Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/325

] rather than seen, till they emerge in foaming cascades, occupy every gully. In Fuegia these wild scenes are rendered gloomy, and, to the traveller who has recently quitted a more genial climate, positively forbidding, by the almost total absence of animated nature, and by the clouded sky, constant storms, and vexed ocean, added to the silence which is only broken by the hollow voice of the torrent and the cry of the savage.

"The various sea-weeds that abound in the Scottish lochs are represented in Fuegia by an infinitely more luxuriant growth of the same species as were mentioned to be natives of the Falkland Islands and Kerguelen Island. Though very different from our northern Algæ, they are equally, and some of them even better, adapted for making kelp. The rocks immediately above the sea are generally barren, or only covered with Lichens; but sometimes they produce a few green tufted plants; and wherever there is any beach, it yields several kinds of scurvy-grass (Cardamine hirsuta), the wild celery (Apium graveolens), besides a Plantago, Chrysosplenium, and some other herbs in considerable abundance.

"From the shore to an elevation of eight hundred feet, the steep sides of the hills, except where absolute precipices intervene, are clad with an uniformly lurid though deep green forest, consisting entirely of the following trees:—the evergreen beech (Fagus Forsteri), that never sheds its shining coriaceous foliage—this is the most prevalent tree;