1834.] FORESTS. 235 
wood; at other times, when attempting to lean against a firm 
tree, one was startled by finding a mass of decayed matter ready 
to fall at the slightest touch. We at last found ourselves among 
the stunted trees, and then soon reached the bare ridge, which 
conducted us to the summit. Here was a view characteristic of 
Tierra del Fuego; irregular chains‘of hills, mottled with patches 
of snow, deep yellowish-green valleys, and arms of the sea inter- 
secting the land in many directions. The strong wind was 
piercingly cold, and the atmosphere rather hazy, so that we did 
not stay long on the top of the mountain. Our descent was not 
quite so laborious -as our ascent; for the weight of the body 
forced a passage, and all the slips and falls were in the right 
direction. 
I have already mentioned the sombre and dull character of the 
evergreen forests,* in which two or three species of trees grow, 
to the exclusion of all others. Above the forest land, there are 
many dwarf alpine plants, which all spring from the mass of 
peat, and help to compose it: these plants are very remarkable 
from their close alliance with the species growing on the moun- 
tains of Europe, though so many thousand miles distant. The 
central part of Tierra del Fuego, where the clay-slate formation 
occurs, is most favourable to the growth of trees; on the outer 
coast the poorer granitic soil, and a situation more exposed to 
the violent winds, do not allow of their attaining any great size. 
Near Port Famine I have seen more Jarge trees than anywhere 
else: I measured a Winter’s Bark which was four feet six inches 
in girth, and several of the beech were as much as thirteen feet. 
Captain King also mentions a beech which was seven feet in 
diameter seventeen feet above the roots. 
There is one vegetable production deserving notice from its 
importance as an article of food to the Fuegians. It is a globu- 
* Captain Fitz Roy informs me that in April (our October), the leaves of 
those trees which grow near the base of the mountains, change colour, but 
not those on the more elevated parts. I remember having read some obser- 
vations, showing that in England the leaves fall earlier in a warm and fine 
autumn, than in a late and cold one. ‘The change in the colour being here 
retarded in the more elevated, and therefore colder situations, must be 
owing to the same general law of vegetation. The trees of Tierra del 
Fuego during no part of the year entirely shed their leaves, 
