308 TIERRA DEL FUEGO. 



ing weed. The good service it thus affords to ves- 

 sels navigating near this stormy land is evident ; 

 and it certainly has saved many a one from being 

 "wrecked. I know few things more surprising than 

 to see this plant gi-owing and flourishing amidst 

 those great breakers of the Western Ocean, which 

 no mass of rock, let it be ever so hard, can long 

 resist. The stem is round, slimy, and smooth, and 

 seldom has a diameter of so much as an inch. A 

 few taken together are sufficiently strong to support 

 the weight of the large loose stones to which, in 

 the inland channels, they grovf attached ; and yet 

 some of these stones were so heavy that, when 

 drawn to the surface, they could scarcely be lifted 

 into a boat by one person. Captain Cook, in his 

 second voyage, says that this plant at Kerguelen 

 Land rises from a greater depth than twenty-four 

 fathoms ; " and as it does not grow in a perpen- 

 dicular direction, but makes a very acute angle 

 with the bottom, and much of it afterward spreads 

 many fathoms on the siu-face of the sea, I am well 

 warranted to say that some of it grows to the length 

 of sixty fathoms and upwards." I do not suppose 

 the stem of any other plant attains so great a length 

 as three hundred and sixty feet, as stated by Cap- 

 tain Cook. Captain Fitz Roy, moreover, found it 

 growing* up from the greater depth of forty-five 

 fathoms. The beds of this sea-weed, even when 

 not of great breadth, make excellent natural float- 

 ing breakwaters. It is quite curious to see, in an 

 exposed harbour, how soon the waves from the 



* Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, vol. i., p. 3C3. It ap- 

 pears that sea-weed grows extremely quick. Mr. Stephenson 

 found (Wilson's Voyage round Scotland, vol. ii., p. 228) that a rock 

 uncovered only at spring-tides, which had been chiselled smooth 

 in November, on the following May, that is, within six months 

 afterwards, was thickly covered with Fucus digitatus two feet, 

 and F. esculentus six feet in length. 



