ANTAECTIC BOTANY 133 



As spring approached, even the Falklands put on a brighter 

 face. The forthcoming visit to Hermit e Island offered an 

 attractive prospect, despite the fact that, with the equinoctial 

 gales coming on, a long and uncomfortable passage might be 

 expected. There is at least this consolation : ' We know from 

 now long experience, that no sea can hurt such vessels as ours, 

 which rise like tubs on the water and tumble about in the 

 waves.' 



Already he is beginning to think of the Fuegian Fagi, &c., 

 as described in his father's * Journal of Botany ' ; and correct- 

 ing Webster's confusions in his account of Captain Foster's ^ 

 voyage : 



It is, however, among the Mosses and oth^r Cryptogams 

 that I shall hope for novelty in the S. extremity of the 

 American Continent. . . . You will not wonder that after 

 spending so long a time in the Antarctic regions, I should 

 be most anxious to complete the Botany of this desolate 

 part of the world, by going even to the Horn, and that any 

 new Moss or Lichen from such latitudes appears of infinitely 

 more value to me than gf new Palm or Rafflesia would to 

 you, nor can you well conceive my delight on finding the 

 three curious Halorageous, Portulaceous, and Crassulaceous 

 weeds of Kerguelen's Land at the Aucklands, then Camp- 

 bell's Island, and again on the Falklands — ^three curious 

 forms of small Natural Orders, as strictly Antarctic as 

 Parry a or Sieversia is Arctic. 



Amongst the lower orders I find it takes all my eyes to 

 get up a tolerably complete collection, for in such dreary 



1 Henry Foster (1796-1831), navigator and surveyor. His most important 

 voyages were with Captain Clavering and Sabine in the Griper, to the coasts 

 of Greenland and Norway, after which he was elected to the Royal Society ; 

 as astronomer with Parry in his Polar expeditions of 1824-5 and 1827, when 

 his astronomical and magnetic observations won him the Cople}'^ medal ; and 

 from 1828, when he was sent out in command of the Chanticleer to the South 

 Seas to determine the ellipticity of the earth by pendulum experiments at 

 various places, as well as to make magnetic and other observations. His 

 work took him to the South Shetlands, and thence to St. Martin's Cove, behind 

 Cape Horn, a spot afterwards visited by Hooker. Here he met Captain King 

 in the Adventure, who was surveying the neighbouring islands. He was 

 accidentally droA^-ned in the Chagres River just aiter he had at last succeeded 

 in measuring the difference in longitude across the Isthmus of Panama by 

 means of rockets. The account of the voyage was written from the journal 

 of Webster, surgeon of the Chanticleer. 



I 



