A Magellan Glacier. 125 



its advancing condition was evident from the piles of rubble which 

 were in places shot in among the green trees, and from the over- 

 turned condition of many of those on the margin of the forest, as 

 they gave way before the advancing piles of rubbish. It was a 

 strange sight, standing in the middle of this terminal moraine, to 

 see, on the one hand, a fresh evergreen forest abounding in the 

 most delicate ferns and mosses ; and, on the other, a huge mass 

 of cold blue-veined ice, which was slowly and irresistibly gouging 

 its passage downwards to the sea. The stones of the moraine 

 were composed of syenite and greenstone, the former predomi- 

 nating, and mixed up with them I saw many trunks of trees, 

 which were crushed, torn, and distorted out of all shape. These 

 were probably the remains of a portion of the forest, which had 

 at one time extended further up the valley, and which had been 

 annihilated by the advance of the glacier ; and this circumstance, 

 with the other which I have mentioned, showed clearly that the 

 glacier was now extending its limits and approaching the sea. A 

 few days afterwards, we paid a second visit to Glacier Bay, when 

 a good photo was obtained. 



We stayed for a fortnight at Swallow Bay, a port in Crooked 

 Reach, a few miles to the westward of Tilly Bay. It would seem 

 that this locality had been greatly resorted to by the natives 

 for catching fish, for we found several of their " stone weirs," 

 in a more or less perfect state. The places selected for these 

 weirs were usually small smooth-bottomed coves, and the weir, 

 which consists of a sort of dam built of loose stones about three 

 feet high, is placed across the mouth of one of these coves in 

 such a manner, that when it is complete, any fish which may 

 be inside it will be imprisoned. When it is low water, and the 

 cove is almost dry, a gap is left in the centre of the weir through 

 which the fish may enter with the rising tide ; at high tide the 

 gap is closed up, so that when the water flows away through 

 the interstices of the dam with the falling tide, the fish remain 

 imprisoned in a shallow pool where they can easily be caught. 



