Page:The birds of Tierra del Fuego - Richard Crawshay.djvu/19

Rh these opinions have repeatedly been expressed to me. Other people, again, arrive at its climate by analogy with corresponding latitudes in the northern hemisphere. In reality, it is far colder and far more inclement. At no time does the temperature ever rise to anything approaching summer-heat in the British Islands. It commonly freezes at midsummer. Degrees of temperature, however, do not convey the climate. There is the wind from the everlasting snows and glaciers, always blowing with terrific force and with cutting keenness, yet how invigorating and fragrant with forest and peat and seaweed!

Drake thus describes the weather in 1578:—"The mountaines being verry high, and som reaching into the frozen region, did every one send out their several windes; somtymes behind us, to send us on our way; somtymes on the starrboarde side, to drive us to the larborde, and on the contrary; somtymes right against us, to drive us farther back in an houre than wee could recover againe in many; but of all others this was the worst, that sometyme two or three of these winds would come together, and meet as it were in one body, whose forces being becom one, did so violently fall into the sea, whirleing, or as the Spanyard saith, with a tornado, that they would pierce into the very bowells of the sea, and make it swell upwards on every syde; the hollownes they made in the water, and the winds breaking out againe, did take the swelling banks so raised into the ayer, and being dispersed abroad, it rann downe againe a mighty raine. Neither may I omit the grisly sight of the cold and frozen mountains rearing their heads, yea, the greatest part of their bodies, into the cold and frozen region, where the power of the reflection of the sonn never reacheth to dissolve the ise and snow; so that the ise and snow hang about the spires of the mountains circularwise, as it were regions by degrees, one above another, and one exceeding another in breadth in a wonderful order. From these hills distilled so sharpe a breath, that it seemed to enter into the bowells of nature, to the great discomfort of the lives of our men."