Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.1): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

22 CAPE NKGRO FBKSHWATER BAY. Jan. 1827. The following day was calm, and so warm, that we thought if Wallis and Cordova were correct in describing the weather they met with, Duclos Guyot was equally entitled to credit and we began to hope we had anticipated worse weather than we should experience. But this was an unusually fine day, and m.any weeks elapsed, afterwards, without its equal. The temperature of the air, in the shade on the beach, was 674°, on the sand 87^° ; and that of the water 55'. Other observations were made, as well as a plan of the bay, of which there is a description in the Sailing Directions. Here we first noticed the character of the vegetation in the Strait, as so different from that of Cape Gregory and other parts of the Patagonian coast, which is mainly attributable to the change of soil ; the northern part being a very poor clay, whilst here a schistose sub-soil is covered by a mixture of alluvium, deposited by mountain streams ; and decomjxtsed vegetable matter, which, from the thickness of the forests, is in great quantity. Two specimens of beech {Fagus betuloides and antarctica), the former an evergreen, — and the winter's bark {Wintera aromatica), are the only trees of large size that we found here ; but the underwood is very thick, and composed of a great variety of plants, of which Arbutus rigida, two or three species of Berberis, and a wild currant (Ribes antarctica^ Bankes and Solander MSS.), at this time in flower, and forming long clustering bunches of young fruit, were the most remarkable. The berberis produces a berry of acidulous taste, that promised to be useful to us. A species of wild celery, also, which grows abundantly near the sea-shore, was valuable as an antiscorbutic. The trees in the immediate vicinity of the shore are small, but the beach was strewed with trunks of large trees, which seemed to have been drifted there by gales and high tides. A river falls into the bay, by a very narrow channel, near its south end ; but it is small, and so blocked up by trees as not to be navigable even for the smallest boat : indeed, it is merely a mountain torrent, varying in size according to the state of the weather.