240 NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



character, the forest is composed of coniferous trees, 

 which have a very different aspect, and at the corre- 

 sponding season they are, I imagine, usually so laden 

 with snow that they can give little relief to the eye. 

 I was struck by the fact that, although we had 

 travelled southward five and a half degrees of latitude 

 (nearly four hundred English miles) since entering 

 the Gulf of Penas, the upper limit of the forest belt 

 was so little depressed. I could not estimate the 

 average depression at more than from two to three 

 hundred feet. 



As we advanced into the main channel, and 

 were drawing near to the headland of Cape Tamar, 

 where the Straits of Magellan are narrowed between 

 that and the opposite coast of the Land of Desolation, 

 we noticed that what seemed from a distance to be a 

 mere film of vapour lying on the surface of the sea 

 grew gradually thicker, rose to a height of about one 

 hundred feet, and quite abruptly, in the space of two 

 or three ship's lengths, we lost the bright sky and the 

 wonderful panorama, and were plunged in a fog that 

 lasted through the greater part of the afternoon. The 

 one constant characteristic of the climate of this 

 region is its liability at all seasons to frequent and 

 abrupt change, especially by day. It is, as I learned, 

 a rare event when a day passes without one or two, or 

 even more frequent, changes of the wind, bringing 

 corresponding changes of temperature, rain, or snow, 

 or clear sky ; but, as a rule, the weather is less incon- 

 stant in winter than at other seasons. A short ex- 

 perience makes it easy to understand the extreme 

 difficulty of navigation in the Straits for sailing ships, 



