224 TIERRA DEL FUEGO. [CHAP. xi. 



matter ready to fall at the slightest touch. "We at last found 

 ourselves among the stunted trees, and then soon reached the bare 

 ridge, which conducted us to the summit. Here was a view 

 characteristic of Tierra del Fuego; irregular chains of hills, 

 mottled with patches of snow, deep yellowish-green valleys, and 

 arms of the sea intersecting the land in many directions. The 

 strong wind was piercingly cold, and the atmosphere rather hazy, 

 so that we did not stay long on the top of the mountain. Our 

 descent was not quite so laborious as our ascent; for the weight of 

 the body forced a passage, and all the slips and falls were in the 

 right direction. 



I have already mentioned the sombre and dull character of the 

 evergreen forests,* in which two or three specits of trees grow, 

 to the exclusion of all others. Above the forest land, there are 

 many dwarf alpine plants, which all spring from the mass of peat, 

 and help to compose it: these plants are very remarkable from 

 their close alliance with the species growing on the mountains of 

 Europe, though so many thousand miles distant. The central 

 part of Tierra del Fuego, where the clay-slate formation occurs, is 

 most favourable to the growth of trees ; on the outer coast the 

 poorer granitic soil, and a situation more exposed to the violent 

 winds, do not allow of their attaining any great size. Near Port 

 Famine I have seen more large trees than anywhere else : I 

 measured a Winter's Bark which was four feet six inches in girth, 

 and several of the beech were as much as thirteen feet. Captain 

 King also mentions a beech which was seven feet in diameter 

 seventeen feet above the roots. 



There is one vegetable production deserving notice from its 

 importance as an article of food to the Fuegians. It is a globular, 

 bright-yellow fungus, which grows in vast numbers on the beech- 

 trees. When young it is elastic and turgid, with a smooth surface ; 

 but when mature it shrinks, becomes tougher, and has its entire 



* Captain Fitz Roy informs me that in April (our October), the leaves 

 of those trees which grow near the base of the mountains, change colour, 

 but not those on the more elevated parts. I remember having read some 

 observations, showing that in England the leaves fall earlier in a warm 

 and fine autumn than in a late and cold one. The change in the colour 

 being here retarded in the more elevated, and therefore colder situations, 

 must be owing to the same general law of vegetation. The trees of 

 Tierra del Fuego during no part of the year entirely shed their leaves. 



