7 8 Cruise of the "Alert." 



soil motion might be accounted for by a slow and gradual 

 depression of the land, and I have carefully sought for evidence 

 favouring this view, but have found no reliable sign whatever 

 of subsidence ; while on the other hand one sees raised beaches 

 and stones testifying to the ravages of stone-boring molluscs 

 at heights above the present high-water marks, which indicate 

 that even elevation of the land has taken place. 



On May 6th, the winter season having then fairly set in, we bade 

 adieu for a while to our surveying ground, and commenced our 

 northern voyage to Valparaiso. Our course lay first through the 

 sheltered channels which separate Wellington Island from the main- 

 land. As we rounded Topar Islands and entered Wide Channel, 

 the heavy mist which had been hanging around us all the morning, 

 almost concealing the land from sight, lifted at intervals like a 

 veil, and exposed to view the noble cliffs of bare greenstone 

 rock which hemmed us in on either side, here and there streaked 

 down their faces by long slender cascades of water, extending 

 from summit to base, and seeming to hang over us like 

 glistening threads of silver. On passing the southern outlet 

 of Icy Reach, we saw shining in the distance the sloping 

 tongue-shaped extremity of one of the Eyre Sound glaciers, 

 whose bergs float out through Icy Reach in the winter time 

 and sometimes prove a serious obstruction to navigation in these 

 gloomy and mysterious channels. In Chasm Reach, which we 

 next traversed, the hills on either side rose nearly perpendicularly 

 to a height of 1,500 feet, their snow-capped summits contrasting 

 grandly with the sombre tints of their rocky sides ; so scantily 

 clad with vegetation as to seem at a distance mere sloping walls 

 of rock. 



In the narrowest part of this " reach," where the width was only 

 about half-a-mile, three native huts were seen established on low 

 projecting shelves of rock, and situated about a mile apart. To these 

 our attention was attracted by the long curling wreaths of grey 

 smoke, ascending from their fires. As darkness was coming on, 



