Page:The birds of Tierra del Fuego - Richard Crawshay.djvu/28

xiv Early voyagers record hardly any definite impressions of the island, even as seen from the sea.

Describing the Strait. Drake says:—"The mountaines arise with such tops and spires into the aire, and of so rare a height, as they may well be accounted amongst the wonders of the world; enuironed, as it were, with many regions of congealed clouds and frozen meteors, whereby they are continually fed and increased, both in height and bignes, from time to time, retaining that which they haue once received, being little againe diminished by the heate of the sun, as being so farre from reflexion and so nio:h the cold and frozen res^ion."

Cook says of the island's aspect to westward, in summer:—" This is the most desolate coast I ever saw. It seems entirely composed of rock mountains without the least appearance of vegetation. These mountains terminate in horrible precipices, whose craggy summits spire up to a vast height; so that hardly anything in nature can appear with a more barren and savage aspect, than the whole of this country. The inland mountains were covered with snow, but those on the sea- coast were not."

Down to the present time, the Survey of the "Adventure" and "Beagle" constitutes the most reliable and complete information on this region at all generally accessible. King's descriptions of the scenery are particularly powerful and vivid.

Of Gabriel Channel, he says:—"Mount Buckland is a tall obelisk-like hill, terminating in a sharp needle-point, and lifting its head above a chaotic mass of 'reliquiæ diluvianæ,' covered with perpetual snow, by the melting of which an enormous glacier on the leeward, or north-eastern side, has been gradually formed. This icy domain is twelve or fourteen miles long, feeding, in the intermediate space, many magnificent cascades, which, for number and height, are not perhaps to be exceeded in an equal space of any part of the world. Within an extent of nine or ten miles, there are upwards of a hundred and fifty waterfalls, dashing into the Channel