Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

1835. ALERSE FOllESTS — SIZE OF TREES. 391 load. At about sixteen they borrow an axe, and make the boards they afterwards carry. The alerse forests are like mines to the Calbucano ; and nothing but old age or accident can check him from making boards after he has had one season of good luck. The profitable parts of the forests are now, of course, much farther from the sea than they were, owing to constant thinning. To get a load of twenty boards twice as much labour is therefore required as was necessary for a similar purpose thirty years ago. The largest alerse tree that has been found by any Calbucano during the last forty years, measured thirty feet in girth, at five feet from the ground ; and more than seventy-six feet to the first branches. This famous tree gave eight lengths of boards and half a length. The two largest trees seen by Mr. Douglas, in his excursion for me, measured one twenty-four, and the other twenty-two feet round, at five feet from the ground: but these were dead trees, hollow in the centre. He saw none above ten feet in circumference, that were quite sound. Report, however, says, that in the Cordillera, out of reach of the Calbuco woodsmen, there are enormous trees, from thirty to forty feet in girth, and from eighty to ninety feet in height to the first branches, above which the heads of those giant trees are said to rise some forty or fifty feet. The alerse has short, stout branches, with leaves hke those of a pine, in their bluish green colour, but shorter, being only half an inch long, and one-twentieth of an inch wide : on one stem there are four rows of these small leaves, at opposite sides. Captain King has fully described the alerse (vol. i, p. 282-3), and the manner of making the boards. I will add a few no- tices of the way in which it is obtained. In carrying his load along many miles of bad road from an ' astillero,' to the nearest water conveyance, the Calbucano weai-s a sheep-skin on his shoulders, under a woollen shirt, and taking a stick, with its lower end forked,* he trudges along * To steady him across bridges of single trees, thrown over ravines, as well as to assist in supporting the load. Sometimes they climb up or down precipices with their loads, by a fallen tree, notched to receive the feet.