CHAP. IV.] THE VOYAGE HOME. 179 



along the shore, and stretches a little way np the slope. It is 

 built mainly of square, white, gray-slated houses, and puts one 

 greatly in mind of one of the newer small towns in the Scottish 

 West Highlands or in one of the Hebrides. The resemblance 

 is heightened by the smell of peat -smoke, for peat is almost 

 universally burned, as there is no wood, and coal costs three 

 pounds a ton. The Government-house is very like a Shetland 

 or Orkney manse, stone-built, slated, and gray, without the least 

 shelter. In the square grass paddock surrounded by a low wall, 

 stretching from the house to the shore, a very ornamental flock 

 of upland geese were standing and preening their feathers the 

 first time we called there. This tameness of the sea-birds is 

 still most remarkable in the Falkland Islands, and a strange 

 contrast to their extreme wildness in the Strait of Mao^ellan : 

 there we stalked the kelp goose {Chloephaga antarctica) and 

 the steamer -duck {Micropterus cinereus) day after day, with 

 great labor and but little success, finding great difficulty in 

 getting even within long range of them ; while in the Falk- 

 lands the same species were all about, standing on the shore 

 within stone's-throw, or diving or fishing quietly within a few 

 yards of the boats. I was told that they are not now nearly 

 so tame, however, as they were some years ago. Almost every 

 evening we met some one coming to the settlement with, a 

 string of upland geese for the pot, and I suppose it is begin- 

 ning to dawn upon the poor birds that their new neighbors 

 are not so harmless as they look. Very likely it may take 

 some generations of experience to make them thoroughly 

 wary, and the difference between the birds of the Islands 

 and those of the Strait may probably be, that while the for- 

 mer have been safe in their primeval solitude up to within 

 a recent period, the latter have been selecting themselves for 

 ages on their capacity for eluding the craft of hungry Pata- 

 gonians and Fuegians. 



The town is clean and well kept, and even the smallest houses 



