150 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS : NARRATIVE. 



During our stop at Villarino Bay some of the boats were manned and 

 sent ashore to procure a supply of fresh water, and I availed myself of 

 this opportunity for going on shore. As we approached the point selected 

 as a landing place at the head of the bay, we passed close by a beautiful, 

 pure white albatross standing on the surface of a low ledge of rock that 

 extended for several rods out into the waters of the bay. It was a truly 

 noble-looking and beautiful bird, although its pure white plumage seemed 

 strangely out of harmony with its surroundings. 



Having safely landed, I noticed a number of small rounded mounds, or 

 hillocks skirting the shore at only a little distance from the beach. On 

 examination these proved to consist chiefly of shells. They were in fact 

 genuine kitchen middens, or shell heaps, still in the process of formation. 

 On the summit of several were to be seen remains of charred wood and 

 shells and on one I found a discarded and worn-out basket made of 

 rushes woven together, remains of a small and dilapidated wickiup and 

 other articles, indicating that within the last few weeks at least it had been 

 made the temporary residence of a small party of Channel Indians. 



After a few moments spent in examining these shell heaps I turned my 

 attention to the forests. The shore was fringed with a dense growth of 

 dwarfed and procumbent beech bushes. Through, or rather over these, I 

 had to force my way before gaining the depths of the real forest, which lay 

 beyond. When, however, after considerable difficulty I succeeded, I found 

 myself, although in south latitude 55, surrounded by a vegetation so 

 profuse and abundant in its growth as to suggest that I had been sud- 

 denly transported into the midst of some tropical jungle. The palms and 

 tree-ferns of the tropics were replaced by the Winter's bark, Drimys winteri, 

 and the deciduous and the evergreen beech, Fagus antarctica and F. betu- 

 loides. Here, at this high latitude, on the twenty-fourth of May, equiva- 

 lent to that day of November in our latitude, humming birds were busily 

 engaged sucking nectar from the delicately colored bossoms of the Philesia 

 buxifolia, while parrots disported themselves in the branches of the trees 

 above my head. The earth was covered over with a profusion of ferns, 

 mosses, Hepaticae and lichens. The delicate, lace-like patterns of the fronds 

 of several species of Hymenophyllum were not the least striking of the 

 wonderful assemblage of cryptogams with which the ground was carpeted. 

 Into the pile of this carpet, formed of these most exquisite and delicately 

 colored plants, at each successive step I sank to a depth of several 



