TREES TRANSPLANTED. 



441 



however," he says, "excited little astonishment, but afforded 

 them infinite diversion." The Prince Frederick took on board, 

 by Wallis' order, several thousand young trees, which had been 

 carefully removed with their roots and the earth about them, 

 and transported them to the Falkland Islands, where there was 

 no growth of wood. Captain Carteret climbed a mountain in 

 the hope of obtaining a view of the South Sea : he erected a 

 pyramid, in which he deposited a bottle containing a shilling and 

 a paper, — a memorial which, he remarked, might possibly remain 

 there as long as the world endured. At other points the land 

 was bare, covered with snow, or piled to the clouds with rocks, 

 looking like the ruins of nature doomed to everlasting sterility 

 and desolation. 



A storm now disabled both ships, and Carteret found the 

 Swallow to be almost unmanageable. From this time forward, 

 during the passage of the Strait, the inhabitants they met seemed 

 to be the most miserable of human beings, — half frozen, half 

 fed, half clothed. After four months' dangerous and tedious 

 navigation, they issued from the Strait into the ocean on the 

 11th of April, 1767, bidding farewell to a region where in the 

 midst of summer the weather was tempestuous, "where the 

 prospect had more the appearance of chaos than of nature, and 

 where, for the most part, the valleys were without herbage and 

 the hills without wood." A storm here separated the Dolphin 

 and the Swallow, and from this point the adventures of Wallis 

 and Carteret form two distinct narratives. We shall follow the 

 course of the Dolphin, and then return to that of the Swallow. 



Wallis sailed to the northwest for two months without inci- 

 dent, discovering Whitsun Island and Queen Charlotte's Island 

 in mid-ocean. At last, on the 19th of June, he touched at 

 Quiros' island of Sagittaria : it had been lost for a century 

 and a half, and its existence even was doubted. The Dolphin 

 was soon surrounded by hundreds of canoes, containing at least 

 eight hundred peonle. They did not manifest hostile intentions, 



