104 Cruise of the "Alert" 



We anchored for the night in Island Harbour. On the follow- 

 ing morning we got under way at an early hour, and steamed 

 down the Messier Channel and through the English Narrows, 

 reaching Eden Harbour about dusk. 



We passed several small icebergs, which had probably reached 

 the channels from a glacier in Iceberg Sound. The largest was 

 about twenty yards across, and projected about six feet above the 

 surface. Most of the hills in this latitude were snow- clad as far 

 as the 1,000 feet line. 



On the evening of the next day, the i ith October, we reached 

 the Trinidad Channel, and established ourselves for a time at 

 Cockle Cove, an anchorage on the south shore of this channel, 

 of which the survey was as yet incomplete. 



It was now spring time on the west coast of Patagonia, but the 

 weather was as chilly and wet as it had been in the autumn of the 

 previous year, when we were moving north towards our winter 

 quarters ; indeed, from the accounts furnished to us by the sealers, 

 as well as from our own experience, I am inclined to think that 

 there are no marked seasonal changes in the weather on the 

 west coast, whither the constant westerly winds are continually 

 delivering the burden of aqueous vapour which they accumulate 

 in their passage over the Southern Ocean. On the other hand, 

 the condition of the fauna and flora indicate the natural two-fold 

 division of the year as decisively as it is observed in the same 

 latitude in the northern hemisphere. 



In the month of October at Cockle Cove the kelp geese and 

 steamer-ducks were preparing their nests, and the cormorants were 

 assembling at their rookeries ; the holly -leaved berberry [Berber is 

 ilicifolid) was already displaying its gorgeous clusters of globular 

 orange flowers, and the giant creeper {Campsidium chilense) was 

 also in bloom, its scarlet bell-shaped flowers peeping from aloft 

 among the branches of the beech-trees, where they appear to seek 

 a position in which they may flourish safe from intrusion. Many 

 of the mosses and jungermannice were also now in full fruit. 



