1770 FISH—PLANTS 227 
when taken out of the water. Of them we bought great 
quantities everywhere to the northward from the natives, 
who catch them by diving near the shore, feeling first with 
their feet till they find out where they lie. We had also 
that fish described by Frézier in his voyage to Spanish South 
America by the name of elefant, pejegallo, or poisson cog, which, 
though coarse, we made shift to eat, and several species of 
skate or sting-rays, which were abominably coarse. But to 
make amends for that, we had among several sorts of dog- 
fish one that was spotted with a few white spots, whose 
flavour was similar to, but much more delicate than, our 
skate. We had flat fish also like soles and flounders, eels 
and congers of several sorts, and many others, which any 
European who may come here after us will not fail to find 
the advantage of, besides excellent oysters, cockles, clams, and 
many other sorts of shell-fish, etc. 
Though the country generally is covered with an abundant 
verdure of grass and trees, yet I cannot say that itis productive 
of such great variety as many countries I have seen: the entire 
novelty, however, of the greater part of what we found 
recompensed us as natural historians for the want of variety. 
Sow-thistle, garden-nightshade, and perhaps one or two kinds 
of grasses, were exactly the same as in England, three or 
four kinds of fern were the same as those of the West 
Indies: these with a plant or two common to all the world, 
were all that had been described by any botanist out of 
about four hundred species, except five or six which we 
ourselves had before seen in Terra del Fuego. 
Of eatable vegetables there are very few; we, indeed, as 
people who had been long at sea, found great benefit in the 
article of health by eating plentifully of wild celery and a 
kind of cress which grows everywhere abundantly near the 
gea-side. We also once or twice met with a herb’ like 
that which the country people in England call “lamb’s- 
quarters ” or “fat-hen,” which we boiled instead of greens ; and 
once only a cabbage-tree,? the cabbage of which made us 
1 Atriplex patula, Linn. ; it is identical with the English ‘fat-hen.” 
2 The most southern of all palms, Areca sapida, Soland. 
