T2 TIERRA DEL FUEGO. [1S39. 



canoe which required constant bailing to keep it afloat. But 

 one of the number — a young man not far from nineteen 

 years of age — could be induced to come on board. They 

 brought with them a number of spears, and a necklace of 

 shells, which they exchanged for pieces of cotton and an iron 

 hoop. In dress, language and appearance, they resembled 

 those at Nassau Bay. They were highly delighted with 

 music, and fond of mimicking everything they heard ; the 

 flute and guitar were played for their amusement, and they 

 endeavored to imitate the accompanying songs. 



(6.) Tierra del Fuego properly includes the group of 

 islands lying off the southern extremity of South America, 

 and separated from it by the straits of Magellan ; but the 

 term is usually applied, by way of distinction, to the largest, 

 or main island, formerly called King Charles' South Land. 

 The eastern part of this island is low, with sloping plains 

 like those of Patagonia, though there is really no level land. 

 On the west side it is traversed, from north to south, by a 

 chain of mountains four thousand feet high. The island is 

 all mountainous, and appears to have been partially sub- 

 merged in the sea by some convulsion of nature, — by which 

 so many inlets and bays are occasioned where valleys would 

 otherwise have been. The surface at the foot of the hills is 

 covered with a thick bed of swampy peat. On the mountain 

 sides, reaching up to an elevation of twelve hundred feet, 

 there are dense forests ; the trees rise uniformly to the height 

 of forty or fifty feet, and generally incline towards the north- 

 east, in consequence of the prevailing southwestern winds. 



The principal trees are beech, birch and willow. One 

 species of birch, the betula antarctica, has a stem from thirty 

 to forty-six inches in diameter. Winter's bark, (dry mis 

 winteri) first introduced as a medicine in 1579, was origi- 

 nally discovered here. In Tierra del Fuego and the adjacent 

 islands, hornblende is the most common rock, but slate is 

 abundant. Lava and other volcanic products were discov- 

 ered by Captain King, but nothing of the kind was found 

 during the limited, and necessarily imperfeot, reconnaissances 



