
been killed, there is a large proportion of bulls.  These wander
about single, or two and three together, and are ver
savage.  I never saw such magnificent beasts; they equalle
in the size of their huge heads and necks the Grecian marbl
sculptures.  Capt. Sulivan informs me that the hide of a
average-sized bull weighs forty-seven pounds, whereas
hide of this weight, less thoroughly dried, is considered a
a very heavy one at Monte Video.  The young bulls generally
run away, for a short distance; but the old ones do no
stir a step, except to rush at man and horse; and man
horses have been thus killed.  An old bull crossed a bogg
stream, and took his stand on the opposite side to us; w
in vain tried to drive him away, and failing, were oblige
to make a large circuit.  The Gauchos in revenge determined
to emasculate him and render him for the futur
harmless.  It was very interesting to see how art completel
mastered force.  One lazo was thrown over his horns as h
rushed at the horse, and another round his hind legs: in
minute the monster was stretched powerless on the ground
After the lazo has once been drawn tightly round the horn
of a furious animal, it does not at first appear an easy thin
to disengage it again without killing the beast: nor, I
apprehend, would it be so if the man was by himself.  By th
aid, however, of a second person throwing his lazo so as t
catch both hind legs, it is quickly managed: for the animal
as long as its hind legs are kept outstretched, is quite
helpless, and the first man can with his hands loosen his laz
from the horns, and then quietly mount his horse; but th
moment the second man, by backing ever so little, relaxe
the strain, the lazo slips off the legs of the struggling beast
which then rises free, shakes himself, and vainly rushes a
his antagonist

During our whole ride we saw only one troop of wil
horses.  These animals, as well as the cattle, were introduce
by the French in 1764, since which time both have greatl
increased.  It is a curious fact, that the horses have neve
left the eastern end of the island, although there is no natural
boundary to prevent them from roaming, and that par
of the island is not more tempting than the rest.  The Gauchos
whom I asked, though asserting this to be the case
were unable to account for it, except from the strong attachment
which horses have to any locality to which they ar
accustomed.  Considering that the island does not appea
fully stocked, and that there are no beasts of prey, I wa
particularly curious to know what has checked their originally
rapid increase.  That in a limited island some chec
would sooner or later supervene, is inevitable; but why ha
the increase of the horse been checked sooner than that o
the cattle?  Capt. Sulivan has taken much pains for m
in this inquiry.  The Gauchos employed here attribute i
chiefly to the stallions constantly roaming from place t
place, and compelling the mares to accompany them, whethe
or not the young foals are able to follow.  One Gaucho tol
Capt. Sulivan that he had watched a stallion for a whol
hour, violently kicking and biting a mare till he force
her to leave her foal to its fate.  Capt. Sulivan can so fa
corroborate this curious account, that he has several time
found young foals dead, whereas he has never found a dea
calf.  Moreover, the dead bodies of full-grown horses ar
more frequently found, as if more subject to disease o
accidents, than those of the cattle.  From the softness o
the ground their hoofs often grow irregularly to a grea
length, and this causes lameness.  The predominant colour
are roan and iron-grey.  All the horses bred here, both tam
and wild, are rather small-sized, though generally in goo
condition; and they have lost so much strength, that the
are unfit to be used in taking wild cattle with the lazo: i
consequence, it is necessary to go to the great expense o
importing fresh horses from the Plata.  At some futur
period the southern hemisphere probably will have its bree
of Falkland ponies, as the northern has its Shetland breed.

The cattle, instead of having degenerated like the horse
seem, as before remarked, to have increased in size; an
they are much more numerous than the horses Capt. Sulivan
informs me that they vary much less in the genera
form of their bodies and in the shape of their horns tha
English cattle.  In colour they differ much; and it is a
remarkable circumstance, that in different parts of this on
small island, different colours predominate.  Round Moun
Usborne, at a height of from 1000 to 1500 feet above the sea
about half of some of the herds are mouse or lead-coloured
a tint which is not common in other parts of the island
Near Port Pleasant dark brown prevails, whereas south o
Choiseul Sound (which almost divides the island into tw
parts), white beasts with black heads and feet are the mos
common: in all parts black, and some spotted animals ma
be observed.  Capt. Sulivan remarks, that the difference i
the prevailing colours was so obvious, that in looking fo
the herds near Port Pleasant, they appeared from a lon
distance like black spots, whilst south of Choiseul Soun
they appeared like white spots on the hill-sides.  Capt. Sulivan
thinks that the herds do not mingle; and it is a singula
fact, that the mouse-coloured cattle, though living on th
high land, calve about a month earlier in the season tha
the other coloured beasts on the lower land.  It is interesting
thus to find the once domesticated cattle breakin
into three colours, of which some one colour would in al
probability ultimately prevail over the others, if the herd
were left undisturbed for the next several centuries.

The rabbit is another animal which has been introduced
and has succeeded very well; so that they abound over larg
parts of the island.  Yet, like the horses, they are confine
within certain limits; for they have not crossed the centra
chain of hills, nor would they have extended even so far a
its base, if, as the Gauchos informed me, small colonies ha
not been carried there.  I should not have supposed tha
these animals, natives of northern Africa, could have existe
in a climate so humid as this, and which enjoys so littl
sunshine that even wheat ripens only occasionally.  It i
asserted that in Sweden, which any one would have though
a more favourable climate, the rabbit cannot live out o
doors.  The first few pairs, moreover, had here to conten
against pre-existing enemies, in the fox and some larg
hawks.  The French naturalists have considered the black variety
a distinct species, and called it Lepus Magellanicus. [5
They imagined that Magellan, when talking of an anima
under the name of "conejos" in the Strait of Magellan
referred to this species; but he was alluding to a small cavy
which to this day is thus called by the Spaniards.  Th
Gauchos laughed at the idea of the black kind being different
from the grey, and they said that at all events it ha
not extended its range any further than the grey kind; tha
the two were never found separate; and that they readil
bred together, and produced piebald offspring.  Of the latte
I now possess a specimen, and it is marked about the hea
differently from the French specific description.  This
circumstance shows how cautious naturalists should be i
making species; for even Cuvier, on looking at the skul
of one of these rabbits, thought it was probably distinct!

The only quadruped native to the island [6]; is a large wolf
like fox (Canis antarcticus), which is common to both Eas
and West Falkland.  I have no doubt it is a peculiar species
and confined to this archipelago; because many sealers
Gauchos, and Indians, who have visited these islands, al
maintain that no such animal is found in any part of Sout
America.

Molina, from a similarity in habits, thought that thi
was the same with his "culpeu;" [7] but I have seen both
and they are quite distinct.  These wolves are well know
from Byron's account of their tameness and curiosity, whic
the sailors, who ran into the water to avoid them, mistoo
for fierceness.  To this day their manners remain the same
They have been observed to enter a tent, and actually pul
some meat from beneath the head of a sleeping seaman.  Th
Gauchos also have frequently in the evening killed them
by holding out a piece of meat in one hand, and in the othe
a knife ready to stick them.  As far as I am aware, ther
is no other instance in any part of the world, of so smal
a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessin
so large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to itself.  Thei
numbers have rapidly decreased; they are already banishe
from that half of the island which lies to the eastward o
the neck of land between St. Salvador Bay and Berkele
Sound.  Within a very few years after these islands shal
have become regularly settled, in all probability this fo
will be classed with the dodo, as an animal which has perished
from the face of the earth.

At night (17th) we slept on the neck of land at the hea
of Choiseul Sound, which forms the south-west peninsula
The valley was pretty well sheltered from the cold wind
but there was very little brushwood for fuel.  The Gauchos
however, soon found what, to my great surprise, made nearl
as hot a fire as coals; this was the skeleton of a bullock
lately killed, from which the flesh had been picked by the
carrion-hawks.  They told me that in winter they often killed a
beast, cleaned the flesh from the bones with their knives
and then with these same bones roasted the meat for thei
suppers.

18th. -- It rained during nearly the whole day.  At nigh
we managed, however, with our saddle-cloths to keep ourselves
pretty well dry and warm; but the ground on whic
we slept was on each occasion nearly in the state of a bog
and there was not a dry spot to sit down on after our day'
ride.  I have in another part stated how singular it is tha
there should be absolutely no trees on these islands, althoug
Tierra del Fuego is covered by one large forest.  Th
largest bush in the island (belonging to the family of
Compositae) is scarcely so tall as our gorse.  The best fuel i
afforded by a green little bush about the size of commo
heath, which has the useful property of burning while fres
and green.  It was very surprising to see the Gauchos, i
the midst of rain and everything soaking wet, with nothin
more than a tinder-box and a piece of rag, immediately mak
a fire.  They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushe
for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; the
surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird'
nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the middl
and covered it up.  The nest being then held up to th
wind, by degrees it smoked more and more, and at las
burst out in flames.  I do not think any other method woul
have had a chance of succeeding with such damp materials.

19th. -- Each morning, from not having ridden for som
time previously, I was very stiff.  I was surprised to hea
the Gauchos, who have from infancy almost lived on horseback,
say that, under similar circumstances, they alway
suffer.  St. Jago told me, that having been confined for thre
months by illness, he went out hunting wild cattle, and i
consequence, for the next two days, his thighs were so stif
that he was obliged to lie in bed.  This shows that the Gauchos,
although they do not appear to do so, yet really mus
exert much muscular effort in riding.  The hunting wil
cattle, in a country so difficult to pass as this is on accoun
of the swampy ground, must be very hard work.  Th
Gauchos say they often pass at full speed over ground whic
would be impassable at a slower pace; in the same manne
as a man is able to skate over thin ice.  When hunting, th
party endeavours to get as close as possible to the herd with
out being discovered.  Each man carries four or five pair o
the bolas; these he throws one after the other at as man
cattle, which, when once entangled, are left for some day
till they become a little exhausted by hunger and struggling
They are then let free and driven towards a small herd o
tame animals, which have been brought to the spot on purpose.
From their previous treatment, being too much terrified
to leave the herd, they are easily driven, if thei
strength last out, to the settlement.

The weather continued so very bad that we determine
to make a push, and try to reach the vessel before night
From the quantity of rain which had fallen, the surfac
of the whole country was swampy.  I suppose my horse fel
at least a dozen times, and sometimes the whole six horse
were floundering in the mud together.  All the little stream
are bordered by soft peat, which makes it very difficult fo
the horses to leap them without falling.  To complete ou
discomforts we were obliged to cross the head of a cree
of the sea, in which the water was as high as our horses
backs; and the little waves, owing to the violence of th
wind, broke over us, and made us very wet and cold.  Eve
the iron-framed Gauchos professed themselves glad whe
they reached the settlement, after our little excursion

The geological structure of these islands is in mos
respects simple.  The lower country consists of clay-slat
and sandstone, containing fossils, very closely related to, bu
not identical with, those found in the Silurian formation
of Europe; the hills are formed of white granular quart
rock.  The strata of the latter are frequently arched wit
perfect symmetry, and the appearance of some of the masse
is in consequence most singular.  Pernety [8] has devote
several pages to the description of a Hill of Ruins, th
successive strata of which he has justly compared to th
seats of an amphitheatre.  The quartz rock must have bee
quite pasty when it underwent such remarkable flexure
without being shattered into fragments.  As the quart
insensibly passes into the sandstone, it seems probable tha
the former owes its origin to the sandstone having bee
heated to such a degree that it became viscid, and upon cooling
crystallized.  While in the soft state it must have bee
pushed up through the overlying beds.

In many parts of the island the bottoms of the valleys ar
covered in an extraordinary manner by myriads of grea
loose angular fragments of the quartz rock, forming "stream
of stones." These have been mentioned with surprise b
every voyager since the time of Pernety.  The blocks ar
not waterworn, their angles being only a little blunted; the
vary in size from one or two feet in diameter to ten, or eve
more than twenty times as much.  They are not throw
together into irregular piles, but are spread out into leve
sheets or great streams.  It is not possible to ascertain thei
thickness, but the water of small streamlets can be hear
trickling through the stones many feet below the surface
The actual depth is probably great, because the crevice
between the lower fragments must long ago have been fille
up with sand.  The width of these sheets of stones varie
from a few hundred feet to a mile; but the peaty soil dail
encroaches on the borders, and even forms islets whereve
a few fragments happen to lie close together.  In a valle
south of Berkeley Sound, which some of our party calle
the "great valley of fragments," it was necessary to cros
an uninterrupted band half a mile wide, by jumping fro
one pointed stone to another.  So large were the fragments
that being overtaken by a shower of rain, I readily foun
shelter beneath one of them.

Their little inclination is the most remarkable circumstance
in these "streams of stones." On the hill-sides I hav
seen them sloping at an angle of ten degrees with the horizon
but in some of the level, broad-bottomed valleys, the
inclination is only just sufficient to be clearly perceived.
On so rugged a surface there was no means of measuring th
angle, but to give a common illustration, I may say that th
slope would not have checked the speed of an English mail-coach.
In some places, a continuous stream of these fragments
followed up the course of a valley, and eve
extended to the very crest of the hill.  On these crests hug
masses, exceeding in dimensions any small building, seeme
to stand arrested in their headlong course: there, also, th
curved strata of the archways lay piled on each other, lik
the ruins of some vast and ancient cathedral.  In endeavouring
to describe these scenes of violence one is tempted to pas
from one simile to another.  We may imagine that stream
of white lava had flowed from many parts of the mountain
into the lower country, and that when solidified they had bee
rent by some enormous convulsion into myriads of fragments.
The expression "streams of stones," which immediately
occurred to every one, conveys the same idea.  Thes
scenes are on the spot rendered more striking by the contrast
of the low rounded forms of the neighbouring hills.

I was interested by finding on the highest peak of on
range (about 700 feet above the sea) a great arched fragment,
lying on its convex side, or back downwards.  Mus
we believe that it was fairly pitched up in the air, and thu
turned?  Or, with more probability, that there existed formerly
a part of the same range more elevated than the poin
on which this monument of a great convulsion of nature no
lies.  As the fragments in the valleys are neither rounde
nor the crevices filled up with sand, we must infer that th
period of violence was subsequent to the land having bee
raised above the waters of the sea.  In a transverse sectio
within these valleys, the bottom is nearly level, or rises bu
very little towards either side.  Hence the fragments appea
to have travelled from the head of the valley; but in realit
it seems more probable that they have been hurled down fro
the nearest slopes; and that since, by a vibratory movemen
of overwhelming force, [9] the fragments have been levelle
into one continuous sheet.  If during the earthquake [10] whic
in 1835 overthrew Concepcion, in Chile, it was thought wonderful
that small bodies should have been pitched a fe
inches from the ground, what must we say to a movemen
which has caused fragments many tons in weight, to mov
onwards like so much sand on a vibrating board, and fin
their level?  I have seen, in the Cordillera of the Andes, th
evident marks where stupendous mountains have been broke
into pieces like so much thin crust, and the strata thrown o
their vertical edges; but never did any scene, like thes
"streams of stones," so forcibly convey to my mind the ide
of a convulsion, of which in historical records we might i
vain seek for any counterpart: yet the progress of knowledg
will probably some day give a simple explanation of thi
phenomenon, as it already has of the so long-thought
inexplicable transportal of the erratic boulders, which are
strewed over the plains of Europe.

I have little to remark on the zoology of these islands.
have before described the carrion-vulture of Polyborus
There are some other hawks, owls, and a few small land-birds.
The water-fowl are particularly numerous, and the
must formerly, from the accounts of the old navigators
have been much more so.  One day I observed a cormoran
playing with a fish which it had caught.  Eight times
successively the bird let its prey go, then dived after it, an
although in deep water, brought it each time to the surface
In the Zoological Gardens I have seen the otter treat a fis
in the same manner, much as a cat does a mouse: I do no
know of any other instance where dame Nature appears s
wilfully cruel.  Another day, having placed myself betwee
a penguin (Aptenodytes demersa) and the water, I was muc
amused by watching its habits.  It was a brave bird; and til
reaching the sea, it regularly fought and drove me backwards
Nothing less than heavy blows would have stopped him; ever
inch he gained he firmly kept, standing close before me erec
and determined.  When thus opposed he continually rolle
his head from side to side, in a very odd manner, as if th
power of distinct vision lay only in the anterior and basa
part of each eye.  This bird is commonly called the jackas
penguin, from its habit, while on shore, of throwing its hea
backwards, and making a loud strange noise, very like th
braying of an ass; but while at sea, and undisturbed, its not
is very deep and solemn, and is often heard in the night-time
In diving, its little wings are used as fins; but on the land,
as front legs.  When crawling, it may be said on four legs
through the tussocks or on the side of a grassy cliff, it move
so very quickly that it might easily be mistaken for a
quadruped.  When at sea and fishing, it comes to the surface fo
the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives agai
so instantaneously, that I defy any one at first sight to b
sure that it was not a fish leaping for sport.

Two kinds of geese frequent the Falklands.  The uplan
species (Anas Magellanica) is common, in pairs and in smal
flocks, throughout the island.  They do not migrate, but buil
on the small outlying islets.  This is supposed to be fro
fear of the foxes: and it is perhaps from the same caus
that these birds, though very tame by day, are shy and wil
in the dusk of the evening.  They live entirely on vegetabl
matter.

The rock-goose, so called from living exclusively on th
sea-beach (Anas antarctica), is common both here and o
the west coast of America, as far north as Chile.  In the dee
and retired channels of Tierra del Fuego, the snow-whit
gander, invariably accompanied by his darker consort, an
standing close by each other on some distant rocky point, i
a common feature in the landscape.

In these islands a great loggerheaded duck or goose (Ana
brachyptera), which sometimes weighs twenty-two pounds
is very abundant.  These birds were in former days called
from their extraordinary manner of paddling and splashin
upon the water, race-horses; but now they are named, muc
more appropriately, steamers.  Their wings are too small an
weak to allow of flight, but by their aid, partly swimming an
partly flapping the surface of the water, they move ver
quickly.  The manner is something like that by which th
common house-duck escapes when pursued by a dog; but
am nearly sure that the steamer moves its wings alternately
instead of both together, as in other birds.  These clumsy
loggerheaded ducks make such a noise and splashing, that th
effect is exceedingly curious.

Thus we find in South America three birds which use thei
wings for other purposes besides flight; the penguins as fins
the steamer as paddles, and the ostrich as sails: and th
Apteryz of New Zealand, as well as its gigantic extinct
prototype the Deinornis, possess only rudimentary
representatives of wings.  The steamer is able to dive only
to a very short distance.  It feeds entirely on shell-fish
from the kelp and tidal rocks: hence the beak and head, for
the purpose of breaking them, are surprisingly heavy and
strong: the head is so strong that I have scarcely been able
to fracture it with my geological hammer; and all our sportsmen
soon discovered how tenacious these birds were of life.  When in
the evening pluming themselves in a flock, they make the sam
odd mixture of sounds which bull-frogs do within the tropics

In Tierra del Fuego, as well as in the Falkland Islands,
made many observations on the lower marine animals, [11] bu
they are of little general interest.  I will mention only on
class of facts, relating to certain zoophytes in the more highl
organized division of that class.  Several genera (Flustra
Eschara, Cellaria, Crisia, and others) agree in having singular
moveable organs (like those of Flustra avicularia, foun
in the European seas) attached to their cells.  The organ, i
the greater number of cases, very closely resembles the hea
of a vulture; but the lower mandible can be opened muc
wider than in a real bird's beak.  The head itself possesse
considerable powers of movement, by means of a short neck
In one zoophyte the head itself was fixed, but the lower ja
free: in another it was replaced by a triangular hood, with
beautifully-fitted trap-door, which evidently answered to th
lower mandible.  In the greater number of species, each cel
was provided with one head, but in others each cell had two.

The young cells at the end of the branches of these corallines
contain quite immature polypi, yet the vulture-head
attached to them, though small, are in every respect perfect
When the polypus was removed by a needle from any of th
cells, these organs did not appear in the least affected.  Whe
one of the vulture-like heads was cut off from the cell, th
lower mandible retained its power of opening and closing
Perhaps the most singular part of their structure is, tha
when there were more than two rows of cells on a branch
the central cells were furnished with these appendages, o
only one-fourth the size of the outside ones.  Their movements
varied according to the species; but in some I neve
saw the least motion; while others, with the lower mandibl
generally wide open, oscillated backwards and forwards a
the rate of about five seconds each turn, others moved rapidly
and by starts.  When touched with a needle, the bea
generally seized the point so firmly, that the whole branc
might be shaken.

These bodies have no relation whatever with the production
of the eggs or gemmules, as they are formed before th
young polypi appear in the cells at the end of the growin
branches; as they move independently of the polypi, and d
not appear to be in any way connected with them; and a
they differ in size on the outer and inner rows of cells, I hav
little doubt, that in their functions, they are related rathe
to the horny axis of the branches than to the polypi in th
cells.  The fleshy appendage at the lower extremity of th
sea-pen (described at Bahia Blanca) also forms part of th
zoophyte, as a whole, in the same manner as the roots of
tree form part of the whole tree, and not of the individua
leaf or flower-buds.

In another elegant little coralline (Crisia?), each cell wa
furnished with a long-toothed bristle, which had the powe
of moving quickly.  Each of these bristles and each of th
vulture-like heads generally moved quite independently o
the others, but sometimes all on both sides of a branch,
sometimes only those on one side, moved together
coinstantaneously, sometimes each moved in regular order one
after another.  In these actions we apparently behold as perfect
a transmission of will in the zoophyte, though composed o
thousands of distinct polypi, as in any single animal.  Th
case, indeed, is not different from that of the sea-pens, which
when touched, drew themselves into the sand on the coast o
Bahia Blanca.  I will state one other instance of unifor
action, though of a very different nature, in a zoophyt
closely allied to Clytia, and therefore very simply organized
Having kept a large tuft of it in a basin of salt-water, whe
it was dark I found that as often as I rubbed any part of
branch, the whole became strongly phosphorescent with
green light: I do not think I ever saw any object more
beautifully so.  But the remarkable circumstance was, that th
flashes of light always proceeded up the branches, from th
base towards the extremities.

The examination of these compound animals was alway
very interesting to me.  What can be more remarkable tha
to see a plant-like body producing an egg, capable of swimming
about and of choosing a proper place to adhere to
which then sprouts into branches, each crowded with innumerable
distinct animals, often of complicated organizations
The branches, moreover, as we have just seen, sometime
possess organs capable of movement and independent of th
polypi.  Surprising as this union of separate individuals in
common stock must always appear, every tree displays th
same fact, for buds must be considered as individual plants
It is, however, natural to consider a polypus, furnished wit
a mouth, intestines, and other organs, as a distinct individual
whereas the individuality of a leaf-bud is not easily realised
so that the union of separate individuals in a common bod
is more striking in a coralline than in a tree.  Our conception
of a compound animal, where in some respects the individuality
of each is not completed, may be aided, by reflectin
on the production of two distinct creatures by bisecting
single one with a knife, or where Nature herself perform
the task of bisection.  We may consider the polypi in
zoophyte, or the buds in a tree, as cases where the divisio
of the individual has not been completely effected.  Certainl
in the case of trees, and judging from analogy in that o
corallines, the individuals propagated by buds seem mor
intimately related to each other, than eggs or seeds are t
their parents.  It seems now pretty well established tha
plants propagated by buds all partake of a common duratio
of life; and it is familiar to every one, what singular an
numerous peculiarities are transmitted with certainty, b
buds, layers, and grafts, which by seminal propagation neve
or only casually reappear

[1] The desserts of Syria are characterized, according to
Volney (tom. i. p. 351), by woody bushes, numerous rats,
gazelles and hares.  In the landscape of Patagonia, the guanaco
replaces the gazelle, and the agouti the hare.

[2] I noticed that several hours before any one of the condors
died, all the lice, with which it was infested, crawled to the
outside feathers.  I was assured that this always happens.

[3] London's Magazine of Nat. Hist., vol. vii.

[4] From accounts published since our voyage, and more
especially from several interesting letters from Capt. Sulivan,
R. N., employed on the survey, it appears that we took an
exaggerated view of the badness of the climate on these
islands.  But when I reflect on the almost universal covering
of peat, and on the fact of wheat seldom ripening here, I can
hardly believe that the climate in summer is so fine and dry
as it has lately been represented.

[5] Lesson's Zoology of the Voyage of the Coquille, tom. i.
p. 168. All the early voyagers, and especially Bougainville,
distinctly state that the wolf-like fox was the only native
animal on the island.  The distinction of the rabbit as a
species, is taken from peculiarities in the fur, from the
shape of the head, and from the shortness of the ears.  I may
here observe that the difference between the Irish and English
hare rests upon nearly similar characters, only more strongly
marked

[6] I have reason, however, to suspect that there is a field-
mouse.  The common European rat and mouse have roamed far from
the habitations of the settlers.  The common hog has also run
wild on one islet; all are of a black colour: the boars are
very fierce, and have great trunks.

[7] The "culpeu" is the Canis Magellanicus brought home by
Captain King from the Strait of Magellan.  It is common in
Chile

[8] Pernety, Voyage aux Isles Malouines, p. 526.

[9] "Nous n'avons pas ete moins saisis d'etonnement a la vue
de l'innombrable quantite de pierres de touts grandeurs,
bouleversees les unes sur les autres, et cependent rangees,
comme si elles avoient ete amoncelees negligemment pour remplir
des ravins.  On ne se lassoit pas d'admirer les effets
prodigieux de la nature." -- Pernety, p. 526.

[10] An inhabitant of Mendoza, and hence well capable of
judging, assured me that, during the several years he had
resided on these islands, he had never felt the slightest
shock of an earthquake.

[11] I was surprised to find, on counting the eggs of a large
white Doris (this sea-slug was three and a half inches long),
how extraordinarily numerous they were.  From two to five eggs
(each three-thousandths of an inch in diameter) were contained
in spherical little case.  These were arranged two deep in
transverse rows forming a ribbon.  The ribbon adhered by its
edge to the rock in an oval spire.  One which I found, measured
nearly twenty inches in length and half in breadth.  By counting
how many balls were contained in a tenth of an inch in the
row, and how many rows in an equal length of the ribbon, on
the most moderate computation there were six hundred thousand
eggs.  Yet this Doris was certainly not very common; although
I was often searching under the stones, I saw only seven
individuals.  No fallacy is more common with naturalists,
than that the numbers of an individual species depend on
its powers of propagation.



CHAPTER X

TIERRA DEL FUEGO

Tierra del Fuego, first arrival -- Good Success Bay -- An
Account of the Fuegians on board -- Interview With the
Savages -- Scenery of the Forests -- Cape Horn -- Wigwam
Cove -- Miserable Condition of the Savages -- Famines --
Cannibals -- Matricide -- Religious Feelings  -- Great
Gale -- Beagle Channel -- Ponsonby Sound -- Build Wigwams
and settle the Fuegians -- Bifurcation of the Beagle
Channel  -- Glaciers -- Return to the Ship -- Second Visit
in the Ship to the Settlement -- Equality of Condition
amongst the Natives.


DECEMBER 17th, 1832. -- Having now finished with
Patagonia and the Falkland Islands, I will describe
our first arrival in Tierra del Fuego.  A little after
noon we doubled Cape St.  Diego, and entered the famous
strait of Le Maire.  We kept close to the Fuegian shore, but
the outline of the rugged, inhospitable Statenland was visible
amidst the clouds.  In the afternoon we anchored in the Bay
of Good Success.  While entering we were saluted in a manner
becoming the inhabitants of this savage land.  A group
of Fuegians partly concealed by the entangled forest, were
perched on a wild point overhanging the sea; and as we
passed by, they sprang up and waving their tattered cloaks
sent forth a loud and sonorous shout.  The savages followed
the ship, and just before dark we saw their fire, and again
heard their wild cry.  The harbour consists of a fine piece
of water half surrounded by low rounded mountains of clay-
slate, which are covered to the water's edge by one dense
gloomy forest.  A single glance at the landscape was sufficient
to show me how widely different it was from anything
I had ever beheld.  At night it blew a gale of wind, and
heavy squalls from the mountains swept past us.  It would
have been a bad time out at sea, and we, as well as others,
may call this Good Success Bay.

In the morning the Captain sent a party to communicate
with the Fuegians.  When we came within hail, one of the
four natives who were present advanced to receive us, and
began to shout most vehemently, wishing to direct us where
to land.  When we were on shore the party looked rather
alarmed, but continued talking and making gestures with
great rapidity.  It was without exception the most curious
and interesting spectacle I ever beheld: I could not have
believed how wide was the difference between savage and
civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and
domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater
power of improvement.  The chief spokesman was old, and
appeared to be the head of the family; the three others were
powerful young men, about six feet high.  The women and
children had been sent away.  These Fuegians are a very
different race from the stunted, miserable wretches farther
westward; and they seem closely allied to the famous Patagonians
of the Strait of Magellan.  Their only garment consists
of a mantle made of guanaco skin, with the wool outside:
this they wear just thrown over their shoulders, leaving
their persons as often exposed as covered.  Their skin is of
a dirty coppery-red colour.

The old man had a fillet of white feathers tied round his
head, which partly confined his black, coarse, and entangled
hair.  His face was crossed by two broad transverse bars;
one, painted bright red, reached from ear to ear and included
the upper lip; the other, white like chalk, extended above
and parallel to the first, so that even his eyelids were thus
coloured.  The other two men were ornamented by streaks
of black powder, made of charcoal.  The party altogether
closely resembled the devils which come on the stage in plays
like Der Freischutz.

Their very attitudes were abject, and the expression of
their countenances distrustful, surprised, and startled.  After
we had presented them with some scarlet cloth, which they
immediately tied round their necks, they became good friends.
This was shown by the old man patting our breasts,
and making a chuckling kind of noise, as people do when
feeding chickens.  I walked with the old man, and this
demonstration of friendship was repeated several times; it was
concluded by three hard slaps, which were given me on the
breast and back at the same time.  He then bared his bosom
for me to return the compliment, which being done, he
seemed highly pleased.  The language of these people,
according to our notions, scarcely deserves to be called
articulate.  Captain Cook has compared it to a man clearing his
throat, but certainly no European ever cleared his throat
with so many hoarse, guttural, and clicking sounds.

They are excellent mimics: as often as we coughed or
yawned, or made any odd motion, they immediately imitated
us.  Some of our party began to squint and look awry; but
one of the young Fuegians (whose whole face was painted
black, excepting a white band across his eyes) succeeded in
making far more hideous grimaces.  They could repeat with
perfect correctness each word in any sentence we addressed
them, and they remembered such words for some time.  Yet
we Europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish
apart the sounds in a foreign language.  Which of us, for
instance, could follow an American Indian through a sentence
of more than three words?  All savages appear to possess, to
an uncommon degree, this power of mimicry.  I was told,
almost in the same words, of the same ludicrous habit among
the Caffres; the Australians, likewise, have long been notorious
for being able to imitate and describe the gait of any
man, so that he may be recognized.  How can this faculty be
explained? is it a consequence of the more practised habits
of perception and keener senses, common to all men in a
savage state, as compared with those long civilized?

When a song was struck up by our party, I thought the
Fuegians would have fallen down with astonishment.  With
equal surprise they viewed our dancing; but one of the
young men, when asked, had no objection to a little waltzing.
Little accustomed to Europeans as they appeared to be, yet
they knew and dreaded our fire-arms; nothing would tempt
them to take a gun in their hands.  They begged for knives,
calling them by the Spanish word "cuchilla." They explained
also what they wanted, by acting as if they had a
piece of blubber in their mouth, and then pretending to cut
instead of tear it.

I have not as yet noticed the Fuegians whom we had on
board.  During the former voyage of the Adventure and
Beagle in 1826 to 1830, Captain Fitz Roy seized on a party
of natives, as hostages for the loss of a boat, which had
been stolen, to the great jeopardy of a party employed on
the survey; and some of these natives, as well as a child
whom he bought for a pearl-button, he took with him to
England, determining to educate them and instruct them in
religion at his own expense.  To settle these natives in their
own country, was one chief inducement to Captain Fitz Roy
to undertake our present voyage; and before the Admiralty
had resolved to send out this expedition, Captain Fitz Roy
had generously chartered a vessel, and would himself have
taken them back.  The natives were accompanied by a missionary,
R. Matthews; of whom and of the natives, Captain
Fitz Roy has published a full and excellent account.  Two
men, one of whom died in England of the small-pox, a boy
and a little girl, were originally taken; and we had now on
board, York Minster, Jemmy Button (whose name expresses
his purchase-money), and Fuegia Basket.  York Minster
was a full-grown, short, thick, powerful man: his disposition
was reserved, taciturn, morose, and when excited violently
passionate; his affections were very strong towards a few
friends on board; his intellect good.  Jemmy Button was a
universal favourite, but likewise passionate; the expression
of his face at once showed his nice disposition.  He was
merry and often laughed, and was remarkably sympathetic
with any one in pain: when the water was rough, I was often
a little sea-sick, and he used to come to me and say in a
plaintive voice, "Poor, poor fellow!" but the notion, after
his aquatic life, of a man being sea-sick, was too ludicrous,
and he was generally obliged to turn on one side to hide a
smile or laugh, and then he would repeat his "Poor, poor
fellow!" He was of a patriotic disposition; and he liked to
praise his own tribe and country, in which he truly said there
were "plenty of trees," and he abused all the other tribes:
he stoutly declared that there was no Devil in his land.
Jemmy was short, thick, and fat, but vain of his personal
appearance; he used always to wear gloves, his hair was
neatly cut, and he was distressed if his well-polished shoes
were dirtied.  He was fond of admiring himself in a looking
glass; and a merry-faced little Indian boy from the Rio
Negro, whom we had for some months on board, soon perceived
this, and used to mock him: Jemmy, who was always
rather jealous of the attention paid to this little boy, did not
at all like this, and used to say, with rather a contemptuous
twist of his head, "Too much skylark." It seems yet wonderful
to me, when I think over all his many good qualities
that he should have been of the same race, and doubtless
partaken of the same character, with the miserable, degraded
savages whom we first met here.  Lastly, Fuegia Basket was
a nice, modest, reserved young girl, with a rather pleasing but
sometimes sullen expression, and very quick in learning anything,
especially languages.  This she showed in picking up
some Portuguese and Spanish, when left on shore for only
a short time at Rio de Janeiro and Monte Video, and in her
knowledge of English.  York Minster was very jealous of
any attention paid to her; for it was clear he determined to
marry her as soon as they were settled on shore.

Although all three could both speak and understand a
good deal of English, it was singularly difficult to obtain
much information from them, concerning the habits of their
countrymen; this was partly owing to their apparent difficulty
in understanding the simplest alternative.  Every one
accustomed to very young children, knows how seldom one
can get an answer even to so simple a question as whether a
thing is black or white; the idea of black or white seems
alternately to fill their minds.  So it was with these Fuegians,
and hence it was generally impossible to find out, by cross
questioning, whether one had rightly understood anything
which they had asserted.  Their sight was remarkably acute;
it is well known that sailors, from long practice, can make
out a distant object much better than a landsman; but both
York and Jemmy were much superior to any sailor on board:
several times they have declared what some distant object
has been, and though doubted by every one, they have proved
right, when it has been examined through a telescope.  They
were quite conscious of this power; and Jemmy, when he
had any little quarrel with the officer on watch, would say,
"Me see ship, me no tell."

It was interesting to watch the conduct of the savages,
when we landed, towards Jemmy Button: they immediately
perceived the difference between him and ourselves, and held
much conversation one with another on the subject.  The
old man addressed a long harangue to Jemmy, which it
seems was to invite him to stay with them But Jemmy
understood very little of their language, and was, moreover,
thoroughly ashamed of his countrymen.  When York Minster
afterwards came on shore, they noticed him in the
same way, and told him he ought to shave; yet he had not
twenty dwarf hairs on his face, whilst we all wore our
untrimmed beards.  They examined the colour of his skin, and
compared it with ours.  One of our arms being bared, they
expressed the liveliest surprise and admiration at its
whiteness, just in the same way in which I have seen the
ourangoutang do at the Zoological Gardens.  We thought that they
mistook two or three of the officers, who were rather shorter
and fairer, though adorned with large beards, for the ladies
of our party.  The tallest amongst the Fuegians was evidently
much pleased at his height being noticed.  When placed
back to back with the tallest of the boat's crew, he
tried his best to edge on higher ground, and to stand on
tiptoe.  He opened his mouth to show his teeth, and turned
his face for a side view; and all this was done with such
alacrity, that I dare say he thought himself the handsomest
man in Tierra del Fuego.  After our first feeling of grave
astonishment was over, nothing could be more ludicrous
than the odd mixture of surprise and imitation which these
savages every moment exhibited.


The next day I attempted to penetrate some way into the
country.  Tierra del Fuego may be described as a mountainous
land, partly submerged in the sea, so that deep inlets
and bays occupy the place where valleys should exist.  The
mountain sides, except on the exposed western coast, are
covered from the water's edge upwards by one great forest.
The trees reach to an elevation of between 1000 and 1500
feet, and are succeeded by a band of peat, with minute alpine
plants; and this again is succeeded by the line of perpetual
snow, which, according to Captain King, in the Strait of
Magellan descends to between 3000 and 4000 feet.  To find
an acre of level land in any part of the country is most rare.
I recollect only one little flat piece near Port Famine, and
another of rather larger extent near Goeree Road.  In both
places, and everywhere else, the surface is covered by a
thick bed of swampy peat.  Even within the forest, the
ground is concealed by a mass of slowly putrefying vegetable
matter, which, from being soaked with water, yields to the
foot.

Finding it nearly hopeless to push my way through the
wood, I followed the course of a mountain torrent.  At first,
from the waterfalls and number of dead trees, I could hardly
crawl along; but the bed of the stream soon became a little
more open, from the floods having swept the sides.  I continued
slowly to advance for an hour along the broken and
rocky banks, and was amply repaid by the grandeur of the
scene.  The gloomy depth of the ravine well accorded with
the universal signs of violence.  On every side were lying
irregular masses of rock and torn-up trees; other trees,
though still erect, were decayed to the heart and ready to
fall.  The entangled mass of the thriving and the fallen
reminded me of the forests within the tropics -- yet there was
a difference: for in these still solitudes, Death, instead of
Life, seemed the predominant spirit.  I followed the watercourse
till I came to a spot where a great slip had cleared a
straight space down the mountain side.  By this road I
ascended to a considerable elevation, and obtained a good
view of the surrounding woods.  The trees all belong to
one kind, the Fagus betuloides; for the number of the other
species of Fagus and of the Winter's Bark, is quite
inconsiderable.  This beech keeps its leaves throughout the year;
but its foliage is of a peculiar brownish-green colour, with
a tinge of yellow.  As the whole landscape is thus coloured,
it has a sombre, dull appearance; nor is it often enlivened
by the rays of the sun.

December 20th. -- One side of the harbour is formed by a
hill about 1500 feet high, which Captain Fitz Roy has called
after Sir J. Banks, in commemoration of his disastrous
excursion, which proved fatal to two men of his party, and
nearly so to Dr. Solander.  The snowstorm, which was the
cause of their misfortune, happened in the middle of January,
corresponding to our July, and in the latitude of Durham!
I was anxious to reach the summit of this mountain
to collect alpine plants; for flowers of any kind in the lower
parts are few in number.  We followed the same watercourse
as on the previous day, till it dwindled away, and we
were then compelled to crawl blindly among the trees.
These, from the effects of the elevation and of the impetuous
winds, were low, thick and crooked.  At length we reached
that which from a distance appeared like a carpet of fine
green turf, but which, to our vexation, turned out to be a
compact mass of little beech-trees about four or five feet
high.  They were as thick together as box in the border of
a garden, and we were obliged to struggle over the flat but
treacherous surface.  After a little more trouble we gained
the peat, and then the bare slate rock.

A ridge connected this hill with another, distant some
miles, and more lofty, so that patches of snow were lying
on it.  As the day was not far advanced, I determined to
walk there and collect plants along the road.  It would have
been very hard work, had it not been for a well-beaten and
straight path made by the guanacos; for these animals, like
sheep, always follow the same line.  When we reached the
hill we found it the highest in the immediate neighbourhood,
and the waters flowed to the sea in opposite directions.  We
obtained a wide view over the surrounding country: to the
north a swampy moorland extended, but to the south we
had a scene of savage magnificence, well becoming Tierra
del Fuego.  There was a degree of mysterious grandeur
in mountain behind mountain, with the deep intervening
valleys, all covered by one thick, dusky mass of forest.  The
atmosphere, likewise, in this climate, where gale succeeds
gale, with rain, hail, and sleet, seems blacker than anywhere
else.  In the Strait of Magellan looking due southward from
Port Famine, the distant channels between the mountains
appeared from their gloominess to lead beyond the confines
of this world.

December 21st.  -- The Beagle got under way: and on the
succeeding day, favoured to an uncommon degree by a fine
easterly breeze, we closed in with the Barnevelts, and running
past Cape Deceit with its stony peaks, about three
o'clock doubled the weather-beaten Cape Horn.  The evening
was calm and bright, and we enjoyed a fine view of the
surrounding isles.  Cape Horn, however, demanded his tribute,
and before night sent us a gale of wind directly in our teeth.
We stood out to sea, and on the second day again made the
land, when we saw on our weather-bow this notorious promontory
in its proper form -- veiled in a mist, and its dim
outline surrounded by a storm of wind and water.  Great
black clouds were rolling across the heavens, and squalls
of rain, with hail, swept by us with such extreme violence,
that the Captain determined to run into Wigwam Cove.
This is a snug little harbour, not far from Cape Horn; and
here, at Christmas-eve, we anchored in smooth water.  The
only thing which reminded us of the gale outside, was every
now and then a puff from the mountains, which made the
ship surge at her anchors.

December 25th. -- Close by the Cove, a pointed hill, called
Kater's Peak, rises to the height of 1700 feet.  The surrounding
islands all consist of conical masses of greenstone,
associated sometimes with less regular hills of baked and
altered clay-slate.  This part of Tierra del Fuego may be
considered as the extremity of the submerged chain of
mountains already alluded to.  The cove takes its name of
"Wigwam" from some of the Fuegian habitations; but every
bay in the neighbourhood might be so called with equal
propriety.  The inhabitants, living chiefly upon shell-fish, are
obliged constantly to change their place of residence; but
they return at intervals to the same spots, as is evident from
the piles of old shells, which must often amount to many
tons in freight.  These heaps can be distinguished at a long
distance by the bright green colour of certain plants, which
invariably grow on them.  Among these may be enumerated
the wild celery and scurvy grass, two very serviceable plants,
the use of which has not been discovered by the natives.

The Fuegian wigwam resembles, in size and dimensions,
a haycock.  It merely consists of a few broken branches
stuck in the ground, and very imperfectly thatched on one
side with a few tufts of grass and rushes.  The whole cannot
be the work of an hour, and it is only used for a few days.
At Goeree Roads I saw a place where one of these naked
men had slept, which absolutely offered no more cover than
the form of a hare.  The man was evidently living by himself,
and York Minster said he was "very bad man," and
that probably he had stolen something.  On the west coast,
however, the wigwams are rather better, for they are covered
with seal-skins.  We were detained here several days by the
bad weather.  The climate is certainly wretched: the summer
solstice was now passed, yet every day snow fell on the
hills, and in the valleys there was rain, accompanied by
sleet.  The thermometer generally stood about 45 degs., but in
the night fell to 38 or 40 degs.  From the damp and boisterous
state of the atmosphere, not cheered by a gleam of sunshine,
one fancied the climate even worse than it really was.

While going one day on shore near Wollaston Island, we
pulled alongside a canoe with six Fuegians.  These were the
most abject and miserable creatures I anywhere beheld.  On
the east coast the natives, as we have seen, have guanaco
cloaks, and on the west they possess seal-skins.  Amongst
these central tribes the men generally have an otter-skin, or
some small scrap about as large as a pocket-handkerchief,
which is barely sufficient to cover their backs as low down
as their loins.  It is laced across the breast by strings, and
according as the wind blows, it is shifted from side to side.
But these Fuegians in the canoe were quite naked, and even
one full-grown woman was absolutely so.  It was raining
heavily, and the fresh water, together with the spray, trickled
down her body.  In another harbour not far distant, a
woman, who was suckling a recently-born child, came one
day alongside the vessel, and remained there out of mere
curiosity, whilst the sleet fell and thawed on her naked
bosom, and on the skin of her naked baby!  These poor
wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces
bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy,
their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their
gestures violent.  Viewing such men, one can hardly make one's
self believe that they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants
of the same world.  It is a common subject of conjecture
what pleasure in life some of the lower animals can enjoy:
how much more reasonably the same question may be asked
with respect to these barbarians!  At night, five or six
human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind
and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet
ground coiled up like animals.  Whenever it is low water,
winter or summer, night or day, they must rise to pick shellfish
from the rocks; and the women either dive to collect
sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited
hair-line without any hook, jerk out little fish.  If a seal is
killed, or the floating carcass of a putrid whale is discovered,
it is a feast; and such miserable food is assisted by a few
tasteless berries and fungi.

They often suffer from famine: I heard Mr. Low, a sealing-master
intimately acquainted with the natives of this
country, give a curious account of the state of a party of
one hundred and fifty natives on the west coast, who were
very thin and in great distress.  A succession of gales prevented
the women from getting shell-fish on the rocks, and
they could not go out in their canoes to catch seal.  A small
party of these men one morning set out, and the other
Indians explained to him, that they were going a four days'
journey for food: on their return, Low went to meet them,
and he found them excessively tired, each man carrying
a great square piece of putrid whale's-blubber with a hole
in the middle, through which they put their heads, like the
Gauchos do through their ponchos or cloaks.  As soon as
the blubber was brought into a wigwam, an old man cut off
thin slices, and muttering over them, broiled them for a
minute, and distributed them to the famished party, who
during this time preserved a profound silence.  Mr. Low
believes that whenever a whale is cast on shore, the natives
bury large pieces of it in the sand, as a resource in time of
famine; and a native boy, whom he had on board, once
found a stock thus buried.  The different tribes when at
war are cannibals.  From the concurrent, but quite independent
evidence of the boy taken by Mr. Low, and of
Jemmy Button, it is certainly true, that when pressed in
winter by hunger, they kill and devour their old women
before they kill their dogs: the boy, being asked by Mr.
Low why they did this, answered, "Doggies catch otters,
old women no." This boy described the manner in which
they are killed by being held over smoke and thus choked;
he imitated their screams as a joke, and described the parts
of their bodies which are considered best to eat.  Horrid
as such a death by the hands of their friends and relatives
must be, the fears of the old women, when hunger begins
to press, are more painful to think of; we are told that they
then often run away into the mountains, but that they are
pursued by the men and brought back to the slaughter-house
at their own firesides!

Captain Fitz Roy could never ascertain that the Fuegians
have any distinct belief in a future life.  They sometimes
bury their dead in caves, and sometimes in the mountain
forests; we do not know what ceremonies they perform.
Jemmy Button would not eat land-birds, because "eat dead
men": they are unwilling even to mention their dead friends.
We have no reason to believe that they perform any sort of
religious worship; though perhaps the muttering of the old
man before he distributed the putrid blubber to his famished
party, may be of this nature.  Each family or tribe has a
wizard or conjuring doctor, whose office we could never
clearly ascertain.  Jemmy believed in dreams, though not, as
I have said, in the devil: I do not think that our Fuegians
were much more superstitious than some of the sailors; for
an old quartermaster firmly believed that the successive
heavy gales, which we encountered off Cape Horn, were
caused by our having the Fuegians on board.  The nearest
approach to a religious feeling which I heard of, was shown
by York Minster, who, when Mr. Bynoe shot some very
young ducklings as specimens, declared in the most solemn
manner, "Oh, Mr. Bynoe, much rain, snow, blow much."
This was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting
human food.  In a wild and excited manner he also related,
that his brother, one day whilst returning to pick up some
dead birds which he had left on the coast, observed some
feathers blown by the wind.  His brother said (York imitating
his manner), "What that?" and crawling onwards,
he peeped over the cliff, and saw "wild man" picking his
birds; he crawled a little nearer, and then hurled down a
great stone and killed him.  York declared for a long time
afterwards storms raged, and much rain and snow fell.
As far as we could make out, he seemed to consider the
elements themselves as the avenging agents: it is evident in
this case, how naturally, in a race a little more advanced
in culture, the elements would become personified.  What
the "bad wild men" were, has always appeared to me most
mysterious: from what York said, when we found the place
like the form of a hare, where a single man had slept the
night before, I should have thought that they were thieves
who had been driven from their tribes; but other obscure
speeches made me doubt this; I have sometimes imagined
that the most probable explanation was that they were
insane.

The different tribes have no government or chief; yet
each is surrounded by other hostile tribes, speaking different
dialects, and separated from each other only by a deserted
border or neutral territory: the cause of their warfare appears
to be the means of subsistence.  Their country is a
broken mass of wild rocks, lofty hills, and useless forests:
and these are viewed through mists and endless storms.  The
habitable land is reduced to the stones on the beach; in
search of food they are compelled unceasingly to wander
from spot to spot, and so steep is the coast, that they can
only move about in their wretched canoes.  They cannot
know the feeling of having a home, and still less that of
domestic affection; for the husband is to the wife a brutal
master to a laborious slave.  Was a more horrid deed ever
perpetrated, than that witnessed on the west coast by Byron,
who saw a wretched mother pick up her bleeding dying
infant-boy, whom her husband had mercilessly dashed on the
stones for dropping a basket of sea-eggs!  How little can
the higher powers of the mind be brought into play: what is
there for imagination to picture, for reason to compare, or
judgment to decide upon? to knock a limpet from the rock
does not require even cunning, that lowest power of the
mind.  Their skill in some respects may be compared to the
instinct of animals; for it is not improved by experience:
the canoe, their most ingenious work, poor as it is, has
remained the same, as we know from Drake, for the last two
hundred and fifty years.

Whilst beholding these savages, one asks, whence have
they come?  What could have tempted, or what change compelled
a tribe of men, to leave the fine regions of the north,
to travel down the Cordillera or backbone of America, to
invent and build canoes, which are not used by the tribes
of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and then to enter on one of the
most inhospitable countries within the limits of the globe?
Although such reflections must at first seize on the mind, yet
we may feel sure that they are partly erroneous.  There is
no reason to believe that the Fuegians decrease in number;
therefore we must suppose that they enjoy a sufficient share
of happiness, of whatever kind it may be, to render life
worth having.  Nature by making habit omnipotent, and its
effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and
the productions of his miserable country.


After having been detained six days in Wigwam Cove by
very bad weather, we put to sea on the 30th of December.
Captain Fitz Roy wished to get westward to land York and
Fuegia in their own country.  When at sea we had a constant
succession of gales, and the current was against us: we
drifted to 57 degs. 23' south.  On the 11th of January, 1833,
by carrying a press of sail, we fetched within a few miles of
the great rugged mountain of York Minster (so called by
Captain Cook, and the origin of the name of the elder Fuegian),
when a violent squall compelled us to shorten sail
and stand out to sea.  The surf was breaking fearfully on
the coast, and the spray was carried over a cliff estimated
to 200 feet in height.  On the 12th the gale was very heavy,
and we did not know exactly where we were: it was a most
unpleasant sound to hear constantly repeated, "keep a good
look-out to leeward." On the 13th the storm raged with its
full fury: our horizon was narrowly limited by the sheets
of spray borne by the wind.  The sea looked ominous, like
a dreary waving plain with patches of drifted snow: whilst
the ship laboured heavily, the albatross glided with its
expanded wings right up the wind.  At noon a great sea broke
over us, and filled one of the whale boats, which was
obliged to be instantly cut away.  The poor Beagle trembled
at the shock, and for a few minutes would not obey her helm;
but soon, like a good ship that she was, she righted and came
up to the wind again.  Had another sea followed the first,
our fate would have been decided soon, and for ever.  We
had now been twenty-four days trying in vain to get westward;
the men were worn out with fatigue, and they had not
had for many nights or days a dry thing to put on.  Captain
Fitz Roy gave up the attempt to get westward by the outside
coast.  In the evening we ran in behind False Cape Horn,
and dropped our anchor in forty-seven fathoms, fire flashing
from the windlass as the chain rushed round it.  How delightful
was that still night, after having been so long involved
in the din of the warring elements!

January 15th, 1833. -- The Beagle anchored in Goeree
Roads.  Captain Fitz Roy having resolved to settle the Fuegians,
according to their wishes, in Ponsonby Sound, four
boats were equipped to carry them there through the Beagle
Channel.  This channel, which was discovered by Captain
Fitz Roy during the last voyage, is a most remarkable feature
in the geography of this, or indeed of any other country: it
may be compared to the valley of Lochness in Scotland, with
its chain of lakes and friths.  It is about one hundred and
twenty miles long, with an average breadth, not subject to
any very great variation, of about two miles; and is throughout
the greater part so perfectly straight, that the view,
bounded on each side by a line of mountains, gradually becomes
indistinct in the long distance.  It crosses the southern
part of Tierra del Fuego in an east and west line, and
in the middle is joined at right angles on the south side by
an irregular channel, which has been called Ponsonby Sound.
This is the residence of Jemmy Button's tribe and family.

19th. -- Three whale-boats and the yawl, with a party of
twenty-eight, started under the command of Captain Fitz
Roy.  In the afternoon we entered the eastern mouth of the
channel, and shortly afterwards found a snug little cove
concealed by some surrounding islets.  Here we pitched our
tents and lighted our fires.  Nothing could look more comfortable
than this scene.  The glassy water of the little harbour,
with the branches of the trees hanging over the rocky
beach, the boats at anchor, the tents supported by the crossed
oars, and the smoke curling up the wooded valley, formed a
picture of quiet retirement.  The next day (20th) we smoothly
glided onwards in our little fleet, and came to a more inhabited
district.  Few if any of these natives could ever
have seen a white man; certainly nothing could exceed their
astonishment at the apparition of the four boats.  Fires were
lighted on every point (hence the name of Tierra del Fuego,
or the land of fire), both to attract our attention and to
spread far and wide the news.  Some of the men ran for
miles along the shore.  I shall never forget how wild and
savage one group appeared: suddenly four or five men came
to the edge of an overhanging cliff; they were absolutely
naked, and their long hair streamed about their faces; they
held rugged staffs in their hands, and, springing from the
ground, they waved their arms round their heads, and sent
forth the most hideous yells.

At dinner-time we landed among a party of Fuegians.
At first they were not inclined to be friendly; for until the
Captain pulled in ahead of the other boats, they kept their
slings in their hands.  We soon, however, delighted them by
trifling presents, such as tying red tape round their heads.
They liked our biscuit: but one of the savages touched with
his finger some of the meat preserved in tin cases which I
was eating, and feeling it soft and cold, showed as much disgust
at it, as I should have done at putrid blubber.  Jemmy
was thoroughly ashamed of his countrymen, and declared his
own tribe were quite different, in which he was wofully
mistaken.  It was as easy to please as it was difficult to
satisfy these savages.  Young and old, men and children, never
ceased repeating the word "yammerschooner," which means
"give me." After pointing to almost every object, one after
the other, even to the buttons on our coats, and saying their
favourite word in as many intonations as possible, they would
then use it in a neuter sense, and vacantly repeat
"yammerschooner." After yammerschoonering for any article very
eagerly, they would by a simple artifice point to their young
women or little children, as much as to say, "If you will
not give it me, surely you will to such as these."

At night we endeavoured in vain to find an uninhabited
cove; and at last were obliged to bivouac not far from a
party of natives.  They were very inoffensive as long as they
were few in numbers, but in the morning (21st) being joined
by others they showed symptoms of hostility, and we thought
that we should have come to a skirmish.  An European
labours under great disadvantages when treating with savages
like these, who have not the least idea of the power of
fire-arms.  In the very act of levelling his musket he appears
to the savage far inferior to a man armed with a bow and
arrow, a spear, or even a sling.  Nor is it easy to teach them
our superiority except by striking a fatal blow.  Like wild
beasts, they do not appear to compare numbers; for each
individual, if attacked, instead of retiring, will endeavour to
dash your brains out with a stone, as certainly as a tiger
under similar circumstances would tear you.  Captain Fitz
Roy on one occasion being very anxious, from good reasons,
to frighten away a small party, first flourished a cutlass near
them, at which they only laughed; he then twice fired his
pistol close to a native.  The man both times looked astounded,
and carefully but quickly rubbed his head; he then
stared awhile, and gabbled to his companions, but he never
seemed to think of running away.  We can hardly put ourselves
in the position of these savages, and understand their
actions.  In the case of this Fuegian, the possibility of such
a sound as the report of a gun close to his ear could never
have entered his mind.  He perhaps literally did not for a
second know whether it was a sound or a blow, and therefore
very naturally rubbed his head.  In a similar manner,
when a savage sees a mark struck by a bullet, it may be some
time before he is able at all to understand how it is effected;
for the fact of a body being invisible from its velocity would
perhaps be to him an idea totally inconceivable.  Moreover,
the extreme force of a bullet, that penetrates a hard substance
without tearing it, may convince the savage that it
has no force at all.  Certainly I believe that many savages
of the lowest grade, such as these of Tierra del Fuego, have
seen objects struck, and even small animals killed by the
musket, without being in the least aware how deadly an
instrument it is.

22nd. -- After having passed an unmolested night, in what
would appear to be neutral territory between Jemmy's tribe
and the people whom we saw yesterday, we sailed pleasantly
along.  I do not know anything which shows more clearly
the hostile state of the different tribes, than these wide
border or neutral tracts.  Although Jemmy Button well knew the
force of our party, he was, at first, unwilling to land amidst
the hostile tribe nearest to his own.  He often told us how
the savage Oens men "when the leaf red," crossed the mountains
from the eastern coast of Tierra del Fuego, and made
inroads on the natives of this part of the country.  It was
most curious to watch him when thus talking, and see his
eyes gleaming and his whole face assume a new and wild
expression.  As we proceeded along the Beagle Channel, the
scenery assumed a peculiar and very magnificent character;
but the effect was much lessened from the lowness of the
point of view in a boat, and from looking along the valley,
and thus losing all the beauty of a succession of ridges.  The
mountains were here about three thousand feet high, and
terminated in sharp and jagged points.  They rose in one
unbroken sweep from the water's edge, and were covered to
the height of fourteen or fifteen hundred feet by the dusky-
coloured forest.  It was most curious to observe, as far as
the eye could range, how level and truly horizontal the line
on the mountain side was, at which trees ceased to grow: it
precisely resembled the high-water mark of drift-weed on a
sea-beach.

At night we slept close to the junction of Ponsonby Sound
with the Beagle Channel.  A small family of Fuegians, who
were living in the cove, were quiet and inoffensive, and soon
joined our party round a blazing fire.  We were well clothed,
and though sitting close to the fire were far from too warm;
yet these naked savages, though further off, were observed,
to our great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at
undergoing such a roasting.  They seemed, however, very
well pleased, and all joined in the chorus of the seamen's
songs: but the manner in which they were invariably a little
behindhand was quite ludicrous.

During the night the news had spread, and early in the
morning (23rd) a fresh party arrived, belonging to the Tekenika,
or Jemmy's tribe.  Several of them had run so fast that
their noses were bleeding, and their mouths frothed from
the rapidity with which they talked; and with their naked
bodies all bedaubed with black, white, [1] and red, they looked
like so many demoniacs who had been fighting.  We then
proceeded (accompanied by twelve canoes, each holding four
or five people) down Ponsonby Sound to the spot where poor
Jemmy expected to find his mother and relatives.  He had
already heard that his father was dead; but as he had had
a "dream in his head" to that effect, he did not seem to
care much about it, and repeatedly comforted himself with
the very natural reflection -- "Me no help it." He was not
able to learn any particulars regarding his father's death, as
his relations would not speak about it.

Jemmy was now in a district well known to him, and
guided the boats to a quiet pretty cove named Woollya,
surrounded by islets, every one of which and every point had
its proper native name.  We found here a family of Jemmy's
tribe, but not his relations: we made friends with them;
and in the evening they sent a canoe to inform Jemmy's
mother and brothers.  The cove was bordered by some acres
of good sloping land, not covered (as elsewhere) either by
peat or by forest-trees.  Captain Fitz Roy originally intended,
as before stated, to have taken York Minster and
Fuegia to their own tribe on the west coast; but as they
expressed a wish to remain here, and as the spot was singularly
favourable, Captain Fitz Roy determined to settle here the
whole party, including Matthews, the missionary.  Five days
were spent in building for them three large wigwams, in
landing their goods, in digging two gardens, and sowing
seeds.

The next morning after our arrival (the 24th) the Fuegians
began to pour in, and Jemmy's mother and brothers
arrived.  Jemmy recognised the stentorian voice of one of
his brothers at a prodigious distance.  The meeting was less
interesting than that between a horse, turned out into a field,
when he joins an old companion.  There was no demonstration
of affection; they simply stared for a short time at
each other; and the mother immediately went to look after
her canoe.  We heard, however, through York that the
mother has been inconsolable for the loss of Jemmy and had
searched everywhere for him, thinking that he might have
been left after having been taken in the boat.  The women
took much notice of and were very kind to Fuegia.  We had
already perceived that Jemmy had almost forgotten his own
language.  I should think there was scarcely another human
being with so small a stock of language, for his English was
very imperfect.  It was laughable, but almost pitiable, to
hear him speak to his wild brother in English, and then ask
him in Spanish ("no sabe?") whether he did not understand
him.

Everything went on peaceably during the three next days
whilst the gardens were digging and wigwams building.  We
estimated the number of natives at about one hundred and
twenty.  The women worked hard, whilst the men lounged
about all day long, watching us.  They asked for everything
they saw, and stole what they could.  They were delighted
at our dancing and singing, and were particularly interested
at seeing us wash in a neighbouring brook; they did not pay
much attention to anything else, not even to our boats.  Of
all the things which York saw, during his absence from his
country, nothing seems more to have astonished him than
an ostrich, near Maldonado: breathless with astonishment
he came running to Mr. Bynoe, with whom he was out walking
-- "Oh, Mr. Bynoe, oh, bird all same horse!" Much as
our white skins surprised the natives, by Mr. Low's account
a negro-cook to a sealing vessel, did so more effectually, and
the poor fellow was so mobbed and shouted at that he would
never go on shore again.  Everything went on so quietly
that some of the officers and myself took long walks in the
surrounding hills and woods.  Suddenly, however, on the
27th, every woman and child disappeared.  We were all uneasy
at this, as neither York nor Jemmy could make out
the cause.  It was thought by some that they had been frightened
by our cleaning and firing off our muskets on the previous
evening; by others, that it was owing to offence taken
by an old savage, who, when told to keep further off, had
coolly spit in the sentry's face, and had then, by gestures
acted over a sleeping Fuegian, plainly showed, as it was said,
that he should like to cut up and eat our man.  Captain
Fitz Roy, to avoid the chance of an encounter, which would
have been fatal to so many of the Fuegians, thought it advisable
for us to sleep at a cove a few miles distant.  Matthews,
with his usual quiet fortitude (remarkable in a man
apparently possessing little energy of character), determined
to stay with the Fuegians, who evinced no alarm for themselves;
and so we left them to pass their first awful night.

On our return in the morning (28th) we were delighted
to find all quiet, and the men employed in their canoes
spearing fish.  Captain Fitz Roy determined to send the
yawl and one whale-boat back to the ship; and to proceed
with the two other boats, one under his own command (in
which he most kindly allowed me to accompany him), and
one under Mr. Hammond, to survey the western parts of
the Beagle Channel, and afterwards to return and visit the
settlement.  The day to our astonishment was overpoweringly
hot, so that our skins were scorched: with this beautiful
weather, the view in the middle of the Beagle Channel
was very remarkable.  Looking towards either hand, no object
intercepted the vanishing points of this long canal between
the mountains.  The circumstance of its being an arm
of the sea was rendered very evident by several huge whales [2]
spouting in different directions.  On one occasion I saw two
of these monsters, probably male and female, slowly swimming
one after the other, within less than a stone's throw
of the shore, over which the beech-tree extended its branches.
We sailed on till it was dark, and then pitched our tents
in a quiet creek.  The greatest luxury was to find for our
beds a beach of pebbles, for they were dry and yielded to
the body.  Peaty soil is damp; rock is uneven and hard;
sand gets into one's meat, when cooked and eaten boat-fashion;
but when lying in our blanket-bags, on a good bed of
smooth pebbles, we passed most comfortable nights.

It was my watch till one o'clock.  There is something
very solemn in these scenes.  At no time does the consciousness
in what a remote corner of the world you are then
standing, come so strongly before the mind.  Everything
tends to this effect; the stillness of the night is interrupted
only by the heavy breathing of the seamen beneath the tents,
and sometimes by the cry of a night-bird.  The occasional
barking of a dog, heard in the distance, reminds one that it
is  the land of the savage.

January 20th. -- Early in the morning we arrived at the
point where the Beagle Channel divides into two arms; and
we entered the northern one.  The scenery here becomes
even grander than before.  The lofty mountains on the north
side compose the granitic axis, or backbone of the country
and boldly rise to a height of between three and four thousand
feet, with one peak above six thousand feet.  They are
covered by a wide mantle of perpetual snow, and numerous
cascades pour their waters, through the woods, into the narrow
channel below.  In many parts, magnificent glaciers extend
from the mountain side to the water's edge.  It is
scarcely possible to imagine anything more beautiful than
the beryl-like blue of these glaciers, and especially as
contrasted with the dead white of the upper expanse of snow.
The fragments which had fallen from the glacier into the
water were floating away, and the channel with its icebergs
presented, for the space of a mile, a miniature likeness of
the Polar Sea.  The boats being hauled on shore at our
dinner-hour, we were admiring from the distance of half a
mile a perpendicular cliff of ice, and were wishing that some
more fragments would fall.  At last, down came a mass with
a roaring noise, and immediately we saw the smooth outline
of a wave travelling towards us.  The men ran down as
quickly as they could to the boats; for the chance of their
being dashed to pieces was evident.  One of the seamen just
caught hold of the bows, as the curling breaker reached it:
he was knocked over and over, but not hurt, and the boats
though thrice lifted on high and let fall again, received no
damage.  This was most fortunate for us, for we were a
hundred miles distant from the ship, and we should have
been left without provisions or fire-arms.  I had previously
observed that some large fragments of rock on the beach had
been lately displaced; but until seeing this wave, I did not
understand the cause.  One side of the creek was formed
by a spur of mica-slate; the head by a cliff of ice about
forty feet high; and the other side by a promontory fifty
feet high, built up of huge rounded fragments of granite
and mica-slate, out of which old trees were growing.  This
promontory was evidently a moraine, heaped up at a period
when the glacier had greater dimensions.

When we reached the western mouth of this northern
branch of the Beagle Channel, we sailed amongst many unknown
desolate islands, and the weather was wretchedly bad.
We met with no natives.  The coast was almost everywhere
so steep, that we had several times to pull many miles before
we could find space enough to pitch our two tents: one night
we slept on large round boulders, with putrefying sea-weed
between them; and when the tide rose, we had to get up and
move our blanket-bags.  The farthest point westward which
we reached was Stewart Island, a distance of about one hundred
and fifty miles from our ship.  We returned into the
Beagle Channel by the southern arm, and thence proceeded,
with no adventure, back to Ponsonby Sound.

February 6th. -- We arrived at Woollya.  Matthews gave
so bad an account of the conduct of the Fuegians, that Captain
Fitz Roy determined to take him back to the Beagle;
and ultimately he was left at New Zealand, where his brother
was a missionary.  From the time of our leaving, a regular
system of plunder commenced; fresh parties of the natives
kept arriving: York and Jemmy lost many things, and Matthews
almost everything which had not been concealed underground.
Every article seemed to have been torn up and
divided by the natives.  Matthews described the watch he
was obliged always to keep as most harassing; night and
day he was surrounded by the natives, who tried to tire him
out by making an incessant noise close to his head.  One day
an old man, whom Matthews asked to leave his wigwam,
immediately returned with a large stone in his hand: another
day a whole party came armed with stones and stakes, and
some of the younger men and Jemmy's brother were crying:
Matthews met them with presents.  Another party showed
by signs that they wished to strip him naked and pluck all
the hairs out of his face and body.  I think we arrived just
in time to save his life.  Jemmy's relatives had been so vain
and foolish, that they had showed to strangers their plunder,
and their manner of obtaining it.  It was quite melancholy
leaving the three Fuegians with their savage countrymen;
but it was a great comfort that they had no personal
fears.  York, being a powerful resolute man, was pretty sure
to get on well, together with his wife Fuegia.  Poor Jemmy
looked rather disconsolate, and would then, I have little
doubt, have been glad to have returned with us.  His own
brother had stolen many things from him; and as he remarked,
"What fashion call that:" he abused his countrymen,
"all bad men, no sabe (know) nothing" and, though
I never heard him swear before, "damned fools." Our three
Fuegians, though they had been only three years with civilized
men, would, I am sure, have been glad to have retained
their new habits; but this was obviously impossible.  I fear
it is more than doubtful, whether their visit will have been
of any use to them.

In the evening, with Matthews on board, we made sail
back to the ship, not by the Beagle Channel, but by the
southern coast.  The boats were heavily laden and the sea
rough, and we had a dangerous passage.  By the evening
of the 7th we were on board the Beagle after an absence of
twenty days, during which time we had gone three hundred
miles in the open boats.  On the 11th, Captain Fitz Roy
paid a visit by himself to the Fuegians and found them going
on well; and that they had lost very few more things.


On the last day of February in the succeeding year (1834)
the Beagle anchored in a beautiful little cove at the eastern
entrance of the Beagle Channel.  Captain Fitz Roy determined
on the bold, and as it proved successful, attempt to
beat against the westerly winds by the same route, which
we had followed in the boats to the settlement at Woollya.
We did not see many natives until we were near Ponsonby
Sound, where we were followed by ten or twelve canoes.  The
natives did not at all understand the reason of our tacking,
and, instead of meeting us at each tack, vainly strove to
follow us in our zigzag course.  I was amused at finding
what a difference the circumstance of being quite superior
in force made, in the interest of beholding these savages.
While in the boats I got to hate the very sound of their
voices, so much trouble did they give us.  The first and last
word was "yammerschooner." When, entering some quiet
little cove, we have looked round and thought to pass a quiet
night, the odious word "yammerschooner" has shrilly sounded
from some gloomy nook, and then the little signal-smoke
has curled up to spread the news far and wide.  On leaving
some place we have said to each other, "Thank heaven, we
have at last fairly left these wretches!" when one more faint
hallo from an all-powerful voice, heard at a prodigious
distance, would reach our ears, and clearly could we distinguish
-- "yammerschooner." But now, the more Fuegians the merrier;
and very merry work it was.  Both parties laughing,
wondering, gaping at each other; we pitying them, for giving
us good fish and crabs for rags, etc.; they grasping at the
chance of finding people so foolish as to exchange such splendid
ornaments for a good supper.  It was most amusing to
see the undisguised smile of satisfaction with which one
young woman with her face painted black, tied several bits
of scarlet cloth round her head with rushes.  Her husband,
who enjoyed the very universal privilege in this country of
possessing two wives, evidently became jealous of all the
attention paid to his young wife; and, after a consultation
with his naked beauties, was paddled away by them.

Some of the Fuegians plainly showed that they had a fair
notion of barter.  I gave one man a large nail (a most valuable
present) without making any signs for a return; but he
immediately picked out two fish, and handed them up on the
point of his spear.  If any present was designed for one
canoe, and it fell near another, it was invariably given to the
right owner.  The Fuegian boy, whom Mr. Low had on
board showed, by going into the most violent passion, that
he quite understood the reproach of being called a liar, which
in truth he was.  We were this time, as on all former occasions,
much surprised at the little notice, or rather none
whatever, which was taken of many things, the use of which
must have been evident to the natives.  Simple circumstances
-- such as the beauty of scarlet cloth or blue beads,
the absence of women, our care in washing ourselves, -- excited
their admiration far more than any grand or complicated
object, such as our ship.  Bougainville has well remarked
concerning these people, that they treat the "chefs
d'oeuvre de l'industrie humaine, comme ils traitent les loix
de la nature et ses phenomenes."

On the 5th of March, we anchored in a cove at Woollya,
but we saw not a soul there.  We were alarmed at this, for
the natives in Ponsonby Sound showed by gestures, that there
had been fighting; and we afterwards heard that the dreaded
Oens men had made a descent.  Soon a canoe, with a little
flag flying, was seen approaching, with one of the men in it
washing the paint off his face.  This man was poor Jemmy,
-- now a thin, haggard savage, with long disordered hair, and
naked, except a bit of blanket round his waist.  We did not
recognize him till he was close to us, for he was ashamed
of himself, and turned his back to the ship.  We had left him
plump, fat, clean, and well-dressed; -- I never saw so complete
and grievous a change.  As soon, however, as he was clothed,
and the first flurry was over, things wore a good appearance.
He dined with Captain Fitz Roy, and ate his dinner
as tidily as formerly.  He told us that he had "too much"
(meaning enough) to eat, that he was not cold, that his
relations were very good people, and that he did not wish to go
back to England: in the evening we found out the cause of
this great change in Jemmy's feelings, in the arrival of his
young and nice-looking wife.  With his usual good feeling
he brought two beautiful otter-skins for two of his best
friends, and some spear-heads and arrows made with his own
hands for the Captain.  He said he had built a canoe for himself,
and he boasted that he could talk a little of his own
language!  But it is a most singular fact, that he appears to
have taught all his tribe some English: an old man spontaneously
announced "Jemmy Button's wife." Jemmy had lost
all his property.  He told us that York Minster had built
a large canoe, and with his wife Fuegia, [3] had several months
since gone to his own country, and had taken farewell by an
act of consummate villainy; he persuaded Jemmy and his
mother to come with him, and then on the way deserted them
by night, stealing every article of their property.

Jemmy went to sleep on shore, and in the morning returned,
and remained on board till the ship got under way,
which frightened his wife, who continued crying violently
till he got into his canoe.  He returned loaded with valuable
property.  Every soul on board was heartily sorry to shake
hands with him for the last time.  I do not now doubt that
he will be as happy as, perhaps happier than, if he had never
left his own country.  Every one must sincerely hope that
Captain Fitz Roy's noble hope may be fulfilled, of being
rewarded for the many generous sacrifices which he made for
these Fuegians, by some shipwrecked sailor being protected
by the descendants of Jemmy Button and his tribe!  When
Jemmy reached the shore, he lighted a signal fire, and the
smoke curled up, bidding us a last and long farewell, as the
ship stood on her course into the open sea.

The perfect equality among the individuals composing the
Fuegian tribes must for a long time retard their civilization.
As we see those animals, whose instinct compels them to live
in society and obey a chief, are most capable of improvement,
so is it with the races of mankind.  Whether we look
at it as a cause or a consequence, the more civilized always
have the most artificial governments.  For instance, the
inhabitants of Otaheite, who, when first discovered, were
governed by hereditary kings, had arrived at a far higher grade
than another branch of the same people, the New Zealanders,
-- who, although benefited by being compelled to turn their
attention to agriculture, were republicans in the most absolute
sense.  In Tierra del Fuego, until some chief shall arise
with power sufficient to secure any acquired advantage, such
as the domesticated animals, it seems scarcely possible that
the political state of the country can be improved.  At present,
even a piece of cloth given to one is torn into shreds
and distributed; and no one individual becomes richer than
another.  On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how
a chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which
he might manifest his superiority and increase his power.

I believe, in this extreme part of South America, man
exists in a lower state of improvement than in any other part
of the world.  The South Sea Islanders, of the two races
inhabiting the Pacific, are comparatively civilized.  The
Esquimau in his subterranean hut, enjoys some of the comforts
of life, and in his canoe, when fully equipped, manifests
much skill.  Some of the tribes of Southern Africa
prowling about in search of roots, and living concealed on
the wild and arid plains, are sufficiently wretched.  The
Australian, in the simplicity of the arts of life, comes
nearest the Fuegian: he can, however, boast of his boomerang,
his spear and throwing-stick, his method of climbing trees, of
tracking animals, and of hunting.  Although the Australian may be
superior in acquirements, it by no means follows that he is
likewise superior in mental capacity: indeed, from what I
saw of the Fuegians when on board and from what I have
read of the Australians, I should think the case was exactly
the reverse.

[1] This substance, when dry, is tolerably compact, and of
little specific gravity: Professor Ehrenberg has examined
it: he states (Konig Akad. der Wissen: Berlin, Feb. 1845)
that it is composed of infusoria, including fourteen
polygastrica, and four phytolitharia.  He says that they are
all inhabitants of fresh-water; this is a beautiful example
of the results obtainable through Professor Ehrenberg's
microscopic researches; for Jemmy Button told me that it is
always collected at the bottoms of mountain-brooks.  It is,
moreover, a striking fact that in the geographical distribution
of the infusoria, which are well known to have very wide
ranges, that all the species in this substance, although
brought from the extreme southern point of Tierra del Fuego,
are old, known forms.

[2] One day, off the East coast of Tierra del Fuego, we saw
a grand sight in several spermaceti whales jumping upright
quite out of the water, with the exception of their tail-fins.
As they fell down sideways, they splashed the water high up,
and the sound reverberated like a distant broadside.

[3] Captain Sulivan, who, since his voyage in the Beagle, has
been employed on the survey of the Falkland Islands, heard
from a sealer in (1842?), that when in the western part of
the Strait of Magellan, he was astonished by a native woman
coming on board, who could talk some English.  Without doubt
this was Fuega Basket.  She lived (I fear the term probably
bears a double interpretation) some days on board.



CHAPTER XI

STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. -- CLIMATE OF THE SOUTHERN COASTS

Strait of Magellan -- Port Famine -- Ascent of Mount Tarn --
Forests  -- Edible Fungus -- Zoology -- Great Sea-weed -- Leave
Tierra del Fuego -- Climate -- Fruit-trees and Productions
of the Southern Coasts -- Height of Snow-line on the
Cordillera -- Descent of Glaciers to the Sea -- Icebergs
formed -- Transportal of Boulders --  Climate and Productions
of the Antarctic Islands -- Preservation of Frozen Carcasses --
Recapitulation.


IN THE end of May, 1834, we entered for a second time
the eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan.  The country
on both sides of this part of the Strait consists of
nearly level plains, like those of Patagonia.  Cape Negro, a
little 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 these two
countries, which are opposed to each other in almost every
feature.  It is truly surprising to find in a space of twenty
miles such a change in the landscape.  If we take a rather
greater distance, as between Port Famine and Gregory Bay,
that is about sixty miles, the difference is still more
wonderful.  At the former place, we have rounded mountains
concealed by impervious forests, which 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 atmospheric currents, [1] although
rapid, turbulent, and unconfined by any apparent limits, yet
seem to follow, like a river in its bed, a regularly determined
course.

During our previous visit (in January), we had an interview
at Cape Gregory with the famous so-called gigantic
Patagonians, who gave us a cordial reception.  Their height
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 some men taller
and only a few shorter; and the women are also tall; altogether
they are certainly the tallest race which we anywhere
saw.  In features they strikingly resemble the more northern
Indians whom I saw with Rosas, but they have a wilder and
more formidable appearance: their faces were much painted
with red and black, and one man was ringed and dotted with
white like a Fuegian.  Captain Fitz Roy offered to take 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 knives, forks, and spoons: nothing was so much
relished as sugar.  This tribe has had so much communication
with sealers and whalers that most of the men can speak a
little English and Spanish; and they are half civilized, and
proportionally demoralized.

The next morning a large party went on shore, to barter
for skins and ostrich-feathers; fire-arms being refused,
tobacco was in greatest request, far more so than axes or
tools.  The whole population of the toldos, men, women, and
children, were arranged on a bank.  It was an amusing
scene, and it was impossible not to like the so-called giants,
they were so thoroughly good-humoured and unsuspecting:
they asked us to come again.  They seem to like to have
Europeans to live with them; and old Maria, an important
woman in the tribe, once begged Mr. Low to leave any one
of his sailors with them.  They spend the greater part of the
year here; but in summer they hunt along the foot of the
Cordillera: sometimes they travel as far as the Rio Negro
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 was first landed at Buenos Ayres in 1537, and the
colony being then for a time deserted, the horse ran wild; [2]
in 1580, only forty-three years afterwards, we hear of them at
the Strait of Magellan!  Mr. Low informs me, that a neighbouring
tribe of foot-Indians is now changing into horse-Indians:
the tribe at Gregory Bay giving them their worn-out horses,
and sending in winter a few of their best skilled men to hunt
for them.

June 1st. -- We anchored in the fine bay of Port Famine.
It was now the beginning of winter, and I never saw a more
cheerless prospect; the dusky woods, piebald with snow,
could be only seen indistinctly, through a drizzling hazy
atmosphere.  We were, however, lucky in getting two fine
days.  On one of these, Mount Sarmiento, a distant mountain
6800 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 remember having seen a
mountain, first from the Beagle Channel, where the whole
sweep from the summit to the base was full in view, and then
from Ponsonby Sound across several successive ridges; and
it was curious to observe in the latter case, as each fresh
ridge afforded fresh means of judging of the distance, how
the mountain rose in height.

Before reaching Port Famine, two men were seen running
along the shore and hailing the ship.  A boat was sent for
them.  They turned out to be two sailors who had run away
from a sealing-vessel, and had joined the Patagonians.  These
Indians had treated them with their usual disinterested
hospitality.  They had parted company through accident, and
were then proceeding to Port Famine in hopes of finding
some ship.  I dare say they were worthless vagabonds, but I
never saw more miserable-looking ones.  They had been living
for some days on mussel-shells and berries, and their
tattered clothes had been burnt by sleeping so near their fires.
They had been exposed night and day, without any shelter,
to the late incessant gales, with rain, sleet, and snow, and yet
they were in good health.

During our stay at Port Famine, the Fuegians twice came
and plagued us.  As there were many instruments, clothes,
and men on shore, it was thought necessary to frighten them
away.  The first time a few great guns were fired, when they
were far distant.  It was most ludicrous to watch through a
glass the Indians, as often as the shot struck the water, take
up stones, and, as a bold defiance, throw them towards the
ship, though about a mile and a half distant!  A boat was
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
left in peace and quietness.  During the former voyage the
Fuegians were here very troublesome, and to frighten them a
rocket was fired at night over their wigwams; it answered
effectually, and one of the officers told me that the clamour
first raised, and the barking of the dogs, was quite ludicrous
in contrast with the profound silence which in a minute or
two afterwards prevailed.  The next morning not a single
Fuegian was in the neighbourhood.

When the Beagle was here in the month of February, I
started one morning at four o'clock to ascend Mount Tarn,
which is 2600 feet high, and is the most elevated point in this
immediate district.  We went in a boat to the foot of the
mountain (but unluckily not to the best part), and then
began our ascent.  The forest commences at the line of high-
water mark, and during the first two hours I gave over all
hopes of reaching the summit.  So thick was the wood, that
it was necessary to have constant recourse to the compass;
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 fallen down in every direction.
When passing over these natural bridges, one's course was
often arrested by sinking knee deep into the rotten wood; at
other times, when attempting to lean against a firm tree, one
was startled by finding a mass of decayed matter ready to
fall at the slightest touch.  We at last found ourselves among
the stunted trees, and then soon reached the bare ridge, which
conducted us to the summit.  Here was a view characteristic
of Tierra del Fuego; irregular chains of hills, mottled with
patches of snow, deep yellowish-green valleys, and arms of
the sea intersecting the land in many directions.  The strong
wind was piercingly cold, and the atmosphere rather hazy, so
that we did not stay long on the top of the mountain.  Our
descent was not quite so laborious as our ascent, for the
weight of the body forced a passage, and all the slips and
falls were in the right direction.

I have already mentioned the sombre and dull character of
the evergreen forests, [3] in which two or three species of
trees grow, to the exclusion of all others.  Above the forest
land, there are many dwarf alpine plants, which all spring
from the mass of peat, and help to compose it: these plants
are very remarkable from their close 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 allow of
their attaining any great size.  Near Port Famine I have seen
more large trees than anywhere else: I measured a Winter's
Bark which was four feet six inches in girth, and several of
the beech were as much as thirteen feet.  Captain King also
mentions a beech which was seven feet in diameter, seventeen
feet above the roots.

There is one vegetable production deserving notice from
its importance as an article of food to the Fuegians.  It is a
globular, bright-yellow fungus, which grows in vast numbers
on the beech-trees.  When young it is elastic and turgid, with

[picture]

a smooth surface; but when mature it shrinks, becomes tougher,
and has its entire surface deeply pitted or honey-combed,
as represented in the accompanying wood-cut.  This fungus
belongs to a new and curious genus, [4] I found a second
species on another species of beech in Chile: and Dr. Hooker
informs me, that just lately a third species has been discovered
on a third species of beech in Van Diernan's Land.  How singular
is this relationship between parasitical fungi and the trees
on which they grow, in distant parts of the world!  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 arbutus, the natives eat
no vegetable food besides this fungus.  In New Zealand,
before the introduction of the potato, the roots of the fern
were largely consumed; at the present time, I believe, Tierra
del Fuego is the only country in the world where a cryptogamic
plant affords a staple article of food.

The zoology of Tierra del Fuego, as might have been
expected from the nature of its climate and vegetation, is
very poor.  Of mammalia, besides whales and seals, there is
one bat, a kind of mouse (Reithrodon chinchilloides), two
true mice, a ctenomys allied to or identical with the tucutuco,
two foxes (Canis Magellanicus and C. Azarae), a sea-otter,
the guanaco, and a deer.  Most of these animals inhabit only
the drier eastern parts of the country; 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
junction; because such cliffs generally are formed by the
intersection of sloping deposits, which, before the elevation
of the land, had been accumulated near the then existing
shores.  It is, however, a remarkable coincidence, that in the
two large islands cut off by the Beagle Channel from the
rest of Tierra del Fuego, one has cliffs composed of matter
that may be called stratified alluvium, which front similar
ones on the opposite side of the channel, -- while the other is
exclusively bordered by old crystalline rocks: in the former,
called Navarin Island, both foxes and guanacos occur; but in
the latter, Hoste Island, although similar in every respect,
and only separated by a channel a little more than half a mile
wide, I have the word of Jemmy Button for saying that
neither of these animals are found.

The gloomy woods are inhabited by few birds: occasionally
the plaintive note of a white-tufted tyrant-flycatcher
(Myiobius albiceps) may be heard, concealed near the summit
of the most lofty trees; and more rarely the loud strange
cry of a black wood-pecker, with a fine scarlet crest on its
head.  A little, dusky-coloured wren (Scytalopus Magellanicus)
hops in a skulking manner among the entangled mass
of the fallen and decaying trunks.  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
feet of the intruder's face.  It is far from wishing for the
modest concealment of the true creeper (Certhia familiaris);
nor does it, like that bird, run up the trunks of trees, but
industriously, after the manner of a willow-wren, hops about,
and searches for insects on every twig and branch.  In the
more open parts, three or four species of finches, a thrush,
a starling (or Icterus), two Opetiorhynchi, and several hawks
and owls occur.

The absence of any species whatever in the whole class of
Reptiles, is a marked feature in the zoology of this country,
as well as in that of the Falkland Islands.  I do not ground
this statement merely on my own observation, but 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 degs.  south, I saw a frog; and
it is not improbable that these animals, as well as lizards, may
be found as far south as the Strait of Magellan, where the
country retains the character of Patagonia; but within the
damp and cold limit of Tierra del Fuego not one occurs.
That the climate would not have suited some of the orders,
such as lizards, might have been foreseen; but with respect
to frogs, this was not so obvious.

Beetles occur in very small numbers: it was long before I
could believe that a country as large as Scotland, covered
with vegetable productions and with a variety of stations,
could be so unproductive.  The few which I found were
alpine species (Harpalidae and Heteromidae) living under
stones.  The vegetable-feeding Chrysomelidae, so eminently
characteristic of the Tropics, are here almost entirely
absent; [5] I saw very few flies, butterflies, or bees, and no
crickets or Orthoptera.  In the pools of water I found but a 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 the
water.  Land-shells could be procured only in the same alpine
situations with the beetles.  I have already contrasted the
climate as well as the general appearance of Tierra del
Fuego with that of Patagonia; and the difference is strongly
exemplified in the entomology.  I do not believe they have
one species in common; certainly the general character of the
insects is widely different.

If we turn from the land to the sea, we shall find the latter
as abundantly stocked with living creatures as the former is
poorly so.  In all parts of the world a rocky and partially
protected 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 a particular history.  It is the kelp, or Macrocystis
pyrifera.  This plant grows on every rock from low-water
mark to a great depth, both on the outer coast and within the
channels. [6] I believe, during the voyages of the Adventure
and Beagle, not one rock near the surface was discovered
which was not buoyed by this floating weed.  The good service
it thus affords to vessels navigating near this stormy
land is evident; and it certainly has saved many a one from
being wrecked.  I know few things more surprising than to
see this plant growing and flourishing amidst those great
breakers of the western ocean, which no mass of rock, let it
be ever so hard, can long resist.  The stem is round, slimy,
and smooth, and seldom has a diameter of so much as an
inch.  A few taken 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
warranted to say that some of it grows to the length of sixty
fathoms and upwards." I do not suppose the stem of any
other plant attains so great a length as three hundred and
sixty feet, as stated by Captain Cook.  Captain Fitz Roy,
moreover, found it growing [7] up from the greater depth of
forty-five fathoms.  The beds of this sea-weed, even when
of not great breadth, make excellent natural floating
breakwaters.  It is quite curious to see, in an exposed harbour,
how soon the waves from the open sea, as they travel through
the straggling stems, sink in height, and pass into smooth
water.

The number of living creatures of all Orders, whose existence
intimately depends on the kelp, is wonderful.  A great
volume might be written, describing the inhabitants of one
of these beds of sea-weed.  Almost all the leaves, excepting
those that float on the surface, are so thickly incrusted with
corallines as to be of a white colour.  We find exquisitely
delicate structures, some inhabited by simple hydra-like
polypi, others by more organized kinds, and beautiful compound
Ascidiae.  On the leaves, also, various patelliform shells,
Trochi, uncovered molluscs, and some bivalves are attached.
Innumerable crustacea frequent every part of the plant.  On
shaking the great entangled roots, a pile of small fish, shells,
cuttle-fish, crabs of all orders, sea-eggs, star-fish, beautiful
Holuthuriae, Planariae, and crawling nereidous animals of a
multitude of forms, all fall out together.  Often 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
Flustraceae, and some compound Ascidiae; 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 intertropical regions.  Yet if in any
country a forest was destroyed, I do not believe nearly so
many species of animals would perish as would here, from
the destruction of the kelp.  Amidst the leaves of this plant
numerous species of fish live, which nowhere else could find
food or shelter; with their destruction the many cormorants
and other fishing birds, the otters, seals, and porpoises, would
soon perish also; and lastly, the Fuegian savage, the miserable
lord of this miserable land, would redouble his cannibal
feast, decrease in numbers, and perhaps cease to exist.

June 8th. -- We weighed anchor early in the morning and
left Port Famine.  Captain Fitz Roy determined to leave the
Strait of Magellan by the Magdalen Channel, which had not
long been discovered.  Our course lay due south, down that
gloomy passage 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, from their summits nearly down to their
bases.  The glimpses which we caught through the dusky
mass were highly interesting; jagged points, cones of snow,
blue glaciers, strong outlines, marked on a lurid sky, were
seen at different distances and heights.  In the midst of such
scenery we anchored at Cape Turn, close to Mount Sarmiento,
which was then hidden in the clouds.  At the base of
the lofty and almost perpendicular sides of our 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 have fewer claims or less authority.  The inanimate works
of nature -- rock, ice, snow, wind, and water -- all warring
with each other, yet combined against man -- here reigned in
absolute sovereignty.

June 9th. -- In the morning we were delighted by seeing
the veil of mist gradually rise from Sarmiento, and display it
to our view.  This mountain, which is one of the highest in
Tierra del Fuego, has an altitude of 6800 feet.  Its base, for
about an eighth of its total height, is clothed by dusky woods,
and above this a field of snow extends to the summit.  These
vast piles of snow, which never melt, and seem destined to
last as 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 the upper great expanse of snow to
the sea-coast: they may be likened to great frozen Niagaras;
and perhaps these cataracts of blue ice are full as beautiful
as the moving ones of water.  By night we reached the western
part of the channel; but the water was so deep that no
anchorage could be found.  We were in consequence obliged
to stand off and on in this narrow arm of the sea, during a
pitch-dark night of fourteen hours long.

June 10th. -- In the morning we made the best of our way
into the open Pacific.  The western coast generally consists
of low, rounded, quite barren hills of granite 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 the main islands, there are numberless
scattered rocks on which the long swell of the open ocean
incessantly rages.  We passed out between the East and West
Furies; and a little farther northward there are so many
breakers that the sea is called the Milky Way.  One sight of
such a coast is enough to make a landsman dream for a week
about shipwrecks, peril, and death; and with this sight we
bade farewell for ever to Tierra del Fuego.

The following discussion on the climate of the southern
parts of the continent with relation to its productions, on
the snow-line, on the extraordinarily low descent of the
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
recapitulation alone may be read.  I shall, however, here
give only an abstract, and must refer for details to the
Thirteenth Chapter and the Appendix of the former edition
of this work.

On the Climate and Productions of Tierra del Fuego and
of the South-west Coast. -- The following table gives the
mean temperature of Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands,
and, for comparison, that of Dublin: --

                               Summer   Winter   Mean of Summer
                   Latitude    Temp.    Temp.    and Winter
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tierra del Fuego   53 38' S.   50       33.08    41.54
Falkland Islands   51 38' S.   51       --       --
Dublin             53 21' N.   59.54    39.2     49.37


Hence we see that the central part of Tierra del Fuego is
colder in winter, and no less than 9.5 degs. less hot in
summer, than Dublin.  According to von Buch, the mean
temperature of July (not the hottest month in the year)
at Saltenfiord in Norway, is as high as 57.8 degs.,
and this place is actually 13 degs. nearer the pole
than Port Famine! [8] Inhospitable as this climate appears
to our feelings evergreen trees flourish luxuriantly under
it.  Humming-birds may be seen sucking the flowers, and
parrots feeding on the seeds of the Winter's Bark, in lat.
55 degs. S. I have already remarked to what a degree the
sea swarms with living creatures; and the shells (such as
the Patellae, Fissurellae, Chitons, and Barnacles),
according to Mr. G. B. Sowerby, are of a much larger size
and of a more vigorous growth, than the analogous species in
the northern hemisphere.  A large Voluta is abundant in
southern Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands.  At
Bahia Blanca, in lat. 39 degs. S., the 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 characterized
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 geologist were to find in lat 39 degs. on the coast of
Portugal a bed containing numerous shells belonging to three
species of Oliva, to a Voluta and Terebra, he would probably
assert that the climate at the period of their existence must
have been tropical; but judging from South America, such an
inference might be erroneous.

The equable, humid, and windy climate of Tierra del
Fuego extends, with only a small increase of heat, for many
degrees along the west coast of the continent.  The forests
for 600 miles northward of Cape Horn, have a very similar
aspect.  As a proof of the equable climate, even for 300 or
400 miles still further northward, I may mention that in
Chiloe (corresponding in latitude with the northern parts
of Spain) the peach seldom produces fruit, whilst strawberries
and apples thrive to perfection.  Even the crops of
barley and wheat [9] are often brought into the houses to be
dried and ripened.  At Valdivia (in the same latitude of
40 degs., 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 potatoes (convolvulus) are cultivated;
and grapes, figs, olives, oranges, water and musk melons,
produce abundant fruit.  Although the humid and equable
climate of Chiloe, and of the coast northward and southward
of it, is so unfavourable to our fruits, yet the native
forests, from lat. 45 to 38 degs., almost rival in luxuriance
those of the glowing intertropical regions.  Stately trees of
many kinds, with smooth and highly coloured barks, are loaded
by parasitical monocotyledonous plants; large and elegant
ferns are numerous, and arborescent grasses entwine the
trees into one entangled mass to the height of thirty or forty
feet above the ground.  Palm-trees grow in lat 37 degs.; an
arborescent grass, very like a bamboo, in 40 degs.; and
another closely allied kind, of great length, but not erect,
flourishes even as far south as 45 degs. S.

An equable climate, evidently due to the large area of sea
compared with the land, seems to extend over the greater
part of the southern hemisphere; and, as a consequence, the
vegetation partakes of a semi-tropical character.  Tree-ferns
thrive luxuriantly in Van Diemen's Land (lat. 45 degs.), and I
measured one trunk no less than six feet in circumference.
An arborescent fern was found by Forster in New Zealand
in 46 degs., where orchideous plants are parasitical on the
trees.  In the Auckland Islands, ferns, according to Dr.
Dieffenbach [10] have trunks so thick and high that they may
be almost called tree-ferns; and in these islands, and even
as far south as lat. 55 degs. in the Macquarrie Islands,
parrots abound.

On the Height of the Snow-line, and on the Descent of
the Glaciers in South America. -- For the detailed authorities
for the following table, I must refer to the former edition: --

                                 Height in feet
Latitude                         of Snow-line    Observer
----------------------------------------------------------------
Equatorial region; mean result   15,748           Humboldt.
Bolivia, lat. 16 to 18 degs. S.  17,000           Pentland.
Central Chile, lat. 33 degs. S.  14,500 - 15,000  Gillies, and
                                                  the Author.
Chiloe, lat. 41 to 43 degs. S.   6,000            Officers of the
                                                  Beagle and the
                                                  Author.
Tierra del Fuego, 54 degs. S.    3,500 - 4,000    King.


As the height of the plane of perpetual snow seems chiefly to
be determined by the extreme heat of the summer, rather than
by the mean temperature of the year, we ought not to be
surprised at its descent 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 degs. N., that is, about 14 degs. nearer the pole, to meet
with perpetual snow at this low level.  The difference in height,
namely, about 9000 feet, between the snow-line on the Cordillera
behind Chiloe (with its highest points ranging from
only 5600 to 7500 feet) and in central Chile [11] (a distance of
only 9 degs. of latitude), is truly wonderful.  The land from the
southward of Chiloe to near Concepcion (lat. 37 degs.) is hidden
by one dense forest dripping with moisture.  The sky is
cloudy, and we have seen how badly the fruits of southern
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. [12] No doubt the plane of perpetual snow
undergoes the above remarkable flexure of 9000 feet,
unparalleled in other parts of the world, not far from the
latitude of Concepcion, where the land ceases to be covered
with forest-trees; for trees in South America indicate a rainy
climate, and rain a clouded sky and little heat in summer.

The descent of glaciers to the sea must, I conceive, mainly
depend (subject, of course, to a proper supply of snow in the
upper region) on the lowness of the line of perpetual snow
on steep mountains near the coast.  As the snow-line is so
low in Tierra del Fuego, we might have expected that many
of the glaciers would have reached the sea.  Nevertheless,
I was astonished when I first saw a 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 officers on
the survey.  Great masses of ice frequently fall from these
icy cliffs, and the crash reverberates like the broadside of a
man-of-war through the lonely channels.  These falls, as
noticed in the last chapter, produce great waves which break
on the adjoining coasts.  It is known that earthquakes frequently
cause masses of earth to fall from sea-cliffs: how
terrific, then, would be the effect of a severe shock (and such
occur here [13]) on a body like a glacier, already in motion, and
traversed by fissures!  I can readily believe that the water
would be fairly beaten back out of the deepest channel, and
then, returning with an overwhelming 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 one
time floating outwards, and one of them must have been at
least 168 feet in total height.  Some of the icebergs were
loaded with blocks of no inconsiderable size, of granite and
other rocks, different from the clay-slate of the surrounding
mountains.  The glacier furthest from the pole, surveyed
during the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, is in lat.
46 degs. 50', in the Gulf of Penas.  It is 15 miles long, and in
one part 7 broad and descends to the sea-coast.  But even a
few miles northward of this glacier, in Laguna de San

[picture]

Rafael, some Spanish missionaries [14] encountered "many
icebergs, some great, some small, and others middle-sized," in
a narrow arm of the sea, on the 22nd of the month corresponding
with our June, and in a latitude corresponding with
that of the Lake of Geneva !

In Europe, the most southern glacier which comes down
to the sea is met with, according to Von Buch, on the coast
of Norway, in lat. 67 degs.  Now, this is more than 20 degs. of
latitude, or 1230 miles, nearer the pole than the Laguna de San
Rafael.  The position of the glaciers at this 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 7.5 degs. of
latitude, or 450 miles, of a harbour, where three species of
Oliva, a Voluta, and a Terebra, are the commonest shells,
within less than 9 degs. from where palms grow, within 4.5 degs.
of a region where the jaguar and puma range over the
plains, less than 2.5 degs. from arborescent grasses, and
(looking to the westward in the same hemisphere) less than
2 degs. from orchideous parasites, and within a single degree
of tree-ferns!

These facts are of high geological interest with respect to
the climate of the northern hemisphere at the period when
boulders were transported.  I will not here detail how simply
the theory of icebergs being charged with fragments of rock,
explain the origin and position of the gigantic boulders of
eastern Tierra del Fuego, on the high plain of Santa Cruz,
and on the island of Chiloe.  In Tierra del Fuego, the greater
number of boulders lie on the lines of 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 originated [15] 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 the glaciers themselves, and that
those distant from mountains, and embedded in subaqueous
deposits, have been conveyed thither either on icebergs or
frozen in coast-ice.  The connection between the transportal
of boulders and the presence of ice in some form, is strikingly
shown by their geographical distribution over the earth.
In South America they are not found further than 48 degs. of
latitude, measured from the southern pole; in North America
it appears that the limit of their transportal extends to
53.5 degs. from the northern pole; but in Europe to not more
than 40 degs. of latitude, measured from the same point.  On the
other hand, in the intertropical parts of America, Asia, and
Africa, they have never been observed; nor at the Cape of Good
Hope, nor in Australia. [16]

On the Climate and Productions of the Antarctic Islands.
-- Considering the rankness of the vegetation in Tierra del
Fuego, and on the coast northward of it, the condition of the
islands south and south-west of America is truly surprising.
Sandwich Land, in the latitude of the north part of Scotland,
was found by Cook, during the hottest month of the
year, "covered many fathoms thick with everlasting snow;"
and there seems to be scarcely any vegetation.  Georgia, an
island 96 miles long and 10 broad, in the latitude of Yorkshire,
"in the very height 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 degs. 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. Kendall [17] found the bay, in which he was
at anchor, beginning to freeze at a period corresponding with
our 8th of September.  The soil here consists of ice and
volcanic ashes interstratified; and at a little depth beneath
the surface it must remain perpetually congealed, for Lieut.
Kendall found the body of a foreign sailor which had long
been buried, with the flesh and all the features perfectly
preserved.  It is a singular fact, that on the two great
continents in the northern hemisphere (but not in the broken
land of Europe between them ), we have the zone of perpetually
frozen undersoil in a low latitude -- namely, in 56 degs. in
North America at the depth of three feet, [18] and in 62 degs.
in Siberia at the depth of twelve to fifteen feet -- as the
result of a directly opposite condition of things to those
of the southern hemisphere.  On the northern continents, the
winter is rendered excessively cold by the radiation from a
large area of land into a clear sky, nor is it moderated by
the warmth-bringing currents 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 perpetually congealed
under-soil, is low.  It is evident that a rank vegetation,
which does not so much require heat as it does protection
from intense cold, would approach much nearer to this zone
of perpetual congelation under the equable climate of the
southern hemisphere, than under the extreme climate of the
northern continents.

The case of the sailor's body perfectly preserved in the icy
soil of the South Shetland Islands (lat. 62 to 63 degs. S.), in a
rather lower latitude than that (lat. 64 degs. N.) under which
Pallas found the frozen rhinoceros in Siberia, is very
interesting.  Although it is a fallacy, as I have endeavoured to
show in a former chapter, to suppose that the larger quadrupeds
require a luxuriant vegetation for their support, nevertheless
it is important to find in the South 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 not, I think, so
perplexing as it has generally been considered.  The plains of
Siberia, like those of the Pampas, appear to have been formed
under the sea, into which rivers brought down the bodies
of many animals; of the greater number of these, only the
skeletons have been preserved, but of others the perfect
carcass.  Now, it is known that in the shallow sea on the Arctic
coast of America the bottom freezes, [19] and does not thaw in
spring so soon as the surface of the land, moreover at
greater depths, where the bottom of the sea does not freeze
the mud a few feet beneath the top layer might remain even
in summer below 32 degs., as in the case on the land with the
soil at the depth of a few feet.  At still greater depths, the
temperature of the mud and water would probably not be low
enough to preserve the flesh; and hence, carcasses drifted
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; [20] 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 washed by a flood into a shallow part of the
Arctic Sea, would be preserved for an indefinite period, if it
were soon afterwards covered with mud sufficiently thick to
prevent the heat of the summer-water penetrating to it; and
if, when the sea-bottom was upraised into land, the covering
was sufficiently thick to prevent the heat of the summer air
and sun thawing and corrupting it.

Recapitulation. -- I will recapitulate the principal facts with
regard to the climate, ice-action, and organic productions of
the southern hemisphere, transposing the places in imagination
to Europe, with which we are so much better acquainted.
Then, near Lisbon, the commonest sea-shells, namely, three
species of Oliva, a Voluta, and a Terebra, would have a
tropical character.  In the southern provinces of France,
magnificent forests, intwined by arborescent grasses and with
the trees loaded with parasitical plants, would hide the face
of the land.  The puma and the jaguar would haunt the
Pyrenees.  In the latitude of Mont Blanc, but on an island as
far westward as Central North America, tree-ferns and
parasitical Orchideae would thrive amidst the thick woods.
Even as far north as central Denmark, humming-birds would be
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
ice-cliffs, whence great masses would be yearly detached: this
island would boast only of a little moss, grass, and burnet,
and a titlark would be its only land inhabitant.  From our
new Cape Horn in Denmark, a chain of mountains, scarcely
half the height of the Alps, would run in a straight line due
southward; and on its western flank every deep creek of the
sea, or fiord, would end in "bold and astonishing glaciers."
These lonely channels would frequently reverberate with the
falls of ice, and so often would great waves rush along their
coasts; numerous icebergs, some as tall as cathedrals, and
occasionally loaded with "no inconsiderable blocks of rock,"
would be stranded on the outlying islets; at intervals violent
earthquakes would shoot prodigious masses of ice into the
waters below.  Lastly, some missionaries attempting to penetrate
a long arm of the sea, would behold the not lofty surrounding
mountains, sending down their many grand icy streams
to the sea-coast, and their progress in the boats would
be checked by the innumerable floating icebergs, some small
and some great; and this would have occurred on our twenty-
second of June, and where the Lake of Geneva is now spread
out! [21]

[1] The south-westerly breezes are generally very dry.
January 29th, being at anchor under Cape Gregory: a very
hard gale from W. by S., clear sky with few cumuli;
temperature 57 degs., dew-point 36 degs., -- difference
21 degs. On January 15th, at Port St. Julian: in the
morning, light winds with much rain, followed by a very
heavy squall with rain, -- settled into heavy gale with
large cumuli, -- cleared up, blowing very strong from S.S.W.
Temperature 60 degs., dew-point 42 degs., -- difference
18 degs.

[2] Rengger, Natur. der Saeugethiere von Paraguay. S. 334.

[3] Captain Fitz Roy informs me that in April (our October),
the leaves of those trees which grow near the base of the
mountains change colour, but not those on the more elevated
parts.  I remember 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 the more elevated, and therefore colder
situations, must he owing to the same general law of vegetation.
The trees of Tierra del Fuego during no part of the year
entirely shed their leaves.

[4] Described from my specimens and notes by the Rev. J. M.
Berkeley, in the Linnean Transactions (vol. xix. p. 37), under
the name of Cyttaria Darwinii; the Chilean species is the
C. Berteroii.  This genus is allied to Bulgaria.

[5] I believe I must except one alpine Haltica, and a single
specimen of a Melasoma.  Mr. Waterhouse informs me, that of
the Harpalidae there are eight or nine species -- the forms
of the greater number being very peculiar; of Heteromera,
four or five species; of Rhyncophora, six or seven; and of
the following families one species in each: Staphylinidae,
Elateridae, Cebrionidae, Melolonthidae.  The species in the
other orders are even fewer.  In all the orders, the scarcity
of the individuals is even more remarkable than that of the
species.  Most of the Coleoptera have been carefully described
by Mr. Waterhouse in the Annals of Nat. Hist.

[6] Its geographical range is remarkably wide; it is found
from the extreme southern islets near Cape Horn, as far
north on the eastern coast (according to information given
me by Mr. Stokes) as lat. 43 degs., -- but on the western
coast, as Dr. Hooker tells me, it extends to the R. San
Francisco in California, and perhaps even to Kamtschatka.
We thus have an immense range in latitude; and as Cook,
who must have been well acquainted with the species, found
it at Kerguelen Land, no less than 140 degs. in longitude.

[7] Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, vol. i. p. 363. -- It
appears that sea-weed grows extremely quick. -- Mr. Stephenson
found (Wilson's Voyage round Scotland, vol. ii. p. 228) that
a rock uncovered only at spring-tides, which had been chiselled
smooth in November, on the following May, that is, within
six months afterwards, was thickly covered with Fucus digitatus
two feet, and F. esculentus six feet, in length.

[8] With regard to Tierra del Fuego, the results are deduced
from the observations of Capt. King (Geographical Journal,
1830), and those taken on board the Beagle.  For the Falkland
Islands, I am indebted to Capt. Sulivan for the mean of the
mean temperature (reduced from careful observations at
midnight, 8 A.M., noon, and 8 P.M.) of the three hottest
months, viz., December, January, and February.  The temperature
of Dublin is taken from Barton.

[9] Agueros, Descrip. Hist. de la Prov. de Chiloe, 1791, p. 94.

[10] See the German Translation of this Journal; and for the
other facts, Mr. Brown's Appendix to Flinders's Voyage.


[11] On the Cordillera of central Chile, I believe the
snow-line varies exceedingly in height in different summers.
I was assured that during one very dry and long summer, all
the snow disappeared from Aconcagua, although it attains the
prodigious height of 23,000 feet.  It is probable that much
of the snow at these great heights is evaporated rather than
thawed.

[12] Miers's Chile, vol. i. p. 415. It is said that the
sugar-cane grew at Ingenio, lat. 32 to 33 degs., but not in
sufficient quantity to make the manufacture profitable.  In
the valley of Quillota, south of Ingenio, I saw some large
date palm trees.

[13] Bulkeley's and Cummin's Faithful Narrative of the Loss
of the Wager.  The earthquake happened August 25, 1741.

[14] Agueros, Desc. Hist. de Chiloe, p. 227.

[15] Geological Transactions, vol. vi. p. 415.

[16] I have given details (the first, I believe, published) on
this subject in the first edition, and in the Appendix to it.
I have there shown that the apparent exceptions to the absence
of erratic boulders in certain countries, are due to erroneous
observations; several statements there given I have since
found confirmed by various authors.

[17] Geographical Journal, 1830, pp. 65, 66.

[18] Richardson's Append. to Back's Exped., and Humboldt's
Fragm. Asiat., tom. ii. p. 386.

[19] Messrs. Dease and Simpson, in Geograph. Journ., vol.
viii. pp. 218 and 220.

[20] Cuvier (Ossemens Fossiles, tom. i. p. 151), from Billing's
Voyage.

[21] In the former edition and Appendix, I have given some
facts on the transportal of erratic boulders and icebergs
in the Atlantic Ocean.  This subject has lately been treated
excellently by Mr. Hayes, in the Boston Journal (vol. iv.
p. 426).  The author does not appear aware of a case published
by me (Geographical Journal, vol. ix. p. 528) of a gigantic
boulder embedded in an iceberg in the Antarctic Ocean, almost
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. Richardson has
assured me that the icebergs off North America push before
them pebbles and sand, and leave the sub-marine rocky flats
quite bare; it is hardly possible to doubt that such ledges
must be polished and scored in the direction of the set of
the prevailing currents.  Since writing that Appendix, I have
seen in North Wales (London Phil. Mag., vol. xxi. p. 180)
the adjoining action of glaciers and floating icebergs.