44 LIFE OF 



clouds were piled up against a dark blue sky, and across 

 them black, ragged sheets of vapour were rapidly driven. 

 The successive mountain ranges appeared like dim 

 shadows ; and the setting sun cast on the woodland a 

 yellow gleam, much like that produced by the flame of 

 spirits of wine on a man's countenance. The water was 

 white with the flying spray ; and the wind lulled and 

 roared again through the rigging. It was a most 

 ominous, sublime scene." While near Tres Montes the 

 year 1835 was ushered in, as Darwin says, "with the 

 ceremonies proper to it in these regions. She lays out 

 no false hopes ; a heavy N.W. gale, with steady rain, 

 bespeaks the rising year. Thank God, we are not destined 

 here to see the end of it, but hope then to be in the 

 Pacific, where a blue sky tells one there is a heaven 

 a something beyond the sky above our heads." 



Valdivia being reached in February, the Beagle party 

 were witnesses of a severe earthquake. Danvin was on 

 shore, lying down in the wood to rest. The effect pro- 

 duced upon him by the motion he experienced was very 

 marked : " There was no difficulty in standing upright, but 

 the motion made me almost giddy. It was something 

 like the movement of a vessel in a little cross ripple, or 

 still more like that felt by a person skating over thin ice, 

 which bends under the weight of his body. A bad earth- 

 quake at once destroys the oldest associations ; the 

 world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved 

 beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid ; one second of 

 time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of in- 

 security, which hours of reflection would never have 

 created." By the same earthquake every house in 



