XL] THE UNBURIED DEAD 193 



of a similar import seemed to rise up from the lidless coffin 

 before us. It was no brother mortal that lay at our feet, 

 softly folded in the embraces of " Mother Earth," but a 

 poor scarecrow, gibbeted for ages on this bare rock, like a 

 dead Prometheus ; the vulture, frost, gnawing for ever on 

 his bleaching relics, and yet eternally preserving them ! 



On another part of the coast we found two other corpses 

 yet more scantily sepulchred, without so much as a cross to 

 mark their resting-place. Even in the palmy days of the 

 whale-fisheries, it was the practice of the Dutch and English 

 sailors to leave the wooden coffins in which they had placed 

 their comrades' remains, exposed upon the shore; and I 

 have been told by an eye-witness, that in Magdalena Bay 

 there are to be seen, even to this day, the bodies of men 

 who died upwards of 250 years ago, in such complete pre- 

 servation that, when you pour hot water on the icy coating 

 which encases them, you can actually see the unchanged 

 features of the dead, through the transparent incrustation. 



As soon as Fitz had gathered a few of the little flowering 

 mosses that grew inside the coffin, we proceeded on our way, 

 leaving poor Jacob Moor — like his great namesake — alone 

 in his glory. 



Turning to the right, we scrambled up the spur of one of 

 the mountains on the eastern side of the plain, and thence 

 dived down among the lateral valleys that run up between 

 them. Although by this means we opened up quite a new 

 system of hills, and basins, and gullies, the general scenery 

 did not change its characteristics. All vegetation — if the 

 black moss deserves such a name — ceases when you ascend 

 twenty feet above the level of the sea, and the sides of the 

 mountains become nothing but steep slopes of schist, split 

 and crumbled into an even surface by the frost. Every 

 step we took unfolded a fresh succession of these jagged 

 spikes and break-neck acclivities, in an unending variety of 

 quaint configuration. Mountain climbing has never been a 

 hobby of mine, so I was not tempted to play the part of 

 Excelsior on any of these hill sides ; but for those who love 



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