THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 297 



the same, but it was much less thickly inhabited. On the 

 large island of Tanqui there was scarcely one cleared spot, 

 the trees on every side extending their branches over the 

 sea-beach. I one day noticed, growing on the sandstone 

 cliffs, some very fine plants of the panke (Gunnera scabra), 

 which somewhat resembles the rhubarb on a gigantic scale. 

 The inhabitants eat the stalks, which are subacid, and tan 

 leather with the roots, and prepare a black dye from them. 

 The leaf is nearly circular, but deeply indented on its mar- 

 gin. I measured one which was nearly eight feet in diame- 

 ter, and therefore no less than twenty-four in circumfer- 

 ence ! The stalk is rather more than a yard high, and each 

 plant sends out four or five of these enormous leaves, pre- 

 senting together a very noble appearance. 



December 6th. We reached Caylen, called " el fin del 

 Cristiandad." In the morning we stopped for a few minutes 

 at a house on the northern end of Laylec, which was the 

 extreme point of South American Christendom, and a mis- 

 erable hovel it was. The latitude is 43 10', which is two 

 degrees farther south than the Rio Negro on the Atlantic 

 coast. These extreme Christians were very poor, and, under 

 the plea of their situation, begged for some tobacco. As a 

 proof of the poverty of these Indians, I may mention that 

 shortly before this, we had met a man, who had travelled 

 three days and a half on foot, and had as many to return, 

 for the sake of recovering the value of a small axe and a few 

 fish. How very difficult it must be to buy the smallest article, 

 when such trouble is taken to recover so small a debt. 



In the evening we reached the island of San Pedro, where 

 we found the Beagle at anchor. In doubling the point, two 

 of the officers landed to take a round of angles with the 

 theodolite. A fox (Canis fulvipes), of a kind said to be 

 peculiar to the island, and very rare in it, and which is a new 

 species, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently ab- 

 sorbed in watching the work of the officers, that I was able, 

 by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head 

 with my geological hammer. This fox, more curious or 

 more scientific, but less wise, than the generality of his 

 brethren, is now mounted in the museum of the Zoological 

 Society. 



