i8s.] KING GEORGES SOUND. 327 



labour of the ascent, from the number of rotten trunks, was almost as 

 great as on a mountain in Tierra del Fuego or in Chiloe. It cost us 

 five and a half hours of hard climbing before we reached the summit. 

 In many parts the Eucalypti grew to a great size, and composed a 

 noble forest. In some of the dampest ravines, tree-ferns flourished in 

 an extraordinary manner ; I saw one which must have been at least 

 twenty feet high to the base of the fronds, and was in girth exactly six 

 feet. The fronds forming the most elegant parasols, produced a gloomy 

 shade, like that of the first hour of night. The summit of the mountain 

 is broad and flat, and is composed of huge angular masses of naked 

 greenstone. Its elevation is 3, too feet above the level of the sea. The 

 day was splendidly clear, and we enjoyed a most extensive view ; to 

 the north, the country appeared a mass of wooded mountains, of about 

 the same height with that on which we were standing, and with an 

 equally tame outline : to the south the broken land and water, forming 

 many intricate bays, was mapped with clearness before us. After 

 staying some hours on the summit, we found a better way to descend, 

 but did not reach the Beagle till eight o'clock, after a severe day's 

 work. 



February yth. The Beagle sailed from Tasmania, and, on the 6th of 

 the ensuing month, reached King George's Sound, situated close to the 

 S.W. corner of Australia. We stayed there eight days ; and we did not 

 during our voyage pass a more dull and uninteresting time. The 

 country, viewed from an eminence, appears a woody plain, with here 

 and there rounded and partly bare hills of granite protruding. One 

 day I went out with a party, in hopes of seeing a kangaroo hunt, and 

 walked over a good many miles of country. Everywhere we found the 

 soil sandy, and very poor ; it supported either a coarse vegetation of 

 thin, low brushwood and wiry grass, or a forest of stunted trees. The 

 scenery resembled that of the high sandstone platform of the Blue 

 Mountains ; the Casuarina (a tree somewhat resembling a Scotch fir) 

 is, however, here in greater number, and the Eucalyptus in rather less. 

 In the open parts there were many grass-trees, a plant which, in 

 appearance, has some affinity with the palm; but, instead of being 

 surmounted by a crown of noble fronds, it can boast merely of a tuft 

 of very coarse grass-like leaves. The general bright green colour of 

 the brushwood and other plants, viewed from a distance, seemed to 

 promise fertility. A single walk, however, was enough to dispel such 

 an illusion ; and he who thinks with me will never wish to walk again 

 in so uninviting a country. 



One day I accompanied Captain Fitz Roy to Bald Head ; the place 

 mentioned by so many navigators, where some imagined that they saw 

 corals, and others that they saw petrified trees, standing in the position 

 in which they had grown. According to our view, the b^ds have been 

 formed by the wind having heaped up fine sand, composed of minute 

 rounded particles of shells and corals, during which process branches 

 and roots of trees, together with many land-shells, became enclosed. 

 The whole then became consolidated by the percolation of calcareous 

 matter; and the cylindrical cavities left by the decaying of the wood 



