1834] THE CONDOR. 173 



character of the landscape likewise altered. While rambling up 

 some of the narrow and rocky defiles, I conld almost have fancied 

 myself transported back again to the barren valleys of the island 

 of St. Jago. Among the basaltic cliffs, I found some plants which 

 I had seen nowhere else, but others I recognised as being wanderers 

 from Tierra del Fuego. These porous rocks serve as a reservoir 

 for the scanty rain-water ; and consequently on the line where the 

 igneous and sedimentary formations unite, some small springs 

 (most rare occurrences in Patagonia) burst forth ; and they could 

 be distinguished at a distance by the circumscribed patches of 

 bright green herbage. 



April 27th. The bed of the river became rather narrower, and 

 hence the stream more rapid. It here ran at the rate of six knots 

 an hour. From this cause, and from the many great angular 

 fragments, tracking the boats became both dangerous and 

 laborious. 



This day I shot a condor. It measured from tip to tip of the 

 wings, eight and a half feet, and from beak to tail, four feet. This 

 bird is known to have a wide geographical range, being found on 

 the west coast of South America, from the Strait of Magellan along 

 the Cordillera as far as eight degrees north of the equator. The 

 steep cliff near the mouth of the Eio Negro is its northern limit on 

 the Patagonian coast ; and they have there wandered about four 

 hundred miles from the great central line of their habitation in the 

 Andes. Further south, among the bold precipices at the head of 

 Port Desire, the conder is not uncommon ; yet only a few stragglers 

 occasionally visit the sea-coast. A line of cliff near the month 

 of the Santa Cruz is frequented by these birds, and about eighty 

 miles up the river, where the sides of the valley are formed by 

 steep basaltic precipices, the condor reappears. From these facts, 

 it seems that the condors require perpendicular cliffs. In Chile, 

 they haunt, during the greater part of the year, the lower country 

 near the shores of the Pacific, and at night several roost together 

 in one tree; but in the early part of summer, they retire to the 

 most inaccessible parts of the inner Cordillera, there to breed in 

 peace. 



With respect to their propagation, I was told by the country 

 people in Chile, that the condor makes no sort of nest, but in the 

 months of November and December lays two large white eggs on a 



