160 PUMA HUMMING-BIRDS WOOD. April 18S8. 



but the trial might have been more profitable at another season, 

 judging from the number of seals we saw on the rocks off the 

 Port, which live principally upon fish. Muscles, limpets, and 

 seareggs abound here, and are good and wholesome of their 

 kind. Birds are few in number, and of the species most common 

 in these regions. No quadruped of any kind was seen ; but 

 the purser told me that he had observed, near the sandy beach, 

 traces of a four-footed animal, resembling those of a tiger : he 

 followed them to a cavern, and thence to the jungle. He also 

 said that he had seen several humming-birds. 



" With the exception of wild celery and the arbutus berry, 

 I know not of any useful vegetable production that this place 

 affords, unless the ' Winter^s-bark tree** may be mentioned. 

 Some coarse grass, fit perhaps for animals, may be there pro- 

 cured. The only signs of inhabitants were some wigwams on 

 the western point, which seemed to have been long forsaken : 

 in their construction they were precisely similar to those erected 

 by the migratory tribes in the Straits of Magalhaens; and 

 the shells of muscles, limpets, and sea-eggs, within and about 

 them, showed that the former tenants of these hovels drew, like 

 the Magalhaenic tribes, a principal part of their subsistence 

 from shell-fish. 



" Around the harbour are granite mountains, perfectly bare 

 at their summits and north-western sides, but the lower parts 

 are thickly covered in sheltered places and ravines, partly with 

 trees, and partly with brushwood : among the trees growing 

 here we observed, as usual, two kinds of beech, a tree like the 

 cypress, but of small size, and the Winter's-bark. The under- 

 wood is composed of all the various shrubs we had met with in 

 the Straits of Magalhaens ; and this brushwood is so thickly 

 spread over the lower parts of the shores of the harbour, that 

 it is only by crawling over it that the distance of a few yards 

 from the rocks can be gained ; and being generally of insuffi- 

 cient strength to support a man''s weight, it frequently gives 

 way beneath him, and he is so completely buried, as to make it 

 difficult for him to extricate himself. 



" Scarcely any of the trees attain a size to render them fit 



