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. TERRAPIN TREES ROCKS. 487 broken lava. Walking is extremely difficult. A hand-barrow was lying at the landing-place, which showed that terrapin were to be got near us, though we did not then see any. The men from whalers and sealing vessels carry the large terrapin, or land-tortoises, on these barrows. Ascending a little hill, we were surprised to find much brush or underwood, and trees of considerable size, as large in the trunk as one man could clasp. These were prickly pears, and a kind of gum-tree : how their roots are able to penetrate, or derive nourishment from the hard lava, it is hard to say; for earth there is scarcely any. Wild cotton shrubs are nume- rous. This first excursion had no tendency to raise our ideas of the Galapagos Islands. 17th. Weighed and stood alongshore, sounding. There was good anchorage, until near the south-west point of Stephens Bay, off which the water is shoal, and the bottom uneven. We anchored in Stephens Bay, and found an American whaler lying there. This bay is large, and the anchoring ground gene- rally good ; but the landing is bad at low water. There is no fresh water : and it is frequently difficult to enter, as well as to leave, because usually becalmed by high land, it seldom feels the true wind. Enderby Cove is only fit for a boat ; at low water it is full of rocks. The Kicker Rock is a curious mass of stone, rising almost perpendicularly from the bottom of the sea, where it is thirty fathoms deep ; and in the offing is another (called the Dalrymple, by Colnett), which looks exactly like a ship becalmed, with all sail set. Seeing a remarkable hill at the north-east side of the bay, which had not an appear- ance like other parts of the island, I went to it in a boat, hoping to find water near the foot, and to have a good view from the summit. Disappointed in both ways, the hill being composed of a crumbling sand-stone, and almost inaccessible, I returned to the ship early next morning. Several new birds were seen by those who were on shore, and many fish were caught on board, of which the best and most numerous were a kind of rock cod, of large size. 18th. Weighed and stood alongshore until noon, when we