well; and even wheat sometimes ripens. With these capabilities, and with herds of fine cattle, it is evident that the Falkland Islands are well able to support an industrious colony. Captain Fitzroy thinks that they offer an eligible situation for a penal settlement; but, in this respect, perhaps Staatenland or Tierra del Fuego is still preferable. There the climate would supply the place of bars, bolts, and fetters. A warm roof would keep the wild spirits together without the aid of sentinels. There can be no greater mistake than to establish a Penal Colony in a temperate climate, where the life of a bushranger promises so much pleasure; and even in the Falkland Islands, where the weather is commonly boisterous and chilly, the gauchos can sleep in the open air. On the other hand, there cannot be a monitor more peremptory and effectual, and at the same time less injurious to the moral feelings, than the absolute necessity of providing for personal comfort. When the Beagle, touching on the coasts of Patagonia in April 1834, anchored in the mouth of the river Santa Cruz, Captain Fitzroy resolved to explore that fine stream towards its sources. The rapidity of the river made the undertaking extremely difficult; oars were of no avail, and the men were obliged to haul the boats along with ropes. Still, they persevered till they had advanced about 180 miles from the sea, and had the Andes full in view. Their provisions being then nearly consumed, and the monotony of the country promising little to reward their toils, they retraced their steps; the nearest waters of the Pacific being, it was calculated, about eighty miles distant. The river diminished little as it was ascended; being generally from three to four hundred yards broad, and of a depth of seventeen feet in the middle. Its waters were of a fine blue colour, and flowed with the remarkable rapidity of from four to six knots an hour throughout its whole course. Of its valley Mr Darwin says, 'If I had space, I could prove that South America was 'formerly here cut off by a strait, joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, like that of Magellan.' The herds of guanacoes followed by the puma; the ostriches inhabiting, and the condors soaring over those sterile plains of coarse shingle, do not here call for notice. Mr Darwin's account of the origin of those plains is better worth attention. In Europe,' he observes, deposits of the more recent eras have generally been accumulated in small basins or trough-shaped hollows. In South America, however, the entire plains of Patagonia, extending seven hundred miles in length, and backed, on the one hand, by the chain of the Andes, and fronted, on the other, by the shores of the Atlantic, are thus constituted. Moreover, the northern boundary is merely assumed in consequence of a mineralogical change in the strata; if organic remains were present, it would probably be found to be only an artificial limit. Again, to the northward (1300 miles distant from the Straits of Magellan) we have the pampas' deposit, which, though very different in composition, belongs to the same epoch with the superficial covering of the plains of Patagonia.-III. p. 201. According to Mr Darwin's theory, the whole of the South American continent, within the limits above alluded to at least, has been raised from the bed of the ocean within a very recent period that is to say, recent in a geological sense. The mingled clay and marl which form the soil of the pampas, he regards as the muddy accumulations or deposit of an immense estuary, of which the wide but shallow La Plata now remains the diminutive image. Further south in Patagonia, no fresh waters, flowing slowly, have overspread the wide valleys or plains with a fertile sediment. Of the plains of Patagonia, each portion in succession, from the Cordillera downwards to the Atlantic, was once the sea-beach. The waves threw upon it the rough shingle, the materials of which had fallen from the Cordillera a whitish sediment alone interposing between the stones and the accumulated sand beneath. As the sea slowly retired, or rather as the land rose, the waves still marked the furthest limits of their influence by a line of shingle; so that, while the process of the elevation of the land was equable, the result was the gradual formation of a uniformly sloping bed of shingle, But that the equable rising of the land was often interrupted by periods of repose, during which the waters corroded the shores so as to form cliffs, is evident from the circumstance, that the Patagonian plains exhibit six or seven terraces of exactly the same structure and materials, but of different heights; and these several heights, which mark so many periods of uniform action of the waters, recurring at distances of six or seven hundred miles asunder, prove the wide extent of the subterranean forces which regulated the rising of the shores. For about a hundred miles from the Cordillera, the plains bordering on the river Santa Cruz were covered with an immense stream of lava-increasing in depth towards the mountains, where a section of it would probably not fall short of three thousand feet. We may add, that the sand, shingle, and marine shells, extend a long way northward between the Pampas and the Cordillera, in the latitude of Conception. The same tract is also thickly strewed with volcanic ashes. The shingle of the lower terrace of the Patagonian plains is strewed with shells of species now common in the neighbouring seas; but in the sandy substratum are imbedded the shells of extinct species, including an oyster of extraordinary size. In the gravel, also, Mr Darwin discovered the bones of an extinct Llama, which must have been fully as large as the Camel. America, in past ages, like Africa at the present day, nourished many species of animals of great size; but these have perished unaccountably, and lie buried in vast quantities in the alluvial soil of the pampas. Remains of the megatherium; of an immense mastodon; of the toxodon, an extraordinary animal as large as a hippopotamus; and of other creatures as yet nameless, have been collected by Mr Darwin, and will be explained by him in a work now in course of publication. The western side of the southern part of the South American continent, presents the strongest possible contrast with the eastern. The open dry plains of Patagonia, enjoy clear skies throughout the year, and in summer are scorchingly hot. But beyond the mountains which bound them on the west, the scene is totally changed. The narrow strip of western coast is broken by numerous inlets, which penetrate quite through the Cordillera; here attaining a height of seven thousand feet. The ramifications of these inlets terminate in iminense glaciers, one of which was found to have an extent of twenty-one miles in length. Beneath the perpetual snows, and between the arms of the branching glaciers, grow impenetrable forests. Constant rains, pouring down from skies ever clouded, have covered the islands and mountain-sides with a dense mass of vegetation. This, towards the south, resembles the vegetation of Tierra del Fuego; but towards Chiloe the woods become incomparably more beautiful, and the dusky beech gives way to plants of a tropical character. Northwards the climate undergoes remarkable modifications. At Valdivia, the forests have a brighter hue. The apple, introduced from Europe, has there attached itself to the soil, and has spread over the elevated plains towards the sources of the Rio Negro; so that the Indians name that tract the land of apples. Beyond Valdivia, the forests on the coast become gradually more thin; but, on the sides of the Cordillera, woods of the noble Auracanian pine, the fruit of which yields the Indians a staple article of food, extend as far north as the volcano of Antuco. Through northern Chili, forests quite disappear from both sides of the Cordillera; a few scattered trees on its eastern side, alone give intimation of the approaching change. But, in Peru, the order of things is the reverse of that which obtains in the latitude of Patagonia. On the western side of the mountain-chain is the desert; on the east the boundless and impenetrable forests. No rain falls on the coast of Peru; but in the valley of Maynas, on the other side of the Cordillera, the rain never ceases; and one place in it is said to be visited by a thunder-storm every day in the year. The inhabitants of Chiloe, rather more than forty thousand in number, are, in general, a mixed progeny of Spanish and Indian blood. The ten or eleven thousand of them who bear Indian names, are not distinguishable in features or manners from most of those who boast of Spanish descent. Here the philanthropist enjoys the rare spectacle of an aboriginal uncultivated nation. raised to the same level (though an humble one) of civilisation with their European conquerors. They are all Christians, though still retaining, in secret, many barbarous superstitions. Docile, patient, and laborious, they might soon become, under the training of an enlightened government, a valuable population. Speaking of their resemblance to the natives of Tierra del Fuego, Mr Darwin remarks, 'Every thing I have seen convinces me of 'the close connexion of the different tribes, who, nevertheless, 'speak quite distinct languages;'-that is to say, we presume, that they strike the ear as distinctly different ;-but the radical differences of languages can only be rationally traced by those who are enabled to compare them analogically, and with reference to their grammatical structure. The Indians of the mainland further north, belong to that Araucanian nation who have derived so much celebrity from their fierce opposition to the encroachments of the Spaniards. They are still unsubdued; and retain, with their haughty manners, a large tract of the finest country in South America; in which the luxuriant productions of the climate of Chiloe is blended with the serenity of that of Chili. Mr Darwin says of them,— These Indians are good-sized men; their check-bones are very prominent; and, in general, they resemble the great American family to which they belong; but their physiognomy seemed to me slightly different from that of any other tribe which I had before seen. Their expression is generally grave and even austere, and possesses much character; this may pass either for honest bluntness or fierce determination. The long black hair, the grave and much-lined features, and the dark complexion, called to my mind old portraits of James the First.'-Vol. III., p. 366. In May 1835, a British frigate, the Challenger, was wrecked at Tucapel, on the Araucanian coast. On that occasion, as Captain Fitzroy (who took a zealous part in aiding the shipwrecked men) relates, the Indians assembled on the shore in great numbers, all on horseback, and assisted in hauling the rafts ashore, or in helping the people to land. Even the Indian wo'men rode into the furious surf, and with their lassoes helped very materially; some took the boys up behind their saddles and carried them ashore; others fixed their lassoes to the 'rafts.' Captain Seymour, of the Challenger, on receiving a present of a young heifer from the Cacique, expressed his regret that, situated as he then was, he had no equivalent to offer; whereupon, the chieftain, with a violent exclamation, indignantly disavowed the intention of accepting any thing from men in distress. The Araucanians are well clad; their ponchos or mantles being made of a dark-blue woollen cloth of their own manufacture. The caciques pride themselves on their silver spurs, the silver bits and head-gear of their horses. The women are ornamented in the old Peruvian fashion, with beads, golden pins, and large pendent trinkets of brass and gold. Captain Fitzroy saw one so adorned: She was a fine-looking young woman, the ' daughter of a cacique, who had accompanied some of her tribe to look at the shipwrecked white men. Her horse was a beau 'tiful animal, looking as wild as herself.' vey We need not devote any of our space to the details of the surof the coasts of Chili; but after what we have said of the opposite shores, it is incumbent on us to point out where the western coast of South America affords indications that the continent has, within a recent geological period, risen from the ocean. Mr Darwin, whose faculty of generalization is certainly of no ordinary vigour, has here very happily seized the circumstances of superficial configuration, which tend to confirm his theory of elevation. The Cordillera of the Andes marks the position of that great fissure in the crust of the earth through which the rocks of igneous formation have been thrown up. The general increase of that mountain mass towards the tropic, commensurate with the augmented subterranean forces, is also proportionate to the increased breadth of the continent raised by the latter. But the raising of the land, as Mr Darwin observes, has been gradual. Tierra del Fuego is a mountain land, partially submerged, intersected by great straits, and exposing, on the south and west particularly, a multitude of pinnacles which figure as islands. A little to the north, Otway Water is an example of interrupted communication, and of a strait recently converted into a lake by a rising of the land. Further on, the Patagonian plains have been all covered by the sea; and, at a later period, have been divided by straits from east to west, like Tierra del Fuego. On the western side of the Cordillera, the islands, from the strait of Magalhaens to Chiloe, differ from those on the western side of Tierra del Fuego, in having risen so much as to convert all but the deepest channels into dry land; thereby enlarging and simplifying (as we may ex VOL. LXIX. NO. CXL. 2 I |