Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/346

308 to justify the risk; and our people were more usefully employed, whenever the weather admitted, in cutting down such trees as the carpenters selected as fit for building, to be conveyed by us to the settlement at Falkland Islands, where timber was greatly wanted, and in taking up, under the direction of Dr. Hooker, many hundred young trees of various kinds, which I was in hope might succeed when transplanted into those islands,—an important desideratum.

We found patches of celery near most of the wigwams, and thinking it probable that plant was cultivated by the natives, we cleared several small spaces and sowed a quantity of seeds of various kinds of vegetables, such as parsley, cabbages, potatoes, peas, beans, and the Kerguelen Island cabbage, in the hope of their being eventually useful to them. Several pairs of rabbits, which we had brought for the purpose from Falkland Islands, were landed at different parts of the harbour, and on some of the adjacent islands; and from the luxuriance of the vegetation I have no doubt they will thrive and multiply exceedingly.

Birds of different kinds were daily arriving from the northward, and our sportsmen succeeded in supplying our tables with woodcocks, quails, upland geese, and water-rails, whilst the cormorant, loggerhead duck, and kelp geese were eagerly solicited by the less fastidious Fuegians, who seemed to prefer them when in a putrid state.

We were unsuccessful in all our attempts at