Few places are more mournful than this region when rain is falling. After the rain ceases, mists arise and circle round you, shutting you in, these in their turn often being dissipated by a sudden fierce squall. In summer the climate is very humid, and many of the plants have the fat damp aspect seldom observable save in the tropics. The huge masses of rank vegetation seem to stifle you; once you have been in that great black insatiable woodland you can never quite shake off its influence.
In that particular forest was one glade by the outrunning of a little brook where the ground was thick with orchids.[30]
One reads of "virgin forests," but one must behold them to comprehend the reality that underlies the wording. For days you saw no living thing, heard no human tones, nothing but the immense voices of the thunder, the glacier and the everlasting wind. The solitude of Patagonia, its peculiar characteristic of lack of human life in the present and the past, was borne in upon one under that high dome of foliage, and in those aisles abysmally vast, stretching north, south, east and west. In any other country legends would have gathered round these places, some touch of man's presence and adventure humanised them, so to speak. In Patagonia the fancy had nothing to grip, to grow upon, no story of joy or of sorrow. Solitude reigned alone, and nature spoke only by the awful uninterpreted tongues of God's elements.
[28] Two kinds of fish came under my observation, but I understood there were four.
[29] I hope in a future volume to publish a list of the plants we collected. At the moment of writing all have not reached England.
[30] There were also orchids growing about the foothills of the Cordillera. Those I brought back are now under the care of the Curator of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. They should flower before this book is in print.
DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER KATARINA AND LAKE PEARSON
Fears of winter coming on -- Stormy days -- Quiet nights -- Picnics in Patagonia -- Start by night -- Hellgate by starlight -- Camp on beach -- Advance up North Fjord -- Approach to River Katarina -- Shallow water -- Leave launch -- Advance with canvas boat -- Tameness of huemul -- Anecdote of Canoe Indians -- White-faced ducks -- First sight of lake -- Bernardo falls ill -- Immoderate bags of so-called sportsmen -- Problem of shrinkage of Lake Argentino -- Discovery of Lake Pearson -- Description -- Bernardo better -- Comet -- Obliged to turn back -- Hellgate by firelight.