THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 439 



the day, with bright sunshiny intervals between them, when 

 the wooded mountains, on the summits of many of which 

 snow had fallen the night before, appeared very beautiful. 

 We reached the harbour between one and two p.m., and there 

 anchored, soon after which some of the officers made an ex- 

 cursion in one of the boats to a large lake-like expanse of 

 water at the head, with a river flowing into its upper end. 

 On their return they brought me specimens of a fresh-water 

 shell of the genus Chilina, which was new to me. The follow- 

 ing morning was showery and very cold, the snow-crowned 

 hills in our vicinity presenting a decidedly wintry aspect ; and, 

 after an interval of between five and six months, we resumed 

 our fire in the wardroom. Three of the officers, with my- 

 self, left the ship soon after breakfast, and pulled up the 

 river for some distance. In a small bay, communicating with 

 the lake-like expanse already referred to, we found many 

 specimens of the Ghilina, procured the day before, associated 

 with live barnacles in brackish water. Many of the shells 

 had their apices much eroded. On shore I found a spider of 

 considerable size inhabiting a burrow in the soft decaying 

 moss, wide enough to admit of one's thumb. It had a large 

 bag of eggs attached to the abdomen ; and on taking hold of 

 it with a pair of forceps to place it in a phial of spirit, it 

 ejected a jet of fluid to a distance of several inches from the 

 extremity of the abdomen. I obtained fine flowering speci- 

 mens of Escallonia serrata and Pinguicula antarctica, as well 

 as of a white-flowered Valerian, new to me ; and I found 

 Lepidothamnus Fonhi both in flower and fruit. 



On the 1st of December we left Gray Harbour, and passed 

 southwards through the English Narrows and Indian Eeach 

 to Port Grappler on the mainland, opposite the north-east 

 corner of Saumarez Island. We reached our destination, a 



