166 MOUNTAINS—INDIAN wicwAms. April 1828. 
purpose of obtaining bearings of remote points: he remarked 
to me, ‘that many miles were passed over in ascending even 
moderate heights; the land was very high and very irregular ; 
the mountains seemed not to lie in any uniform direction, and 
the longest chain that was observed did not exceed five miles. 
The flat land between the heights was never two miles in 
extent: the ground was always swampy, and. generally there 
were small lakes receiving the drainage of mountain-streams. 
Indeed the whole country appeared broken and unconnected.’ 
“Some of the mountains were ascertained to be 2,500 feet 
high, but the general height was about 2,000 feet. A large 
island, on the northern side of the harbour, is an excellent 
watering-place, at which casks may be conveniently filled in 
the boat. It is also an object of great natural beauty: the 
hill, which forms its western side, rises to seven or eight hun- 
dred feet, almost perpendicularly, and when viewed from its 
base in a boat, seems stupendous: it is clothed with trees, 
among which the light-green leaves of the Winter’s-bark tree, 
and the red flowers of the Fuchsia, unite their tints with the 
darker foliage of other trees. This perpendicular part extends 
to the northward till it is met by the body of the mountain, 
which is arched into a spacious cavern, fifty yards wide and a 
hundred feet high, whose sides are clothed with a rich growth 
of shrubs; and before it a cascade descends down the steep 
face of the mountain. 
‘On the shore we found two Indian wigwams and the remains 
of a third ; but they had evidently been long deserted, for the 
grass had grown up both around and within them to the height 
of more than a foot. These wigwams were exactly similar to 
those in the Strait of Magalhaens: one was larger than any 
I had met with, being eighteen feet in diameter. The only land 
birds I saw were two owls, which passed by us after dusk with 
a screeching noise. 
‘©Qn the patches of sandy beach, in the inner harbour, we 
hauled the seine, but unsuccessfully ; we expected to find fish 
plentiful here, from seeing many seals on the rocks outside, 
and from finding the water quite red with the spawn of cray- 
