48 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



which is a perfect child's puzzle of slabs of different sizes, with 5 or 6 distinct sides 

 to each, all fitted together with the neatness of a honeycomb. I tried in vain to 

 find some system on which it was arranged. We had the good fortune to see a 

 group of guanacos feeding quietly under the old trees. They looked strange 

 enough to be in character with them, having the body of a sheep and the head of 

 a camel ; and they let us come quite near. On the other side of the mountains they 

 are used as a beast of burden, though so weak that ten of them could not carry the 

 load of an average donkey. After wandering about the lower lands, we climbed 

 through the bogs and granite boulders to the top of one of the hills, and came 

 suddenly to a most wonderful view, with seven snowy cones of the Cordillera 

 piercing their way through the long line of mist which hid the nearer connecting 

 mountains from sight, and glittering against the greenish blue sky. Each one 

 looked perfectly separate and gigantic, though the highest was only io,cxx> feet 

 above the sea. Under the mist were hills of beech forest, and nearer still the 

 Araucaria domes, while the foreground consisted of noble old specimens of the same 

 trees grouped round a huge grey boulder covered with moss and enriched with 

 sprays of embothrium of the brightest scarlet. No subject could have been finer, 

 if I could only have painted it, but that ' if ' has been plaguing me for years, and 

 every year seems to take me farther from a satisfactory result," 



Inspired by this charming description, and by a desire to see the magnificent 

 forests of Southern Chile, whence I hoped to introduce new trees and plants to our 

 gardens, I visited Chile in the winter of 1901-1902, and after various difficulties 

 caused by the dispute about the frontier, which nearly led to a war between Chile and 

 Argentina, I started from the hospitable home of my friends, Mr. George and 

 Senora Bussey at San Ignacio, to see the Araucarias in the Sierra de Pemehue, 

 a region where they attain their greatest perfection, and which, having only been 

 recently conquered from the Indians, had been described by no scientific traveller ; 

 though Senor Moreno has written an excellent account of the Argentine side of the 

 frontier, which I visited later, 



The Sierra de Pemehue is a range of mountains lying on the west side of the 

 upper course of the great Bfobio river, and is not, strictly speaking, a part of the 

 Cordillera of the Andes, from which it is separated by that river. The greater part 

 of it is covered with splendid forests, principally composed of beeches, Fagus 

 obliqua and Fagus Dombeyi, and it was near the head-waters of the Renaico river that 

 I first saw what is to me the most striking of all trees hardy in England, and the 

 only Chilean tree which as yet seems to have acclimatised itself thoroughly in this 

 country. 



They were growing in scattered groups on the cliffs far above us at an elevation 

 of 3000-4000 feet, and we did not enter the Araucaria forest till we got near the top of 

 the pass, which crossed over a mountain called Chilpa, between the Renaico and the 

 Villacura valleys. Here the trees were growing scattered among Coigue trees {Fagus 

 Dombeyi), and higher up in a forest mainly composed of Niere {Fagus antarctica), 

 many of which were killed by forest fires, which had not, however, destroyed the 

 thick-barked Araucarias, though I saw here but few young trees and no seedlings. 



