patagonica, which resembles the Californian redwood Sequoia sempervirens in many ways. It seems to require swampy ground to bring it to perfection, and in some places attains a height of 150 feet or more. Its timber has a beautiful grain and makes excellent shingles, but at present, as far as I know, has not been exported to Europe. It has attained a height of nearly forty feet in Devonshire and Cornwall, and if planted in wet soil would, I think, make a fine tree in the extreme south-west of England and Ireland.
The climate of Nahuelhuapi is a cold one in winter, much more so on the east shore (where Mr. Neilsaid the thermometer had fallen to – 17° C. in winter) than on the islands, where the captain of the steamer, Herr Otto Muhlenpfordt, has a house, and had not registered more than 8° C. of frost. From Lago Frio we had a magnificent view of the great Tronador, one of the very finest mountains I have ever seen, for though not of any great height (between 11,000 and 12,000 feet) it is covered with glaciers which on –the north-west side reach down to about 2,000 feel above sea-level, and its lower slopes are buried in an evergreen forest composed of the many beautiful trees and shrubs of South Chile.
From Lago Frio, which is passed in a row-boat, to Casapangue, the pass of Perez Rosales is crossed at an elevation of 1,150 metres as shown by the Chilean boundary pillar on its top. This pass is named after a Chilean governor who passed it in 1855. Here I found a very beautiful plant, Columnea ovata Cav., in flower on the rotten stumps and bases of trees in the dense shady forest, but could find no seed ripe enough to gather. I also caught several of the characteristic forest butterflies, nearly all Satyridæ and Hesperidæ, and descended about 2,500 feet through a forest which reminded me very much of the Sikkim Himalaya at about 6,000 to 7,000 feet.
At Casapangue is a good wooden house where the manager of Messrs. Hube and Achelis entertained us, and I would gladly have stayed there some days had time allowed. But as there were only two full days before the steamer was due at Puerto Montt, I had only time to visit the foot of the great glacier which descends into the valley near Casapangue, and which will some day be a favourite resort of those who wish to make the as yet unattempted ascent of the Tronador mountain, from whose precipices avalanches are constantly falling, with the thundering noise which has given a name to the mountain.
On reaching the foot of the glacier, from an arch in which a considerable torrent emerged, I was much surprised to find growing on the stony debris which had been brought down from above by the moving ice a whole grove of beech trees, some of them fifteen to twenty feet high, and a great quantity of Gunnera chilensis Lam, in fruit, from which I have since raised seedlings. There was no moraine on either side as far as I could see, but the dense forest came right down to the edge of the ice. Neither in the Himalaya nor in the Alps have I ever seen a glacier which from a naturalist's or Alpinist's point of view seemed so interest¬ ing as this, and so well deserving of careful examination and description.
From Casapangue to Puella on the shore of Lake Todos Santos is a beautiful ride of twelve to fifteen miles through superb forest where
