Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/194

168 plants which take a deep root, and, therefore, only shrubs and grasses are found: the former are thinly scattered over the extensive plains which characterize this country; but the grasses are abundant, and although of a harsh and dry appearance, must be nourishing, for they form the chosen food of numerous and large herds of guanacoes.

Besides the evergreen beech above-mentioned, there are but few other trees in the Strait that can be considered as timber trees. Such an appellation only belongs to two other species of beech and the Winter's bark. The last, which is also an evergreen, is to be found mixed with the first, in all parts of the Strait; so that the country and hills from the height of two thousand feet above the sea, to the very verge of the high-water mark, are covered with a perpetual verdure which is remarkably striking, particularly in those places where the glaciers descend into the sea; the sudden contrast in such cases pointing to the view a scene as agreeable as it seems to be anomalous. I have myself seen vegetation thriving most luxuriantly, and large woody-stemmed trees of Fuchsia and Veronica, in England considered and treated as tender plants, in full flower, within a very short distance of the base of a mountain, covered for two-thirds down with snow, and with the temperature at 36°. The Fuchsia certainly was rarely found but in sheltered spots, but not so the Veronica; for the beaches of the bay on the west side of St. John's Island at Port San Antonio are lined with trees of the latter, growing even in the very wash of the sea. There is no part of the Strait more exposed to the wind tan this, for it faces the reach to the west of Cape Froward, down which the wind constantly blows, and brings with it a succession of rain, sleet, or snow; and in the winter months, from April to August the ground is covered with a layer of snow, from six inches to two or three feet in depth.

There must be, therefore, some peculiar quality in the atmosphere of this otherwise rigorous climate which favours vegetation; for if not, these comparatively delicate plants could not live and flourish through the long and severe winters of this region.

In the summer, the temperature at night was frequently as low as 29° Fahrenheit, and yet I never noticed the following morning any blight or injury sustained by these plants, even in the slightest degree.

One circumstance, however, deserves to be mentioned, which may in some measure account for the innocuous effort of so low a temperature. I have occasionally, during the summer, been up the greater part of the night at my observatory, with the internal as well as the external thermometers as low as freezing point,