1836.] KING GEORGE’S SOUND. 449 
attempt, from the thickness of the wood. Our guide, however, 
was a stupid fellow, and conducted us to the southern and damp 
side of the mountain, where the vegetation was very luxuriant ; 
and where the labour of the ascent, from the number of rotten 
trunks, was almost as great as on a mountain in Tierra del Fuego 
or in Chiloe. It cost us five and a half hours of hard climbing 
before we reached the summit. In many parts the Eucalypti 
grew to a great size, and composed a noble forest. In some 
of the dampest ravines, tree-ferns flourished in an extraordinary 
manner ; I saw one which must have been at least twenty feet 
high to the base of the fronds, and was in girth exactly six feet. 
The fronds forming the most elegant parasols, produced a gloomy 
shade,, like that of: the first hour of night. The summit of the 
mountain is broad and flat, and is composed of huge angular 
masses of naked greenstone. Its elevation is 3100 feet above 
the level of the sea. The day was splendidly clear, and we en- 
joyed a most extensive view; to the north, the country appeared 
a mass of wooded mountains, of about the same height with that 
on which we were standing, and with an equally tame outline: 
to the south the broken land and water, forming many intricate 
bays, was mapped with clearness before us. After staying some 
hours on the summit, we found a better way to descend, but did 
not reach the Beagle till eight .o’clock, after a severe day’s 
work. 
February Tth.—The Beagle sailed from Tasmania, and, on 
the 6th of the ensuing month, reached King George’s Sound, 
situated close to the S.W. corner of Australia. We staid there 
eight days; and we did not during our voyage pass a more duli 
and uninteresting time. The country, viewed from an eminence, 
appears a woody plain, with here and there rounded and partly 
bare hills of granite protruding. One day I went out witha 
party, in hopes of seeing a kangaroo hunt, and walked over a good 
many miles of counuy. Everywhere we found the soil sandy, 
and very poor; it supported either a coarse vegetation of thin, 
low brushwood and wiry grass, or a forest of stunted trees. The 
scenery resembled that of the high sandstone platform of the Blue 
Mountains ; the Casuarina (a tree somewhat resembling a Scotch 
fir) is, huwever, here in greater number, and the Eucalyptus in 
rather less. In the open parts there were many grass-trees,— 
