After a little more trouble we gained the peat, and then the bare slate rock. A ridge connected this hill with another, distant some miles, and more lofty, so that patches of snow were lying on it. When we reached the hill we found it the highest in the immediate neighbourhood, and the waters flowed to the sea in opposite directions. There was a degree of mysterious grandeur in mountain behind mountain, with the deep intervening valleys, all covered by one thick, dusky mass of forest. The atmosphere, likewise, in this climate, where gale succeeds gale, with rain, hail, and sleet, seems blacker than anywhere else. The evening was calm and bright, and we enjoyed a fine view of the surrounding isles. We stood out to sea, and on the second day again made the land, when we saw on our weatherbow this notorious promontory in its proper form veiled in a mist, and its dim outline surrounded by a storm of wind and water. The only thing which reminded us of the gale outside, was every now and then a puff from the mountains, which made the ship surge at her anchors. The surrounding islands all consist of conical masses of greenstone, associated sometimes with less regular hills of baked and altered clayslate. These heaps can be distinguished at a long distance by the bright green colour of certain plants, which invariably grow on them. Among these may be enumerated the wild celery and scurvy grass, two very serviceable plants, the use of which has not been discovered by the natives. It merely consists of a few broken branches stuck in the ground, and very imperfectly thatched on one side with a few tufts of grass and rushes. The whole cannot be the work of an hour, and it is only used for a few days. On the west coast, however, the wigwams are rather better, for they are covered with sealskins. We were detained here several days by the bad weather. The thermometer generally stood about 45 degs. From the damp and boisterous state of the atmosphere, not cheered by a gleam of sunshine, one fancied the climate even worse than it really was. On the east coast the natives, as we have seen, have guanaco cloaks, and on the west they possess sealskins. Amongst these central tribes the men generally have an otterskin, or some small scrap about as large as a pockethandkerchief, which is barely sufficient to cover their backs as low down as their loins.