536 



VAN DTEMEn's land. 



Feb. 1836. 



with me a guide, for I failed in a first attempt, from the 

 thickness of the wood. My 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 

 the labour of the ascent, from the number of rotten trunks, 

 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 gum- 

 trees grew to a great size, and the whole 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 foliage of 

 these trees, forming so many most elegant parasols, created 

 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 enjoyed a most extensive view; to 

 the northward the country appeared a mass of wooded moun- 

 tains, of about the same elevation and tame outline with the 

 one on which we were standing : to the south, the outline of 

 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 17th. — The Beagle sailed from Tasmania, 

 and, on the 6th of the ensuing month, reached King George^s 

 Sound, situated near the S.W. corner of Australia. We staid 

 there eight days; and I do not remember, since leaving 

 England, having passed a more dull, 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 with a party, in hopes 

 of seeing a kangaroo hunt, and walked over a good many 

 miles of country. Every where we found the soil sandy, and 

 very poor ; it either supported a coarse vegetation of thin. 



