We anchored for the night in Island Harbour. On the following
morning we got under way at an early hour, and s'.eamed
down the Messier Channel and through the English Narrows,
reaching Eden Harbour about dusk.
We passed several small icebergs, which had probably reached
the channels from a glacier in Iceberg Sound. The largest was
about twenty yards across, and projected about six feet above the
surface. Most of the hills in this latitude were snow-clad as far
as the 1,000 feet line.
On the evening of the next day, the I ith October, we reached
the Trinidad Channel, and established ourselves for a time at
Cockle Cov'e, an anchorage on the south shore of this channel,
of which the survey was as yet incomplete.
It was now spring time on the west coast of Patagonia, but the
weather was as chilly and wet as it had been in the autumn of the
previous year, when we were moving north towards our winter
quarters ; indeed, from the accounts furnished to us by the sealers,
as well as from our own experience, I am inclined to think that
there are no marked seasonal changes in the weather on the
west coast, whither the constant westerly winds are continually
delivering the burden of aqueous vapour which they accumulate
in their passage over the Southern Cccan. Cn the other hand,
the condition of the fauna and flora indicate the natural two-fold
division of the year as decisively as it is observed in the same
latitude in the northern hemisphere.
In the month of Cctober at Cockle Cove the kelp geese and
steamer-ducks were preparing their nests, and the cormorants were
assembling at their rookeries ; the holly-leaved berberry {Berberis
ilicifolid) was already displaying its gorgeous clusters oi globular
orange flowers, and the giant creeper {Campsidium chilense) was
also in bloom, its scarlet bell-shaped flowers peeping from aloft
among the branches of the beech-trees, where they appear to seek
a position in which they may flourish safe from intrusion. Many
of the mosses and jungennannicB were also now in full fruit.
pill
I'M H J
I II