Page:The birds of Tierra del Fuego - Richard Crawshay.djvu/32

xvi FLORA

though confined. Thickly-wooded and very steep mountains shut us in on all three sides, and opposite, distant only a few miles, rose an immense barrier of snow-covered mountains, on which the moon was shining brightly. The water between was so glassy that their outline might be distinctly traced in it: but a deathlike stillness was sometimes broken by masses of ice falling from the opposite glaciers, which crashed, and reverberated around—like eruptions of a distant volcano."

As men who had seen the world, the "tremendous and astonishing glaciers" of this region impressed the "Adventure" and "Beagle" Survey as one of its greatest wonders.

For present purposes, the flora may be divided into two groups—that of the open parts of the island and that of the forest.

The principal growths met with in the open are a bush with sage-green leaves and white Marguerite -like flowers (Chiliotrichum amelloideum); the Box-leafed Barberry (Berberis huxifolid); the Black Currant {Ribes magellanicum); the Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum); the Arbutus-like prickly-leafed Pernettya mucronata; the delicately beautiful P, serpyllifolia; and Azorella growing in massive vivid-green mounds.

Of these, the most important is the Barberry—the Calafate as it is locally known—though not nearly so abundant as Chiliotrichum, which completely clothes the hill-sides and flats for vast areas. To the Calafate Drake refers, as a "small berry with us named currants, or as the comon sort call them small raisins, growing wonderfull piety," in an island, "where the Atlanticke Ocean and the South Sea meete in