THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 281 



soon after six a.m. near the cliffs above mentioned, we fixed on 

 a situation for our tents, and while the camp fire was being 

 lighted and breakfast getting ready, I had time to take a 

 short stroll and survey the surrounding prospect. Our 

 encampment was placed on a flat space of ground close to 

 the river-bank, behind which rose steep grass-grown banks 

 from thirty to fifty feet in height, and rendered of a brilliant 

 golden-yellow colour by masses of the Adesmia horonioides, 

 which, along with Lepidojphyllum cupressiforme, was growing 

 in the utmost luxuriance. Two other plants, also plentiful, 

 neither of which appear to extend as far south as the Strait, 

 were a beautiful Calceolaria, with a larger flower and narrower 

 leaves than G. plantaginea, and a herbaceous Euphorbia, with 

 copious milky juice. Immediately to the east of us extended 

 the line of cliffs, stretching, with intervals of grassy slopes, 

 towards the mouth of the river. At the near end of this, 

 which I had time to reach before breakfast, I found a few 

 of the plates of the dermal armour of a Glyptodon, and we all 

 regarded this as an auspicious omen of our success. Our 

 morning meal over, the party dispersed in different directions 

 — the greater number, bent on sport, ascending to the high 

 ground above the banks, while Captain Mayne and I, armed 

 with hammers and chisels, set out to search the base of the 

 cliffs for the deposit of fossil bones. We had a long and 

 most fatiguing walk under a hot sun, over the shingle 

 beneath the cliffs, carefully scrutinising their surfaces, and all 

 detached blocks in their vicinity, for fossils, but without 

 the slightest success. "We passed at one part a well of good 

 fresh water, with a plank laid along the swampy ground at 

 the side of it, and not far from this I met with several plants 

 which had never occurred to me in the Strait, including a 

 purple Lathyrus, a bluish-white Poly gala, and a handsome 



