ce
where valleys would have existed had its base still been above the sea.
The greater portion of the mountainsides are covered, from the water's
edge upwards to the elevation of 1500 feet, by one wide-extending forest
of evergreen beeches. Scarcely a level spot is to be found throughout
the whole country; and so dense is the wood, and encumbered by the
trunks of fallen trees and waterfalls, that it is scarcely possible to
penetrate it. Here and there on the western side, and in the Strait of
Magellan, the forest disappears, and magnificent glaciers extend down to
the very water's edge. The mountains on the north side rise to the
height of 4000 feet, with one peak above 6000 feet high, covered with a
mantle of perpetual snow; while numerous cascades pour their waters
through the woods into the narrow channel below. It is scarcely
possible to imagine anything more beautiful than the beryl-like blue of
these glaciers, especially contrasted with the dead white of the upper
expanse of snow.

The inhabitants of this region are among the lowest in the scale of
human beings, living in wretched hovels, composed often merely of boughs
and leaves, their only clothing scanty pieces of skin, worn on one side,
to defend themselves from the icy winds.

These evergreen forests, consisting of only two or three species of
trees, with several Alpine plants growing on the heights above them,
continue round the coast for six hundred miles or more northward of Cape
Horn, till, in the more northern and warmer latitudes, they give place
to semi-tropical vegetation. Now stately trees of various kinds appear,
with smooth and highly-coloured bark, loaded with parasitical plants;
while large and elegant ferns, and numerous and arborescent grasses,
entwine the trees into one entangled mass. Palm-trees appear in
latitude 37 degrees; and an arborescent grass, very like the bamboo,
three degrees further north.

In many places the ocean washes the base of the Andes, or huge spurs
project from the mountains; and in others a narrow belt alone is left
between them and the water. The whole of Chili, indeed, consists of a
narrow strip of land between the Cordilleras and the Pacific; while this
strip is often traversed by several mountain lines, which in some parts
run parallel to the great range. Extending to the south, between these
outer lines and the main Cordilleras, we find a succession of level
basins, generally blending into each other by