1836.] KING GEOBGE'S SOUND. 431 



from its very foundation, then numbered only three and thirty 

 years ! Another day I ascended Mount Wellington ; I took with 

 me a guide, for I failed in a first attempt, from the thickness of the 

 wood. Our guide, however, was a stupid fellow, and conducted us 

 to the southern and damp side of the mountain, where the vegeta- 

 tion was very luxuriant ; and where the labour of the ascent, from 

 the number of rotten trunks, was almost as great as on a mountain 

 inTierra del Fuego or in Chiloe. It cost us five and a half hours 

 of hard climbing before we reached the summit. In may parts the 

 Eucalypti grew to a great size, and composed a noble forest. In 

 some of the dampest ravines, tree-ferns flourished in an extra- 

 ordinary manner ; I saw one which must have been at least twenty 

 feet high to the base of the fronds, and was in girth exactly six feet. 

 The fronds forming the most elegant parasols, produced a gloomy 

 shade, like that of the first hour of night. The summit of the 

 mountain is broad and flat, and is composed of huge angular masses 

 of naked greenstone. Its elevation is 3100 feet above the level of 

 the sea. The day was splendidly clear, and we enjoyed a most 

 extensive view ; to the north, the country appeared a mass of 

 wooded mountains, of about the same height with that on which 

 we were standing, and with an equally tame outline : to the south 

 the broken land and water, forming many intricate bays, was 

 mapped with clearness before us. After staying some hours on 

 the summit, we found a better way to descend, but did not reach 

 the Beagle till eight o'clock, after a severe day's work. 



February 7th. The Beagle sailed from Tasmania, and, on the 6th 

 of the ensuing month, reached King George's Sound, situated close 

 to the S.W. corner of Australia. We stayed there eight days ; and 

 we did not during our voyage pass a more dull and uninteresting- 

 time. The country, viewed from an eminence, appears a woody 

 plain, with here and there rounded and partly bare hills of granite 

 protruding. One day I went out with a party, in hopes of seeing a 

 kangaroo hunt, and walked over a good many miles of country. 

 Everywhere we found the soil sandy, and very poor ; it supported 

 either a coarse vegetation of thin, low brushwood and wiry grass, 

 or a forest of stunted trees. The scenery resembled that of the 

 high sandstone platform of the Blue Mountains ; the Casuarina (a 

 tree somewhat resembling a Scotch fir) is, however, here in greater 

 number, and the Eucalyptus in rather less. In the open parts 

 there were many grass-trees, a plant which, in appearance, has 



