ur, size, and
shape. It grows on a bushy plant, has a bitterish taste, rather insipid;
but may he eaten either raw or in tarts, and is used as food by the
natives.[4]

[1] "We found many little clefts, which cannot properly be called
vallies, where a few shrubs of different species sprang up in a thin
layer of swampy soil, being defended against the violence of storms,
and exposed to the genial influence of reverberated sun-beams. The
rock, of which the whole island consisted, is a coarse granite,
composed of feld-spath, quartz, and black mica or glimmer. This rock
is in most places entirely naked, without the smallest vegetable
particle; but wherever the rains, or melted snows, have washed
together some little rubbish, and other particles in decay, it is
covered with a coating of minute plants, in growth like mosses, which,
forming a kind of turf, about an inch or more in thickness, very
easily slip away under the foot, having no firm hold on the rock. In
sheltered places a few other plants thrive among these mossy species,
and these at last form a sufficient quantity of soil for the nutriment
of shrubs. Here we found the species which affords what has been
called Winter's Bark; but in this unfriendly situation it was only a
shrub about ten feet high, crooked and shapeless. Barren as these
rocks appeared, yet almost every plant which we gathered on them was
new to us, and some species were remarkable for the beauty of their
flowers, or their smell."--G.F.

[2] Mr G.F. has given a pretty minute description of the country
around this sound, and its annual and vegetable productions; but for a
reason afterwards stated by Captain Cook, there seems little
inducement to copy from it. Those who think otherwise, but who,
perhaps, are very few in number, will have recourse to that
gentleman's narrative.--E.

[3] The reader who is not satisfied with the picture now given of
these wretched and disgusting beings, may turn to the abstract of
Bougainville's Voyage, quoted in the preceding volume of this
collection, which surely ought to suffice.--E.

[4] In the cavities and crevices of the huge piles of rocks, forming
Terra del Fuego and Staten-land, so very like each other, where a
little moisture is preserved by its situation, and where from the
continued friction of the loose pieces of rocks